Mike's Minute: The issue we have in rural New Zealand

Is Origin Air and Westport part of a wider regional issue in rural New Zealand? 

Origin's Westport to Wellington flight is in jeopardy. It's not the first small airline in the first small town to face this trouble. 

In fact, as a result of this trouble, the Government set up the Regional Infrastructure Fund for essential air services. 

I suppose the key is the word "essential" – is Westport to Wellington essential? 

The fund, it is suggested, is going to turn the airline down. Why? I don’t know. 

So we seem to have a rock-and-a-hard place scenario. 

Is life on the Coast about Hokitika? You can fly from there so is that good enough? 

Add the insurance issue on the Coast in and how many hurdles does a region need before it becomes a bit hard? Before you essentially just need a lot of Government support to keep the lights on? 

Of course it's the cold, hard reality of a small country with a small population that has decided, rightly or wrongly, to spread themselves out all over the place. 

Numbers matter. Planes need to be full, businesses need demand. The equation has to make sense. 

How much air connectivity is the right amount? 

What about freight vs people? What about product to market that requires speed, not the volume of a train or truck? 

How far should you have to drive? Hokitika is not far away. In fact, it could be quicker to go from Westport to Hokitika than it is from the North of Auckland to the South of Auckland where the airport is. 

We do, once again rightly or wrongly, expect a lot in small town New Zealand. We love the quiet of the country and rural New Zealand, just with all the first-world services and conveniences, if you wouldn’t mind. 

It's also true to say that small towns all over the world have the same issues. Places like Australia with its size, even more so than us. 

But if you don’t have an air link and you don’t have insurance and you can't find a GP and the dentist is in the city on the other side of the alps, you get to a tipping point where it all starts to become a bit hard. 

Is the Coast, or parts of it, in danger of that very scenario? 

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