Horn to use shoe leather in bid to save strong wool industry
Murray Horn is a man on a mission and the hope will be that it’s not an impossible one.
The National Health Board chairman was tapped by Agriculture Minister David Carter to act as a wool industry convenor, announced this week.
Dr Horn’s role of the next few weeks is to speak with up to 40 wool industry representatives in an attempt to find some common ground on which a brand new industry body could be based.
“I’ll be talking to people one on one first to understand their interests and their perspectives,” Dr Horn told NBR.
“Success is going to depend on the willingness to engage with the process.”
However, Dr Horn said it seemed widely accepted that there was a need to create a single industry voice.
It’s likely Dr Horn will use his experience with his review of New Zealand’s health system last year.
Appointed by Health Minister Tony Ryall to create a series of recommendations that could be used to reform the health sector, Dr Horn was later appointed as chairman of the new National Health Board.
Dr Horn said it was unlikely that he would write an extensive report following his meetings with the wool industry.
Instead, the same group of people previously gathered together by Mr Carter would be briefed of his findings.
“I’m approached this with an open mind and a fresh pair of eyes, but there needs to be a clear agenda and a way forward with ideas of how to implement it.”
Mr Carter has intimated this approach is the last gasp of the strong wool industry in New Zealand.
Among the recommendations created by Mr Carter’s wool taskforce was a single industry voice.
It also recommended a complete mindshift from a supply-dominated perspective to market-let initiatives.
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Comments and questions1
The strong wool growers already had a collective voice and intelligent representation when they had control of the Wool Board.
Internationally, prices for strong wool were already declining when this body was dismantled and the hard-won assets distributed to various groups with clear and less-than-clear agendas. Much of the knowledge and capital has since been frittered away.
Strong wool prices have now dropped through the floor, and there's been no industry body to do anything about it. It's now simply not worth shearing. Now the Minister has the hindsight to determine that a single voice might help resurrect a once-critical component of our export earnings.
The Wool Board was voted out, rather than a better system being voted in. That's politics, but it has absolutely no place in any modern business reality.
I'm sure Dr. Horn has done an excellent job in reviewing the Health Sector, and as Chair of the Health Board. However this is not the expertise required to pull a very sick industry out of the deep, deep hole it is now in.
Our major market was China, and I don't see any reports that the Chinese economy is shrinking.
Our strong wools are good for carpets, but then so are most other strong wools - Chinese, Uruguayan, South African etc.
Instead of being a price taker at auction, which was the critical component of the machine that broke, New Zealand growers need to take responsibility and invest in downstream ownership and/or control of resources and markets.
The industry needs a clear vision of how to do that from someone who understands the task and is able to lead.
Obviously Ms. Gattung is out of favour with the Minister, but appointing Dr Horn is surely an inside joke regarding basket cases and post-mortems. Not funny if you are a woolgrower and a voter, however. I think he's there to read the last rites, and the industry should either get it's head out of the sand and make it's own decisions or accept the long slow fate inaction will bring them.
I'd like to think that all the investment in making New Zealand a leading wool producing nation can still be brought to our advantage.
I'm less sure this appointee is the leader to do it.
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