Meaningful dialogue missing

The most surprising aspect of the Watercare meeting at the Bridgehouse on April 29 was how few people attended.

Despite the massive disruptions that are about to shake the town, only two business owners were in the audience – Bin Inn owner Jill Gabriel and Intimate Apparel owner Louise Tunnicliffe. Watercare and contractor representatives outnumbered them three-to-one.

When we asked one of the communications officers at the meeting why they thought there was such a small turnout, she said it was probably because business owners were being kept well-informed.

Mahurangi Matters decided to ground truth this the next day.

A walk along both sides of just Elizabeth Street was revealing. Overwhelming, retail staff and business owners said they had not heard about the meeting. Two people checked their emails, just to make sure they hadn’t inadvertently missed the notice, because they said they would have attended had they known. One business owner explained that because her English was not good, she found it hard to understand what was being said at meetings. She was under the impression the project had been completed.

Increasingly, institutions and government departments are relying on sign-ups to online newsletters that have a very poor “human” opening rate (some are as low as 25 per cent).

That approach might tick a box in a communications plan, but it is clearly failing the very people most affected by these projects. Not everyone has the time to sift through dozens of emails every day, and many small business owners are already stretched trying to keep their doors open.

Too often, organisations mistake sending information for actually communicating it.

If councils and major agencies genuinely want community engagement, they need to return to more direct and accessible forms of communication. That means door-knocking businesses, distributing printed notices, ensuring information is available in multiple languages where needed and, dare we say it, advertising in the local community newspaper.

The frustration many communities feel towards large institutions often stems less from the projects themselves than from the sense that decisions are being imposed without meaningful dialogue.