RSLG membership opportunities

Robert Reid, Co-chair, Tāmaki Makaurau Regional Skills Leadership Group

Kia ora, koutou. Ko Robert Reid ahau. I’m co-chair of the Tāmaki Makaurau Regional Skills Leadership Group. My background is as a trade unionist, which I have done for many, many years as my hair shows, and have been co-chair of the group right since its inception during the pandemic. And my other co-chair with me is Awerangi Tamihere.

Awerangi Tamihere, Co-chair, Tāmaki Makaurau Regional Skills Leadership Group

Kia ora, Robert. Mōrena, koutou. Ngā mihi māhana kia koutou. Ki te taha o tōku pāpa, no Ngāti Raukawa Rangitāne, Ngāti Kauwhata. Ki te taha o tōku māma, no Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Kāi Tahu. Ko Awerangi Tamihere tōku ingoa. Hi there, I’m Awerangi Tamihere and I’m Robert’s co-partner in crime for the Tāmaki Makaurau Regional Skills Leadership Group and, like Robert, I’ve been with them since the inception before COVID. It’s an honour to be here to spend some time talking about what we get up to.

Robert Reid

I think for us, the fact that right from the beginning, right from day dot, we have had that structure which has brought together Māori and non-Māori parts of the community. But also of course, it has brought together the people on the supply side of the labour market - I’m a trade unionist, so those are workers, those are Māori workers, Pacifika workers, migrant workers - together with people on the demand side, which is the employers who need labour, who want labour and who want skilled labour in this region.

Awerangi Tamihere

And the partnership works quite well because my background is, I’ve been working in whānau ora, working with Māori and different types of entities and at the moment also with Te Whānau o Waipareira. So the Government saw it as an important role to have a co-chair relationship which also honoured and acknowledged the partnership with Māori across Tāmaki Makaurau. So it was important to have a role, an expertise and understanding of workforce, but not only that, having specific expertise as Robert explained, and as I’ve explained, about understanding particularly Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi and their role in looking at the RSLG and what it can do to help Māori in the workforce in Tāmaki Makaurau

Katarina Hina, Co-chair, Manawatū-Whanganui Regional Skills Leadership Group

Kia ora, koutou. Ko Katarina Hina tōku ingoa. He uri au o te awa Whanganui ne Whangaehu. My primary role is as general manager of Te Rūnanga o Ngā Wairiki – Ngāti Apa, based in South Rangitikei, proudly co-chair of the Manawatū-Whanganui Regional Skills Leadership Group. Kia ora rā. Our RSLG is focusing on the future, which means focusing on our rangatahi to ensure that we can provide clear pathways through their school years onto meaningful employment. Our insights and analysis helps us to understand where our rangatahi are transitioning onto once they complete school. It also helps us build a picture up for our employers within all the different industries to ensure that they are youth-ready, and to help them and assist them also, to keep growing the rangatahi within their workforce.

Liz Brown, Co-chair, Canterbury Regional Skills Leadership Group

Our RSLG has been working particularly with manufacturing and the tech sector. And we have been working alongside them and gathering what their future needs and aspirations are in regard to the labour market. Our secretariat also do a lot of work out engaging with the wider sector and wider industries to bring that intelligence back to us to see if we need to reprioritise or if there’s other insights that we could send up to a national level. We’ve been holding sector forums with the tech sector. And from those forums, we’re able to ascertain their emerging needs and their aspirations as well. And so that’s very useful intelligence for us.

Awerangi Tamihere

And what’s deeply wired into the DNA, if you like, of the RSLG is having really good intelligence and working closely on the ground in your communities, your professional expertise, your skills, but knowing how to bring that up to an RSLG level and understand how we take a coordinated approach to bring everything together so we can share a coordinated approach to how our workforce is being dealt with.