Leading the way

Environment Southland Chair, Jeremy McPhail, and Deputy Chair, Phil Morrison, both hail from the Waikaka Valley, but their lives took very different paths before coming together on council.

Their childhoods were intertwined with other farming families in the valley, revolving around the local one-classroom school, Presbyterian church and farming.

Most of the children were boys, says Jeremy: “It was amazing how many boys were in our loop, something like 18 boys and two girls.”

Phil recalls some of their antics – “I remember on frosty mornings we would get to school early so we could go tobogganing on kitchen trays down the grassy bank on the rugby field.”

The youngest sons of sheep farming families – Jeremy had four elder brothers, and Phil had two – they never envisioned one day being in leadership positions on the regional council.

But both had seen their fathers active in the community – Phil’s dad in Federated Farmers and farming cooperatives, and Jeremy’s, on school and church committees, and on the regional council.

“You see your father away doing things and there’s a feeling that you need to do the thing, too,” says Jeremy.

Phil agrees. “I’d describe it less as leadership and more as an ethos of service.”

Jeremy and his wife Annabelle live in Gore, and he and his family still farm in the Waikaka Valley. This is his first term as chair and his fourth on Council.

Phil lives in Invercargill with his wife, Jah. After a 25-year career with the Corps of Royal New Zealand Engineers , he became a university lecturer and now works as a strategy and leadership consultant. This is his first term as deputy chair and his second on Council, though he was on the Regional Forum, which advised Council on how to achieve community aspirations for improved freshwater quality.

Jeremy and Phil have come into their roles at a time of great change, with the Government flagging its intention to remove regional council governance and a Local Government Commission investigation underway into the future structure of local government in Southland.