The ‘think local first’ mantra being promoted by ‘local people behind local business’ must be tempered by common sense. Buy local works two ways. Do the local supporters of this ‘buy local’ campaign want to criticize Culham Engineering for successfully bidding to do the steel work for the Eden Park events centre? 
Or Busck Concrete for the tenders it has won in Hamilton?  Northpower for all its work around New Zealand and overseas?  Semenoff Transport for working its trucks in any city where there’s work to be done?
All those businesses are bringing money and jobs into Whangarei. If they adopted the buy local mantra they’d probably be broke.
If there are small businesses in Whangarei losing Whangarei construction or service tenders to large out-of-town businesses there is a simple business solution.
The obvious approach would be to form a syndicate or partnership with other smaller Whangarei businesses and put in a tender reflecting the combined strengths, staff and resources of all partners.
That would put ‘locally owned’ on a level playing field and enable them to compete and possibly come out winners. 
Just awarding a tender locally because the tenderer is local is a sure-fire trip to a budget blowout.
From Whangarei District Council’s perspective, there is nothing wrong with a council having a “locals first” policy in an open bid system based on capability and cost effectiveness. If two bids are close, there is merit to giving the “locals” priority as much of their business is based locally and they have a lot to lose image-wise if they don’t live up to expectations. Out of town organisations may not be so concerned.  Also, there is the “turnover” of the money spent and local organisations pay salaries to local people and hopefully buy local supplies, and those expenses turn over locally about 7 times on average - all locally.