For those of you who are international visitors, welcome to the Mainland of New Zealand, for everyone else welcome to the People's Republic of Christchurch.
 
I make this greeting because we as a city were accused of being such when we refused to buy into the prevailing theory that selling our core infrastructure to the private sector would be in our city's interests.  We didn't buy that then and we don't buy that now.
 
We know as a city that the quadruple bottom line matters and we know that if we are to be ahead of the exponential curve we see coming we need to utilise our infrastructure to prepare for that future even if returns are sacrificed in the short term.  As a city we can't afford not to take a long term view.
 
Christchurch has a proud history of using business for good.  But it was the earthquakes that provided a catalyst for real change.
 
What happened for me, was that the earthquakes and all the experiences that followed, helped me see clearly what was important in life and that sense of purpose creates meaning for individuals, communities and cities alike. 
 
Our message to the rest of the nation and the world, is that no one needs to wait for a disaster for this to occur.
 
And that is why we so warmly welcome the Social Enterprise World Forum to Christchurch.
 
We are the Garden City of New Zealand, but what that means in the 21st century is so much more than what it meant when I was growing up. Now it is also about sustainability, food resilience, clean rivers and environmental protection.  The earthquakes have enabled us to focus on these. 
 
We now see ourselves as a city of opportunity - for all - a place that is open to new ideas, new people and new ways of doing things - a place where anything is possible. 
 
And it is from this sense of possibilities, place and purpose that Christchurch is proud to be the global capital of Social Enterprise for the week.
 
Welcome to Christchurch. Please take the opportunity to explore all that our city has to offer as you explore the world of social enterprise.
 
No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

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Lord Mayor, Deputy Lord Mayor, Adelaide City Councillors, South Australia State representatives, my colleague Cr David East and Peter Cottrell, the chair of our ChCh-Adelaide Sister City Committee and Distinguished Guests
 
May I begin by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and pay respect to their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. Tena koutou katoa.
 
May I also acknowledge you Lord Mayor, Martin Haese. You have been an incredibly generous host and it is greatly approeciated. I hope we in Christchurch can reciprocate at some time in the near future.
 
It is an honour and a privilege to visit Adelaide for the first time as the Mayor of your New Zealand sister city, Christchurch. 45 years is a special anniversary and much has happened since 1972. That was pre the internet, mobile phones, social media, and trolls were only the stuff of fairytales. 
 
Adelaide is Christchurch's closest Sister City (both geographically and in terms of the length of the relationship).  
 
This of course is not my first trip to Adelaide. I have been here a couple of times before. Once as a very young trade union official and then as a Cabinet Minister when I served under the leadership of the then Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark.
 
I was struck the first time I came by the similarity of our cities' layout. I fell for the myth that they were designed by the same planner, but of course that's not the case, but there is a connection in terms of the style. And it does feel like home. The grid pattern with its parks and botanic gardens earning us both the status as a Garden City. 
 
But as I have been saying recently, what a Garden City means in the 21st century is quite different from what it meant when I was growing up. And you seemed to have created a similar vision for Adelaide around sustainability, food resilience, environmental protection and of course the smart city that we aspire to be as well, taking advantage of all that the new technologies have to offer and enabling smart citizens so they can participate directly in the governance of their city.
 
Another similarity is the recognition of the importance of the arts in the life and vitality of a liveable city. Your annual Adelaide Festival of the Arts is a match with the Christchurch Festival of Arts, which is just wrapping up now. In a post disaster environment, it is so important to foster creativity and innovation, and the arts enable us to do so in a way that we can reimagine our lives even when the going gets tough.
 
I am accompanied by University of Canterbury staff and today we visited the University of Adelaide to thank them for their support of Canterbury students after the earthquake. It had a profound effect on their lives and they have gone on to completed their degrees, never forgetting what was done. We will never forget as a city the support we received from Adelaide.
 
I also want to mention the biennial Christchurch Word Festival celebrating readers and writers. One of our key sister city projects initiated last year was to bring indigenous writers from two of our Sister Cities - Adelaide and Seattle - to connect with our own indigenous writers. I attended what was an incredibly powerful and moving presentation and discussion and had the honour of meeting Ali Cobby-Eckerman, who is not here tonight because she is overseas after receiving the Windham-Campbell prize for literary achievement.  
 
I should also mention Christchurch's International Airport, which has gone from strength to strength over the years, developing relationships with international airports and airlines to ensure direct long haul flights into the heart of the South Island. I must say I would have liked a direct flight from Christchurch to Adelaide yesterday. So that's something that's on my wish list.
 
I have been struck by the Lord Mayor's vision for Adelaide to be a smart, innovative city and being a ‘city where good things happen first’. Our vision is that Christchurch is a city of opportunity for all - a place that is open to new ideas, new people and new ways of doing things - a place where anything is possible. 
 
It is true that this is driven off the back of our desire not to let a serious crisis go to waste to paraphrase a former White House Chief of Staff, who said it was an opportunity to do things we didn't think we could do before. But I really feel that sense of possibility here too and something else we have in common. I also see this as the basis for a strong collaboration between our two smart city programmes and their connections to local universities and start ups. Combining our efforts could accelerate our mutual progress.
 
In conclusion, I want to make a presentation to the City of Adelaide in honour of our 45th anniversary. It is a framed korowai, a Maori cloak. A korowai is worn by a person of high standing and signifies protection and warmth, which serms so appropriate given the support we received after the earthquake. And it also signifies as honour and leadership.
 
Thank you again for the warmth of your welcome. These relationships are important and the city of Christchurch looks forward to the next 45 years of our Sister City relationship with the city of Adelaide. 
 
As I said I know how much it meant that our sister cities reached out to us in our time of need and provided support of every kind. Adelaide was no exception and this will never be forgotten. ​

Next year is 125 years since NZ became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote.  I hope today that we commit to ensuring that such a special anniversary year becomes a year of action to achieve gender equality.  That would be a fitting tribute to Kate Sheppard and the suffragists that we honour today.
 
10years ago as Minister of Women’s Affairs I reminded people of the struggle they went through. This was not won easy.
 
Kate Sheppard and her colleagues were tireless in their campaign which took on a head of steam in 1887 - distributing pamphlets, writing letters to the press, giving talks to a variety of groups, making personal contact with politicians, and of course circulating petitions.
 
Kate Sheppard believed that women could not make any of the changes needed in society without first winning the right the vote.
 
I’m not going to traverse the entire history, which is well known to us all.
 
Suffrage bills were defeated in Parliament in 1888, 1891 and 1892, but Kate Sheppard and other suffragists continued to campaign for the vote.
 
And it was on the 19th of September 1893, that Prime Minister Richard Seddon telegraphed Kate Sheppard to tell her the governor had signed the bill that gave New Zealand women the vote.
 
And this is the point I want to make today. The 1893 elections were held in late November, and over 90,000 women – representing 65 percent of women over 21 – exercised their new right to vote. That’s extraordinary given the need to enrol women and get them to the polls, especially when it was by no means universally accepted that women should be voting.
 
It is shows a complete lack of respect for these achievements if we don't vote.
 
When Kate Sheppard died in Christchurch on 13 July 1934, the Christchurch Times said:
 
‘A great woman has gone, whose name will remain an inspiration to the daughters of New Zealand while our history endures.’
 
I want that inspiration to continue to reach all New Zealanders, but particularly to the daughters of our country. I want them to claim their rights as citizens and to accept the responsibility these rights bestow.
 
I said on Friday when I opened the National Council of Women Conference - Kate Sheppard knew it wasn’t just about the vote.
 
She understood that this was only a first step towards equality when a National Council of Women gathered here for the first in Christchurch on the 13 April 1896 just three years after winning the right to vote.
 
And that's why I say it is disrespectful to Kate Sheppard, the women who stood with her and the men who cast the votes earning the right to wear the white camellia, to choose not to vote.  That is not a valid choice.
 
My message is ‘use it or lose it’. We won’t lose the vote, but we do lose the right to influence the direction our nation takes.
 
And that’s much too important to let go.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/96782859/research-backs-whnau-ora-benefits 
“Measuring the Economic Impact of Whanau Ora Programmes - He Toki ki te Mahi Case Study”
 
Ko ​Whiti-reia te turanga
Ko ​Te Hononga te whare
Ko ​Otakaro te awa
 
Tēnā koutou katoa,
 
Can I acknowledge everyone who has gathered here on this occasion - Arihia Bennett; Chief Executive Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, Dr Eruera Tarena, Chief Executive, Te Tapuae o Rehua, Dr Hana O’Regan, General Manager, Oraka, Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, Trevor Taylor and Amoroa (Molly) Luke, chairs of Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu, Professor Paul Dalziel AERU and Cath Savage Ihi Research.
 
When I was asked by Te Putahitanga if I would receive this report “Measuring the Economic Impact of Whanau Ora Programmes - He Toki ki te Mahi Case Study” in the context of the Social Enterprise World Forum that is happening here in Christchurch this month, I was keen to do so.
 
I want to explain why. Since the earthquakes happened I have become a champion of resilience. Not in the 'gosh you are all so resilient, and by that I really mean stoic' sense and not in the sense of an international catchphrase that has become code for governments abandoning vulnerable communities to a market they have no say or control over.
 
I talk about resilience as a powerful word that captures a capacity to absorb, adapt and thrive in the face of adversity whether it's a shock or chronic stress. It's also about the ability to co-create a vision for the future and take charge of ensuring that it happens no matter what.
 
Pioneers who settled this land, from those who journeyed across the Pacific Ocean from East Polynesia to Te Waipounamu to those who sailed from the British Isles centuries later, brought with them stories of resilience. And so too is the reclaiming of the status of Ngai Tahu in this city and region.
 
It is this story in particular that reinforces my very strong view that a high trust environment is a pre-requisite to building resilience. We are building a relationship of trust as a city with Ngai Tahu and with the Papatipu Rūnanga of our area. We have established a joint standing committee of Council - the first in the history of our city - and much of the central city redesign has incorporated Maori history as part of the landscape, with Matapopore working hand in hand with central government, council and the private sector. Trust is a prerequisite.
 
It's very easy to say that people have lost trust in governments - central and local alike. We use phrases like alternative facts and fake news so that we, can quietly mock those who think their messages are getting through. But those messages are getting through and we are to blame. Trust cannot survive these times when people will not engage.
 
My focus on post-disaster environments after the earthquakes has led me to understand that loss of trust in government is not the only issue. Governments have stopped trusting the people. For too long governments think they have to fix our problems for us. As long as we think of communities as problems to be solved we will continue in that vein. 
 
I have been introduced into the world of ABCD - asset-based community development - and the strengths-based approach, it asks us to employ, in order to tackle the challenges we need to confront as communities. 
 
Instead of looking at problems, we look instead to the community’s strengths - the assets that always exist. We look at the level of social capital - and how that can be built - because we know that what we invest in social capital will reap benefits way beyond that investment when we need to make a withdrawal.
 
When I consider the measurement of Whanau Ora as being achieved when whanau are:
Self-managing
Living healthy lifestyles
Participating fully in society
Confidently participating in Te Ao Maori
Economically secure and successfully involved in wealth creation 
Cohesive, resilient and nurturing
Responsible stewards of their natural and living environments,
 
I see an immediate connection between asset-based community development and Whanau Ora.
 
It is from this kaupapa that I receive this report “Measuring the Economic Impact of Whanau Ora Programmes - He Toki ki te Mahi Case Study”. This is an extraordinary report that provides economic proof that building capability through a Whānau Ora commissioning approach pays off - in this case by an incredible ratio of 7.1!
 
W will hear tonight about He Toki ki te Rika, a Māori trades training initiative in partnership with ARA, focused on building Māori capability and leadership within the trades workforce, and how that feeds into He Toki Ki Te Mahi.
 
This is a model of social enterprise that leads us into the world forum in a special way. This report challenges our assumptions about traditional approaches, favouring the partnership model. And the ripple effects of this programme haven't even been begun to be quantified either. 
 
The report ends as follows: 
 
“It is likely that the benefits considered in this analysis will ripple out though whānau, both in the present and in the future. This is a consequence of success in the Whānau Ora goal of whānau being “economically secure and successfully involved in wealth creation.”
 
Congratulations to those with the vision to establish this programme and for the researchers that will enable this approach to challenge the status quo because the status quo is not good enough if we are to make real change for the benefit of generations to come.
 
No reira tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

Christchurch Beautifying Association
 
President Ron Andrew and Committee Members, Special Guests Trevor and Jill Lord, (Owner and restorer of Woodford heritage Homestead, Built by original CBA Committee Member Albert Kaye and his wife Eliza Bannerman Kaye in 1886/7), distinguished guests one and all.
 
Thank you for the invitation to speak on the occasion of your 120th anniversary - commemorated on Friday 8th September. 
 
1897 Christchurch. This was the year of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. Victoria Lake in Hagley Park was formed and named in her honour. In June the Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort designed clock-tower was erected on corner of High, Lichfield and Manchester Streets, now standing on the corner of Victoria and Salisbury Streets. The work creating the area known as Victoria Square was completed in 1897.
 
Christchurch was and is New Zealand's Garden City. And your Association has been a part of that from its inception.
 
What I have been saying though, is that what a Garden City means in the 21st century is so much more than what it meant when I was growing up. 
 
Now it's not only about the beauty of our gardens and parks - a vista I proudly show off from the top floor of the Council building to visitors from around the world - I say you can see that we are New Zealand's Garden City. Now it is also about being focused on sustainability, environmental protection, clean rivers and streams and food resilience. A 21st Century Garden City is all of these.
 
But it is also about beauty. I went to the Len Lye Exhibition recently and was reminded of the moment that his fascination with his art began.
 
It was in his family backyard on Manchester St. He was a young boy and his father was dying. He was ushered into the backyard while the adults talked. He kicked an old kerosene can, which made a massive crash and flashed as it caught the sunlight. When he wrote of this moment years later, he said, "We're all stopped short by wonder sometimes and that's when it first stopped me in its tracks."
 
Nature has this wonderful capacity to stop us short by wonder. 
 
When I am feeling down, when I feel that joy has been drained from my life, it is the beauty of nature that can replenish the soul in a way that little else can. 
 
I remember when I ran for Mayor there was a lot of concern that we were going to stop being a garden city, that all our English heritage would be replaced, the willows on the Avon would go and native plantings would replace our beautiful and colourful introduced flowers and trees including the cherry trees that blossom so dramatically at this time of the year.
 
I am pleased to see our pre-colonial history finds its place in the regeneration of the city. Our Maori history is rich indeed. But there is no question from Mana Whenua that our history is shared and that one cannot be fully expressed without the other.
 
Your Association's role in establishing the Floral Clock, (something I never took for granted as a child - I always wanted to visit it if we went into town), is a tribute to the Garden City. The Daffodils in Hagley Park give a colourful visualisation of spring like no other. And the Peacock Fountain, after exciting a huge debate over the colour scheme, is a popular photo spot for residents and visitors alike. 
 
I walk past the Waterwheel established for your centenary on most days, and it reminds me of those who had the passion for beautifying our city. They were ahead of their time. And of course it was the centenary year that saw Christchurch awarded Garden City of the World out of 600 entries. Something your association contributed much to achieve.
 
And today you are looking to the The Garden City of the Future. The Garden Village you are promoting speaks to a living village - an ideal that brings communities together to share the joy of gardening and creating wonderful environments in which to live and from time to time to be stopped short by wonder.
 
Congratulations on your 120th Anniversary - I came today because I wanted you to know how valued you are by your city. As Mayor of Christchurch and a former Member of Parliament I stand along the Mayors and MPs before me who have encouraged you in your work. 
 
Thank you for what you have done and for what you continue to do.

Click Can I acknowledge and thank the General Manager of Yoogo, Kirsten Corson, Christchurch City Councillors and staff, and our partners who have helped make this announcement possible.
 
Today I have the privilege to announce a world leading electric car sharing scheme for Christchurch, which will be underway in November. Initiated by the Council, it has brought together the public sector, private businesses and our city’s residents as well, to share in the new technologies which will become standard in the future. 
 
A few months ago, after a competitive tender, the Council selected vehicle management company, Yoogo, as our partner to develop an electric car sharing scheme and together we have turned a dream into a reality. But the partnership has delivered more than we had even dreamed. The fact that it includes residents, takes this scheme to the next level before it’s even off the ground.
 
In order to realise a dream, you need to begin with someone who dreams the dream.
I would like to acknowledge Cr Vicki Buck, who chairs the Innovation and Sustainable Development Committee for her vision, passion and leadership. This is the way of the future.
 
It means Christchurch is demonstrating strong leadership in innovation and carbon emission reduction by being the first city in New Zealand, and one of the few cities internationally, that has a 100% battery electric car sharing service.
 
When you think about this in the context of the autonomous e-shuttle being trialled at Christchurch International Airport and other initiatives that are coming our way, you can see what an important role Christchurch is playing in trialling emerging technologies. The airport trial, for example, will assist central government write the regulatory framework for using autonomous vehicles on New Zealand roads.
 
Next I want to acknowledge As well as the car share partners who currently include:
Ara Institute of Canterbury
Aurecon
Beca
Canterbury District Health Board
Chapman Tripp
Christchurch International Airport
Environment Canterbury
Jacobs
Meridian Energy
Tonkin and Taylor
Warren and Mahoney
 
I would like to thank these 11 organisations for working with Council to enable this city-wide electric car sharing scheme to happen.
 
And as I've said, as well as the car share partners, Christchurch residents will also have the ability to book and use the electric vehicles. This creates the opportunity for people to 'give e-travel' a go.
 
Council also researched and developed a city-wide hub concept and worked with key stakeholders to make the car sharing service accessible across the city. These hubs are essential to the success of this scheme as this is where the charging infrastructure and vehicles will be located.
 
With Council working on setting up the battery electric off-street hub model, there was a significant amount of work required on assessing power supply availability for charging infrastructure for each potential car sharing hub in the city. I would like to thank Orion for working with Council, and now with Yoogo, on this important aspect of the scheme.
 
I would like to give special thanks to Yoogo for coming on-board with our shared vision for an innovative 100% battery electric car sharing service for Christchurch. 
 
Electric vehicles will help to contribute to our target of reducing emissions. Changing 52 of Council’s compact cars will reduce emissions by an estimated 45 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.
 
But the much bigger impact will be the city-wide element of this – that is why we are so pleased that our car share partners came on board to get this scheme off the ground, and we expect this to grow as further businesses sign up and residents are able to use the service.
 
I would like to now ask Kirsten Corson, Yoogo General Manager, to update you on the car sharing service that will be rolled-out city-wide.
here to edit.