Speech
Constellation Cup
To view images from the Australian visit, click here
Kia ora and thank you Annie. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen—warm greetings to you all.
In particular, I want to acknowledge: Your Excellency Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of Australia and Mr Michael Bryce; Noeleen Dix and Kate Palmer, President and Chief Executive respectively of Netball Australia; Raewyn Lovett and Raelene Castle, Chair and Chief Executive respectively of Netball New Zealand; Senator Stephen Conroy, Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications & the Digital Economy; my good friend Martyn Dunne, High Commissioner for New Zealand to Australia and Mrs Jenny Dunne.
Condolences on the death yesterday of three diggers in Afghanistan.
It’s great to be here for this lunch before this year’s final Constellation Cup game. I thought I’d keep to the ABC of speaking: I’ll be accurate (mostly), brief (hopefully) and couth (probably).
Sport has been on everyone’s mind in the last few weeks: Domestically with basketball,football and AFL and Internationally with cricket, hockey, rugby league and of course rugby. I’m sure you expected me to mention rugby given the result of one week ago when the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup breaking a 24-year hoodoo!
Today it’s netball the New Zealand Silver Ferns and Australian Diamonds play for the Constellation Cup.
It is a magnificent trophy—gifted by Ms Bryce and my predecessor Sir Anand Satyanand— which symbolises the essence of a long-standing, 73-year rivalry between these two great teams.
Given that the Diamonds and Silver Ferns have won two tests apiece, I’m sure we’ll witness a thrilling game today.
A love of competition is deeply embedded in our collective DNA, and we express that in our sport. We love to play sport, we love to watch sport and we love to talk about it—not necessarily in that order! The young women in the Diamonds and the Silver Ferns are elite athletes, they train hard, they play hard and they give it their all. They are the best netballers in the world.
But such is the competition between us, that nothing brings out the best in our teams more than a final that pits the Aussies against the Kiwis.
That competition has always been fierce, hard and yet respectful because our relationship rests on deeper foundations than sport alone. Not only do we have a shared geography, we have a shared heritage. Place names familiar in your history resonate in ours: Gallipoli, North Africa and more recently Timor and Afghanistan. We have served, fought and died together defending democratic freedoms.
In the troubled times both Australia and New Zealand have faced at home recently with natural and other disasters, we were the first to respond to the other’s plight.
As the Hon Julia Gillard, your Prime Minister, noted in her speech in our Parliament last year, while Australia has many international partnerships, “New Zealand alone is family.” Let me affirm that sentiment from our side of “the ditch”.
So, in the best spirit of family bonds and sibling rivalry, I wish both teams all the best for a great game. The better team will win, I’m hoping it’ll be the best team – mostly, hopefully, probably!