Diabetes New Zealand Dinner

May I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand - in English, Maori, Cook Island Maori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language .

Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni - and as it is evening [sign].

May I specifically greet you: Lynne Bowe, president of Diabetes NZ Auckland; Mike Smith, president of Diabetes NZ; John Denton, general manager; Marguerite Durling, assistant general manager; board members and distinguished guests.

My wife and I are delighted to have been invited for this Golden Jubilee dinner and auction for Diabetes Auckland.

Diabetes - and the great threat that it poses to our people and our society - is not, perhaps, the topic one would naturally choose for dinner table conversation.

But that's not the way Diabetes Auckland sees it. It would like the topic to be discussed round every dinner table in the country - and it would like everyone to be as activated on the subject as all of you here tonight.  

Thirty-six years ago, Diane Farmer, writing in The New Zealand Listener, said: "Never in almost three decades of pavlova eating, have I laid eyes on any left- overs."  She then prophetically added: "A way with sugar is probably both our virtue and our doom."

One of the consequences of New Zealand's love affair with sugar—and some other unhealthy foods I might add—is diabetes, a disease that is a leading cause of death and disablement in this country. It is also a cause of heart attacks and strokes, and of kidney failure and blindness.

For every person diagnosed with it, there is someone else who has it but doesn't know that they have it. There are often no symptoms, and there is no cure.

It can be managed however. And Diabetes Auckland has become a leader in helping people with diabetes   become 'expert patients' - learning the skills of self-management so as to avoid severe health complications.

Diabetes onset is expected to double in this country in the next dozen years. It already consumes nearly five per cent of our total health budget, but this is forecast to rise three-fold in that same period.

This scenario is not inevitable - because diabetes is largely avoidable.  It is a matter of eating a healthier diet and taking more exercise.

That sounds like a simple enough recipe - but how to get it across? Here Diabetes Auckland is showing the kind of vision we have come to expect of it - with a new programme for schools.

Titled Healthy Options, Positive Eating - HOPE - the programme works not only with the students but with their parents - showing them how to make the kind of food they like - but without fat and without sugar. A highly successful trial has just taken place at McAuleyHigh School in Otahuhu.

I have been given the privilege tonight of announcing another visionary exercise on the part of Diabetes Auckland.

As you will know it is by fund-raising events such as this one, and by securing short-term grants from charitable institutions and sponsors, that the organisation has been able to keep going.  

But with continuity and longevity in mind, Diabetes Auckland has set up a new trust. Its aim is to collect ten million dollars over the next ten years - and for the income generated to guarantee the on-going operation of the organisation.

The Sir Ernest Davis Charitable Trust has given five hundred thousand dollars to begin the process.

I would like to congratulate Diabetes Auckland on its foresight in setting up the Sir Ernest Davis Diabetes Endowment Fund.

I would also like to take an opportunity to congratulate it on its Golden Jubilee - and to wish it all the best for the next fifty years.  

On the note I have thus endeavoured to strike of hope and good wishes for the future, I would like to close in Maori - New Zealand's first language - offering greetings and wishing you good health and fortitude in your endeavours.

No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tena koutou katoa.