State Dinner in Santiago de Chile

E rau rangatira ma, tena koutou katoa.

Your Excellency President Lagos and Seora Luisa Durn de Lagos, distinguished guests.  In the words of our indigenous Maori language, I greet you all - tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

I am delighted and happy to be here with my husband in Chile, as your guest.  It was a great pleasure to welcome you to New Zealand last year, Your Excellency, in your second visit to our country, and I was honoured to receive an invitation from you to visit your beautiful country.  Mr President, can I begin by expressing my deepest sympathies, on behalf of all New Zealanders, on the recent tragedy that took the lives of your young soldiers.  Our thoughts have been with you in this time of great sorrow for your nation. 

Your Excellency, despite the great distance that separates Chile and New Zealand, coming here to see you both is like coming to see old friends.  Travelling over the vast Pacific Ocean to get here, one wonders what one will find.  What has revealed itself in this my first visit, is a country whose beauty cannot be expressed simply - unless, of course, you have the talents of a Gabriela Mistral.  But for those of us who do not have her talent with the language, we can only marvel at the astonishing and mesmerising natural wonder that is Chile.

In New Zealand, we are spoiled by generous landscapes and spectacular vistas.  Sometimes when we travel overseas, we find ourselves thinking secretly 'this place is not as beautiful as home'.  But Chile is different.  As one writer observed, "from salty-desert top to glacier-crowded bottom, Chile is a wonderful reminder of nature's beauty and power." 

Yet there is more to Chile than its natural beauty and its geysers, mountains, beaches, forests and volcanoes.  There is your amazing capital, Santiago, with its grand urban boulevards, and, most importantly, your wonderful people, renowned as much for their warmth as for their resilience.

Your culture has survived the violence and repression of your recent history and is thriving again.  And so does the friendship between our two countries.

The fact that we have now had two Head of State visits in two years shows how close we have become.  This is the first time that I, or any New Zealand Governor-General has visited Chile on a State Visit.  In fact, it is the first time a New Zealand Governor-General has visited any Latin American country, reflecting the fact that Chile is our longest-standing and closest friend in the region.

I have been impressed to see the many areas in which New Zealand and Chile now have close contact and cooperation. This is especially true of our young people. Education links are growing rapidly and set to expand even more. The Working Holiday Scheme is bringing many young Chileans to New Zealand and New Zealanders to Chile. This is one of the best ways we know of to establish constructive future relationships, and life-long friendships between the people of the two countries.

We have growing links in science and technology, in primary industry development, especially agriculture and horticulture, between indigenous peoples and in conservation of our natural resources.  The recent visits by the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs to Rapa Nui, and the Minister of Conservation to Santiago, consolidated these links.

And a milestone, which will be reached very soon will be the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement between New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei with its emphasis on establishing strategic partnerships across a number of fields. This all contributes to New Zealand now seeing Chile as a natural partner, and the areas of contact can only increase in the future.

Chile and New Zealand have also become close partners in a number of international and multilateral fora, sharing common goals in fields such as disarmament and protection of the environment, including the marine environment.

Looking back at the beginnings of our relationship, it is intriguing to reflect on the fact that the trans-Pacific links between New Zealand and Chile are by no means new.  Of course we know - and treasure - the fact that New Zealand and Rapa Nui are two of the three points of the Polynesian triangle, end points of the great Polynesian voyages. But I have recently learned of the contacts that took place with Chile during the early years of European settlement in New Zealand in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - something which has been described as "New Zealand's forgotten relations" with Chile. The relationship was mainly based on trade, with all kinds of goods from walnuts to horses being exchanged between our countries.  And people were travelling between New Zealand and Valparaiso as early as the 1820s.

So our ties go back a long, long way, and, what is perhaps most important, they are set to continue to grow and flower now and in future.  It would be remiss of me, your guest on this wonderful occasion not to quote from your great poet, Pablo Neruda.  It is one of his verses often quoted as a love poem.  But in this case, it might have been written about the relationship between your country and mine. 

No doubt previous New Zealand guests have referred to Neruda before, so in order to provide a point of difference, and undoubtedly also some amusement, I will attempt the quote in Spanish: 

Y una a una las noches

entre nuestras ciudades separadas

se agregan a la noche que nos une.

[And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.]

In the Maori language, this translates as:

Ia po ia po

kei waenganui a tatou wa kainga wehewehe

tae noa ki te po

i honohono ai tatou

I now have the great honour to invite you to share in a toast with me. 

To the President and to the People of Chile.