University of Auckland Pacific Alumni 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 the evening  (Sign)

May I specifically greet you: Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Raewyn Dalziel; Amanda Lyne, External Relations Manager; Members of the nascent University of Auckland Pacific Alumni Group; Pacific Leaders and Distinguished Guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.

May I then add, in the context of this evening, further Pacific greetings: Talofa lava; Malo e lelei, Ni sa bula vinaka, Kam na mauri, and Mi Likum Yu Tumas.

It was with pleasure that my wife Susan and I accepted the invitation to attend this dinner to celebrate Pasifika at the University of Auckland.

I would like to take an opportunity to outline my own connections to the Pacific and to the University, the importance of higher education for the development of Pacific peoples and my vision for some of these things.

I am a New Zealander able to approach the Pacific from a number of angles.  While born in Auckland, my parents were born in Fiji and so the Pacific is part of my ancestry in that way.  Indeed, when opening the Tangata o le Moana exhibition at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa last year, one of the "exhibits," appearing in a video describing growing up in Auckland as the child of a Pacific immigrants was myself.

Also from a personal perspective, due to an uncle migrating from Fiji to Tutuila in the 1930s, I have Samoan relatives living in American Samoa and Hawaii, and last year I was able to privately visit and to visit family graves in Pango Pango.

As Governor-General, I am not only the representative of New Zealand's Head of State, but also that of the wider Realm of New Zealand, which includes the self-governing states of Niue and the Cook Islands and the territory of Tokelau and hence my formal greetings when beginning to speak this evening.  I do that on all public occasions in New Zealand.

In my first year as Governor-General, I had the pleasure of visiting all three and of emphasising that as Governor-General I must serve them all.

New Zealand Governors-General have increasingly represented our nation to the rest of the world, and so accompanied by Susan has come the task of travelling externally.  In the Pacific context, this has included attending the funerals of King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV of Tonga and Malietoa Tanumafili II, Head of State of Samoa and the coronation of King George Tupou V in Tonga just a few weeks ago. 

I have also made a separate State Visit to Samoa, with which New Zealand has its only Treaty of Friendship.  I also had the pleasure of welcoming Samoa's new Head of State, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi, to New Zealand with a formal welcome ceremony and luncheon at Government House in Wellington.

The University of Auckland is also my alma mater and it was with great pride that I accepted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University in 2006 to add to my journeyman Bachelor's degree some 35 years before that.

I graduated from the University in 1970, having completed a Bachelor of Laws degree while working as a law clerk during the day and attending lectures in the late afternoon or early evening.

The University of Auckland, let alone the School of Law, was also a much smaller place in those days, based solely on the

Princes St

campus.  There were about 9,000 students in 1970—whilst today there are almost 40,000 on four city campuses, City, Epsom, Grafton and Tamaki and four satellite campuses at Manukau, Leigh, Kawakawa and Tai Tokerau. 

As you might surmise, the number of students and graduates of Indian descent was rather modest.  Last year I attended a dinner for Indian lawyers and was amazed at the large numbers in attendance.  In 1970, you could count the Indian lawyers in Auckland on one hand and the nationwide figure on two hands and not much more.

And the number of Pacific students here was also small, which is not surprising.  The majority of Pacific migrants had only arrived in previous decade and were focused on finding their feet in a new country.  Indeed, as a child and teenager in Ponsonby and Glen Innes in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was classmates with children of a number of first Pasifika migrants as they began to arrive in Auckland.

Today, however, I am told that more than 3,000 Pasifika students study at the University of Auckland.  And that is as it should be for the University is based in the world's largest Polynesian city.  I am advised the University is committed to increasing the number of Pasifika students graduating.  Initiatives such as  the Tuakana mentoring programme, where senior Pasifika students provide advice and guidance to undergraduates are, in my view, are to be applauded.

And what better time to celebrate Pasifika at the University than on its 125^th centenary.  The University has not only grown in size, both in students and facilities, but also in stature. 

Since I graduated I have seen it become recognised internationally for particular leadership it has provided in medical research and in education large numbers of overseas students who have returned to work in Pacific and Asian settings thereafter.  I am advised, for example, that it is the highest ranked New Zealand university in The Times High Education Supplement's prestigious rankings of world universities, sitting among the top one percent in the world.

New Zealand is a nation of migrants. Some travelled in canoes from Polynesia.  Some travelled in sailing ships and steamers from Europe and Asia.  Others came in ships and aeroplanes from the Pacific, Asia and throughout the world.  As noted New Zealand historian, the late Dr Michael King said:  "In a country inhabited for a mere one thousand years, everybody is an immigrant or a descendent of an immigrant."

The last Census found that about 23 percent of New Zealanders were born overseas.  That increasing diversity is enriching New Zealand's society, culture and economy.

One of those many groups of immigrants have been those from New Zealand's Pacific neighbours, which now account for almost seven percent of the population.  Of the almost 266,000 people who identified as being Pacific origin, most were from six major island groups—Samoa; the Cook Islands; Tonga; Niue; Fiji; and Tokelau.

All these connections emphasise how much New Zealand is part of the Pacific and the Pacific is part of New Zealand.  More than nine in 10 Pacific people living in New Zealand in 2006 lived in the NorthIsland and two-thirds of Pacific people lived in the Auckland Region.

In Auckland, the world's largest Polynesian city, the people of the Pacific have added their own distinctive colour and vibrancy. I note, for example, the contribution of Professor Albert Wendt, of the University to both Pacific and New Zealand literature.

Auckland journalist Gilbert Wong summed up well Pacific Islanders' achievements in New Zealand when he wrote in Metro Magazine as follows:

"All that first-generational migrant drive for children to make the most of education has resulted in the police officers, nurses, teachers, bank managers, lawyers and doctors Some have attained the higher reaches of society professional associations have sprung up a critical mass of Pacific people forming a new identity a few hours by 747 from their home islands. New Zealand is close enough to the springs of Pacific culture for those living here to be refreshed and constantly renewed, whatever they choose to call themselves."

As Wong notes, the key to the advancement of Pacific peoples in New Zealand, as well as industry and hard work, and indeed of our country as a whole, was education.

American psychologist, Dr B.F. Skinner, once said that: "education is what remains when what has been learned has been forgotten."  This may seem a puzzling comment to people who either studying or have just graduated.

What a university education provides is not so much knowledge, although that it is important, but the skills to approach a new problem you might know little about, and begin the process of understanding and analysis before being able to mount an argument about it. 

In each discipline, the source of the information and the ways of approaching it might be different, but the fundamental ability to critically analyse and understand a problem is the key.  When I was a law student it was in the form of an essay.  As a lawyer it was in a submission to court. As a judge it might be a legal decision or summing up to a jury and as an ombudsman, it was a report or recommendation regarding a complaint from a member of the public.

Throughout my career, there was no way in which I might know of every legal issue or precedent I might face.  But what I did have was the ability to find the information I needed, and the skill to extract from it enough to understand and then hopefully solve the problem being faced.

That in essence is what Skinner meant when he said education was what remained when what had been learned had been forgotten.  Instant recall of a particular piece of knowledge may fall away with time, but fundamental skills will always be with you regardless of the task you may be performing in four years' time or forty years' time.

I will give another example of how these fundamental skills are so valuable. I would hazard a guess that most people here have use of a cell phone.  They are an integral part of all aspects of life in the 21st Century from business through to family and social life. 

The cell phone industry is also of multi-billion dollar proportions, employing many thousands of people worldwide.  That includes the people who design and manufacture them; those who build and maintain their technological infrastructure as well as many others who sell, market and administer the various billing systems for them. 

But this cell phone industry and all the jobs that go with it simply did not exist 30 years ago.  There is no way that the education system could provide skills for jobs for an industry that didn't exist. 

But what our education system, and particularly our universities, did provide was the people who had sufficient skills in technology, science, marketing, information management and administration to build the industry that exists today. They were people who, in their various disciplines, developed the knowledge they had, applied critical thinking and, by working collaboratively in teams, were able to communicate that new knowledge to others. 

My vision for the future of the University sees it building on its core roles of teaching, research and community service to be centres of innovation.  But while the fundamental purposes will remain, the way they are delivered will change.  The internet and other information and communication technology have already changed the way many services are delivered and the way we live and work and there is no reason to think that tertiary education will be immune from those changes. 

The internet and email has already made collaboration between researchers around the world much easier while video-conferencing allows students here to attend lectures on the other side of the world—assuming, given the time differences, they can stay awake!

But it will also pose challenges.  Increasingly, major international universities are moving to offer courses and degrees through online distance education.  Universities already compete internationally for the top staff and top postgraduate students—increasingly they will have to compete for undergraduate students as well. 

There are already universities, which largely exist online and already have large enrolments.  The for-profit University of Phoenix in the United States, for example, which offers all its courses online, has more than 340,000 students enrolled in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

There is no reason to believe that such competition will not eventually come to our shores.  It will require all universities to lift their game.  And none of this technology is not without its cost.  The transition from universities centred on bricks and mortar to those that increasingly exist in a virtual sense, will not be easy.

And so in conclusion, it is great pleasure to be with you tonight and to reconnect again with the University of Auckland, of which I am proud to be a graduate.  I will close with the words of my predecessor, Sir William Jervois, who officially opened what was then the AucklandUniversityCollege in 1883.  He summarised the University's significance and its enduring role well when he said:

"The work which we are engaged—placing the advantages of a university within the reach of every man and woman of Auckland—is one the importance of which it is almost impossible to over-estimate. It is work that will, I trust, influence not merely the immediate neighbourhood and the present generation, but also indirectly the whole colony, and that for all time."

And on that note, I will close in New Zealand's first language Maori, offering everyone greetings and wishing you good health and fortitude in your endeavours.  No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tena koutou katoa.