Pacific Business Trust Awards 2001

26 July 2001Speech Notes

Embargoed until 10 pm, 26 July 2001

Kia orana, Ni sa bula, Taloha ni, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Malo e lelei, Halo Oketa, Ia orana, Kia ora, Talofa lava, and warm Pacific greetings to you all.

I acknowledge our tangata whenua. Kia ora koutou.

I would also like to acknowledge Prime Minister Helen Clark, Auckland Mayor Christine Fletcher, Pacific Business Trust Board cairperson, Pauline Winter, directors of the Board, judging panel concenor and editor-in chief of the National Business Review, Nevil Gibson, and the panel of judges.

The Pacific Business Trust Awards are significant for a number of reasons.

Firstly they recognise the outstanding successes and achievements of our Pacific businesses, business people and entrepreneurs. They give recognition among Pacific communities but also they offer that all important market recognition.

The awards celebrate those successes and achievements by celebrating excellence in business. They are also a celebration of our uniqueness, of our passion and of our strength and confidence. And they are a celebration of the positive values and contributions we offer to this country.

They affirm the contribution Pacific peoples and businesses are making to New Zealand. And they affirm our innovation, our creative talents and our business prowess.

The successes and achievements of tonight's nominees confirm that Pacific peoples and the “Pacific ways of doing things” can not only make things work, but can in fact put our businesses at the cutting edge of the New Zealand economy. I thank you for that.

The awards also offer a great opportunity for our young, and not so young, business peoples and entrepreneurs to showcase their talents and to share those talents with other business people.

All the nominees here tonight are role models. Role models not only for your own generation, but also for generations to come. Because you are living proof that you can achieve. Our Pacific peoples, particularly our young people, need the inspiration, the motivation and the confidence that your stories offer.

For all these reasons I am pleased and proud to be here tonight to share this occasion with you all.

The significance of tonight is, however, far greater than the here and now.

Our forbearers came to this country with a vision - a desire to provide a better standard of living for their children, to give us more choices and greater opportunities. Our parents and grandparents filled the gaps in the factories working long hours towards that vision.

All of us here tonight are where we are today because of them. They gave us a solid foundation to springboard us to a better future. They gave us the courage to dream and the perseverance to achieve those dreams.

Final Challenge

If there is one thing I would like to leave with you tonight, it is this: someone along the way gave you an opportunity, some assistance or support to get you where you are today.

My challenge to you is that you do the same for someone else - give someone else a similar opportunity. Because it is only through opportunities that we have real chances to achieve and progress.

Not only will you be giving that person an opportunity, but you will also be giving it to their family and to their community. Business success is not simply about making money and creating jobs – although of course those things are vital to our well being - but in a Pacific context it is also about retaining those things that make us unique, our cultural identity and our community links.

So once again, congratulations to all the nominees. And best wishes for your future endeavours. I would now like to announce the winner of the Pacific Business Person of the Year award, for a New Zealander of Pacific descent who is either self employed or employed within senior management in the private or public sector with at least five years experience.

The winner is ….. Adrian Orr.

Now aged 38 and chief economist with Westpac Trust, Adrian Orr's work history also includes chief economist for the National Bank, economist for the OECD, senior analyst for Treasury and chief manager of the economics department of the Reserve Bank.

Adrian grew up in a multicultural community in Taupo where his Cook Island grandfather had settled in the 1930s.

Ia manuia.