Opening of Hagley Student Centre

Thursday 31 July 2003

Prime Minister, Hagley staff, distinguished guests, students and family and whanau members. Greetings on behalf of the city of Christchurch. I am always pleased to do things for Hagley.

Hagley is one of the windows into the future of our city that I find myself often citing to visitors and locals alike.

It is a window into a future where learning is more of a life long experience. Hagley is also a great example of the incredible changes to the ethnic and cultural mix that makes up our emerging city.

I have actually lost track of how many ethnic and racial groupings are part of the mix here but I know it is a startlingly high total. In fact as some of you know, Hagley has become so diverse and broad that you were recently able to cope with educating one of my family for a while.

Hagley is one of the schools that generally could be classed as a happy camper when it comes to adapting to the waves of change that swept through the education system as it left "yesterday's schools" to become "tomorrow's schools.''

Like many of us, it looks like it has taken Hagley a wee while to fully get to grips with the full potentials involved in learning to surf all those waves of change.

I'm told that the student centre idea has taken about 10 years to complete. There have been a few mutations along the way as the original idea of a student cafe morphed into something more total like a student centre.

Having had the good fortune to find what journalists like to call a "leak" within the Hagley system, I can also share with you today some of the buried history of this building on the road to completion.

Firstly of course we need to remind some of you that in the old days the idea of building a cafe, or anything more ambitious than a letterbox would have never been considered under the old system.

In those days the now defunct Canterbury Education Department and the Department of Education ran everything. By the time departments had finished being departments there was little time for trying out any new ideas.

In fact in the files here somewhere are memos from the Education Department saying when and how school secretaries had to recycle paper clips. School bursars were kept busy collecting major sums like the 20 cent donations for school trips.

The idea of building a $1.5 million building off your own bat was just not a starter. The same source who told me this story has also lifted the lid on a long hidden two year plus

drama that came about when in the first throes of GST, somebody made a $120,000 with the finances.

In 1988/89 there were many, many people still struggling to come to terms with GST. One of the earlier bean counters here managed to work out that Hagley was down for a GST commitment of $12,000.

Such sums, like naughty pupils, were sent to the principal's office. The difference was the amount once signed was sent on to the Education Board for them to pay to the IRD.

At the time Roz Heinz was away, and a senior staff member, both nameless and also long gone signed on her behalf. Somewhere along the way an extra zero was added and a $120,000 payment went through.

The paper trail got further clouded when in 80's terms both the Education Board and the Department of Education were disestablished. Or shut down as we like to say in plain English. Their accounts were audited, wrapped up and sent to the bean counter's graveyard.

In 1989 as the power for finances went directly to schools for the first time, Hagley added a business manager, Gary Parlane

and current assistant principal, Rex Gibson. Tomorrow's Schools had arrived.

Gary and Rex set up building the financial systems to make this new beast work. Along the way they found the major GST overpayment and within a mere two years managed to get their money back.

The refund became some of the seed money that has gone into developing this new building. It is a tale calculated to warm even the stony heart of an accountant. I guess that as a recovering accountant myself, that's why the leaker’s here

thought they had finally found a suitable vessel for their tale.

I am pleased to see such a good recycling of capital coupled with such a public confession. I am even more pleased to see we now have another great asset to help our growing and changing city to move ahead just that little bit easier as a result.