Project Management Institute of NZ Conference Opening

Wednesday 5 November 2003

When I looked at your theme of Leadership of the Rings, I of course started to think a bit of the old Lord of the Rings books and themes. I thought Orcs, gollums, warring tribes of Goblins........it all sounds a bit like local government on a bad day.

Maybe that's a thought I better not stay with for too long. What the whole Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings saga has said to me is that here is a Kiwi with a big vision, guts and the dedication to do what not so long ago, people just assumed could only happen somewhere else.

The great thing about the last decade has been seeing how New Zealand has gradually become the somewhere else for much of the world. We inspire both ourselves and others.

I told the young enterprise awards kids last week that the great news for them is that we are no longer a backwater. I told them how the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor ranked New Zealand second in the world for innovation, ahead of the like of the United States, Ireland, and Australia.

That the same report had said New Zealand women were the most entrepreneurial on the planet. I also told them the truth. We are an incredibly positive people.

In 2002 the international Gallup and Roy Morgan poll of 63 countries rated Kiwis as the second most optimistic people in the world. We have become the place where great ideas regularly get turned into great realities.

Part of the price of this is that many of the old certainties of earlier years are gone. There are some in politics who trade on the nostalgia market. I'm not one of them.

Nothing makes an exciting age more exciting than being able to remember how massively boring New Zealand was 30 years ago. With the changes have come the need for new skills and areas of expertise. Or some times new names for older skills.

Running a city is perhaps one of the ultimate forms of project management. You have the politics, the permanent staff, the change merchants, the pressures, the deadlines and the need to deliver. In the case of the Christchurch City Council which is one of the biggest businesses and employers in the South Island, you have to be mindful you are helping drive the whole island. It's a huge project.

In the last year we have been gearing up for the new Local Government Act which calls on us to take more control of our own destiny. It has called on councillors to try and look at the big, big picture. It has been fascinating to see how some thrive while others flounder in the shallows of the small print.

We have also set up the triple bottom line structure. This calls on us to judge things by their economic, environmental and social impacts. It has also called on skilled project management within and without the Council to get it up and running.

(CITE OTHER EXAMPLES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT)

I'll end by planting just wee idea with you all, once you have made your pile and are looking for some common good project to keep you entertained...think about local body politics. Many of you would be very good at it indeed.