Education NZ Conference

Thursday 25 August 2005

Background:

Education NZ is the parent group for international education in NZ. Education is the fourth largest export earner we have, generating foreign exchange earnings of over $2 Billion per year. Of that, 20 percent of this business comes from Canterbury.

This conference is the major networking event for the industry. It is the 14th year it has been held, but the first time in Christchurch. The theme this year is "Crossroads: Choices and risks in international education".

Points:

• I’m told this is the big networker event of the year for the industry. I’m no exception. I’m so well networked with David Caygill that we have his old bath full of flowers in our garden. So, Christchurch is not only the Garden City, it’s also a networker’s networking sort of city.
• I have done my bit for marketing our wonderful education mix offshore. As some of you will know, it’s hard, hard work in places like China. One day I promise to just bite the next reporter who uses the word junket for one of these trips.
• Education, along with new technology development is part of the host list of things that we have a real chance to use to become a real knowledge economy. We must become a real knowledge economy. Our intellectual and cultural capital are the seeds of real, sustainable future prosperity for us.
• In this, I include our huge stocks of intellectual capital in agriculture as an educational area we can still develop much further.
• One of the great things about marketing our educational options is that it makes you realise and appreciate just how good we are at so many things.
• Here in Christchurch we have identified education as one of the key drivers for our economic future. It is an idea I would dearly love to see become more widely understood, supported and appreciated.

Welcome to Christchurch.