Hi Tech Awards Launch

Friday 30 September 2005

Welcome to Christchurch, the high tech hub of New Zealand. This is not a sideshow for us, this is a window into our present and future.

Christchurch is home to what they call the gold collar workers of high tech, the well paid professionals who love our lifestyle.

Christchurch is a trading city with a real investment in making the knowledge economy a reality - starting with education.

Kiwis are a nation of great inventors and innovators. It is a gift we will need in the future. China and India are waking up as major developed economies. For economic minnows like us, we must nurture our ability to innovate, invent and move up the manufacturing food chain.

The most valuable industrial plant of the future is between your ears.

It is wonderful to see so many reminders of how inventive we can be. It is also great to be able to recognise our achievers and thinkers publicly.

Christchurch has identified high tech as one of the six key areas for our economic future. It is already an area where old barriers of time and distance have been dissolved to our advantage. We are in an era of major change. How we manage that change will make the difference between it working for us, or against us.

Looking around tonight, I'm confident it will work in our favour.