Speech on 150th celebrations

Sunday 30 July 2006

It's good to celebrate our past. While we do so today we also need to face the idea that for Christchurch the pioneering days are not over. We are now a large city, but still a very new city. To serve our future well we have to face the idea that there is still much to be done.

Like our founders 150 years ago we also face some major challenges. Ngai Tahu had by then chosen to welcome new faces onto their lands. While we strive toward being a bicultural city we also need to move ahead to become multicultural.

In 1856 Christchurch was pretty much within the Four Avenues. Today much of our new pioneering challenges lie again within this area. Once again we face the challenge of building population within the Four Avenues. To move forward we need to move back. Literally.

We need to aim toward at least 30,000 people living and working here. What are now our heritage buildings, and the very new neighbours like the Art Gallery make up what is now our cultural precinct. This area faces new demands and challenges.

We need to find a way to allow more space for our museum and within the Art Gallery to draw in more people. Our cultural frontiers need to expand.

Closer to home for the Christchurch City Council our growing city also demands that we design and build a new headquarters. This will be the first since the original. It will be a major milestone for Christchurch as what is now is, New Zealand's second largest city.

Nor can we afford to let the set design of the inner city stage stay static. We need to explore new ways, sometimes by again using old things like the trams for new ways of moving.

While we invest in our civic structure we also need to invest in helping our private sector re-develop the inner city. Here we need to be the broker, not the banker.

Where we differ from our founders is that they faced the challenge of breaking in new territory. Our challenge is to break in new territory against the background of ecological limits to how much more we can do to our air and water, and still expect to survive.

Our forebears had never heard of petrol. We are having to adjust to the idea that within generations this key driver to our civilisation may again be absent.

Rather than limitless scope for exploitation of the natural world we are up against the desperately urgent need to conserve and preserve. Our new frontiers have to be made up of sustainable goals and aims.

We will all have to adjust to pioneering new ways of thinking about how we act and why. The village life our founders came from and built from may turn out to be our ultimate destination. We are again pioneers. The 60 or so villages that grew to become Christchurch may again become local hubs for community life.

Our legacy as we move forward is that we do so as custodians of a hugely humane tradition as a city. It is a legacy to take with us into the next 150 years. We can do so knowing that experience shows us we meet these major challenges well.

When we do face these challenges it is in an inclusive spirit. Christchurch pioneered what became known as the welfare state. We were first here also. First with public housing, first with public works schemes, first in fact with a Mayor's welfare fund. It was here that we forged what has become an active contract of care between the city and its people. It is a contract of care best summed up in the saying "I am my brother's keeper."

As we face the uncertain future we can do so knowing we have a strong start to build on. We have done well as a city. We will continue to do so in future.

Happy birthday to us.