Category: Speeches, Papers & Briefings

Colin James’s comments in commemoration of Sir Frank Holmes St Paul’s Cathedral, 31 October 2011

Frank was forever a young man, which makes our business here today incongruous. Death is an old man’s calling.

Helen Clark, in that way she had of speaking an observation that caused it to sound like an instruction, once said to me: “Someone should write Frank’s biography.” Not because she said it but because she was right, I suggested it to a couple of people. Then I thought when I cut down the work I am doing I could do it. read more

An orphan on the common

Conference on foreign policy issues, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 20 October 2011

Resilience — a big picture

Organisational Effectiveness in Times of Seismic Risk, Conference organised by Wellington Rotary and Victoria University of Wellington, 18 October 2011

Where do you find it now?

Conference on Political Rhetoric, Legislative Council Chamber, 18 August 2011

Colin James at Ian Templeton’s honorary doctorate, Massey University, 26 May 2011

Ian Templeton is an institution. He was well on his way to becoming one when I first fluttered into the parliamentary press gallery 42 years ago. Ian had been there 12 years already. He knew everybody and was known by everybody and still does and is. No one has commanded the degree of respect he has: Helen Clark, with whom he had a weekly catchup while she was Prime Minister, said she often felt the “audience”, as she called it, was for her rather than him. read more

Colin James’s opening comments at the symposium to discuss the OECD strategy on innovation, Wellington, 7 December 2010

Innovation is a very broad notion.

Here is the definition in the OECD’s Innovation Strategy, from the Oslo Manual: “the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service) or process, a new marketing method or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations”. read more

Colin James’s paper to the Reconstituting the Constitution conference, Institute of Policy Studies/Centre for Public Law, 3 September 2010

New Zealand was for a long time attached to Australia or, rather, was under the sea next to Australian Gondwanaland,. It was briefly part of Australia when incorporated in the colony of New South Wales before the Treaty of Waitangi made it a separate colony. It chose to stay out of Australia when the continental colonies federated in 1900 but under section 6 was designated a colony of the Commonwealth of Australia and could therefore, at least in theory, choose to join as a state (provided section 6 is not amended to exclude New Zealand). read more

Colin James to the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Auckland University, 1 July 2010

The territory that is now New Zealand was in 1840 a Pacific place, peopled by autonomous, self-governing tribes (iwi) and subtribes (hapu) who came from the Polynesian Pacific around 800 years ago. In 1840 it was incorporated into the British Empire by the Treaty of Waitangi signed by most iwi and for the next century and a quarter New Zealand was Europe’s most distant outpost — an outpost in the Pacific. Since the mid-1970s, and particularly since the mid-1980s, a distinct European-descended culture and custom has evolved with deepening roots, which increasingly reflects and incorporates elements of Maori tradition, language, motifs and culture and custom. Te reo — the Maori language — has equal official status with English. New Zealand calls itself bicultural, a nation of two principal cultures: Aotearoa-New Zealand. This is in part a factor of the demographic resurgence of Maori (now 15 per cent of the population), in part a response to a new assertiveness from Maori leaders and in part a factor of the fashionable doctrine of indigenous rights, given weight through legislation and court decisions and anchored in the Treaty of Waitangi. In addition, there has been a new migration over the past 40 years from the Polynesian Pacific (now 7 per cent). read more

Colin James, Statistics Forum, Te Papa Tongarewa, 25 March 2010

As a journalist, I long ago learnt that statistics are not what they seem. After I started using statistics, numbers lost the authority they had when I first counted to 100. Nevertheless, they have the patina of accuracy, which is of great use in journalism, either as shorthand or as convenient evidence. read more

Colin James at Te Papa Waitangi debates

Claudia Orange has now twice cast me as a riroriro to a totara in this annual Te Papa Waitangi series. Three years ago I followed Sir Edward Durie. This evening I follow Sir Mason Durie. These brother totaras are of great stature. They root deep into the earth. A riroriro is a momentary flutter. read more