First wahine Maori High Commissioner

Continued from page 1.

Deborah Panckhurst (Ng ti Porou) was “very pleased and honoured” to receive her award for services to foreign affairs and M ori.

The honour, she says, came as a “great surprise”.

“When they rang me to tell me about it I thought they wanted me to provide a letter of support for somebody else.”

That, she says, has happened a few times in the past.

Instead, the phone call was to let her know she would be made an ONZM.

The award was “reached on the back of a lot of other people”, she says, mentioning the team she led to the Solomon Islands and the Te Pou M ori support network at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).

“I was very fortunate to be working with all those people.

“”I’ve always been surrounded by great teams.

“It is extremely important. This is not the sort of work that you can get done all by yourself.”

Ms Panckhurst was the first w hine M ri career diplomat appointed as a head of mission when she was New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands from 2006 to 2009.

During that time, she led New Zealand’s diplomatic engagement to help Solomon Islands restabilise after civil unrest and subsequently developed expertise in disarmament in the Pacific region and globally. She played a key role in major disarmament and non-proliferation negotiations including in the Pacific region, Geneva, The Hague, Vienna and the United Nations in New York.

Ms Panckhurst has had a significant role in developing M ri staff within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and the ministry’s relationships with M ri outside the organisation. She was a foundation member of MFAT’s M ori support network, Te Pou M ori, and for 25 years mentored ri staff to take up overseas postings, and helped develop MFAT’s core training for diplomats around te reo ri and tikanga.

Her efforts helped lay the groundwork for MFAT’s wider embedding of M auranga ori in its orientation and activities such as the M ori Engagement Strategy and the Memorandum of Understanding with the M ri business consultative body Te Taumata.

Ms Panchhurst recently concluded 30 years of diplomatic service with MFAT.

King’s Birthday Honours continue on page 4.

I recently hosted a meeting which included local property developers and representatives from the City and Regional Councils. The background for the meeting was the need to ensure all people involved in providing more housing in our electorate, whether it be those building them or those regulating and permitting that building, understand the issues which govern the ability to build the houses everyone agrees we need.

There are essentially two types of development; greenfields and brownfields. Greenfields means building on currently undeveloped land, typically ex farmland on the edges of current urban areas, where infrastructure like sewers, water supply and other essential services don’t exist are usually built by the developer.

Brownfields development means rebuilding on existing sites, and there has been considerable discussion in recent times around how much intensification should be allowed in existing suburbs, especially changing of height limits to allow for more apartments.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages; the Regional Council in particular see their role to prevent more runoff and other material ending up in our harbours, especially the Porirua harbour in the case of development north of Johnsonville and Newlands. The Wellington City Council are concerned that the existing infrastructure cannot handle the pressure it comes under when new housing areas are developed. Existing infrastructure is aging and needs upgrading across our city, as evidenced by recent pipe failures. An advantage of intensification of existing areas means more people, therefore more ratepayers to pay for those upgrades.

Vaping is shaping up as a big issue, which is why I organised a meeting at Onslow College earlier in the year on the topic. The big tobacco companies have managed to get a new generation who didn’t smoke hooked on nicotine through vaping. I do know some long-term smokers who have managed to get off cigarettes through vaping, but considering how many young people are now vaping, the benefits have been largely negated. There is no easy solution. If we now go to a full-on ban, we risk creating a massive black market which criminals will own, as they largely do with cannabis and other illicit drugs. That has happened in Australia, where they also get around things by legally selling vapes which don’t have nicotine but can be adapted. We have introduced some regulations which will hopefully stem the flow, but addicts are very motivated.

Developers of course need to make a profit, and wish to keep their compliance costs as low as possible. Many believe the Resource Management Act is too cumbersome. We as government for our part have undertaken to rewrite that act.

The feedback was good, but the success will be when there are sufficient affordable houses to meetdemand. That is certainly my goal as your MP.

That, and of course having a vibrant and functioning Johnsonville Shopping Centre we can all be proud of.

There’s plenty to be getting on with.

Hopefully we can prevent more people from picking up the habit. Education is the other strategy, convincing people that putting anything into your lungs is just plain dumb. Another is to enforce the rules on advertising so it is not glamorised as cigarettes once were. Older readers will remember the Marlboro Man, who incidentally died of lung cancer. If there was an easy solution, someone would have done it! I recently attended the opening of Tākina, Wellington’s new conference and exhibition centre opposite Te Papa. It came in on-time and on budget, and I thoroughly recommend a visit. Well done to the Council, which is so often criticised, but largely does a good job for Wellingtonians. Johnsonville’s Waitohi library has proved to be a major asset to the northern suburbs. There are always reasons not to do things, but sometimes we just have to get on with it.