Welcome ceremony – Our City

Sunday 26 October 2003

Greetings to you all and a very warm welcome to our special guests from Kurashiki.

We are especially delighted to have you here, Mayor and Mayoress Nakada, particularly after the recent pleasure of meeting for the 30th birthday celebrations of our Sister City relationship in Kurashiki just 3 months ago.

I am sorry your visit is to be such a short one, Mayor Nakada. We have much to fit in to the time you have available, which I understand is slightly under 24 hours.

We will, of course, be able to enjoy the company of Mayoress Nakada for a little longer as I understand she is staying another day, before travelling with the rest of the Citizens delegation to have look at some more of our South Island scenery.

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island, and one thing that amazes so many of our visitors is that we have so few people living in such a generous amount of space.

As you will see during your visit, our population does swell
considerably with increasing numbers of tourists who come here to see and enjoy the wealth of natural beauty that we have been blessed with in the South Island.

It is not really until we visit highly populated nations that we appreciated how rare it is to be living and working in such a setting as Christchurch.

We have also, as the years have gone by and Christchurch has become a relatively busier city, developed great respect for that wonderful Japanese skill of making relatively small areas into quiet islands for contemplation and peace. It is a theme that is starting to emerge in many of our gardens.

Christchurch, as you may know, has been judged at one time as the world's best Garden City. It is a trend that I expect will grow as we develop features like our Sister City Gardens, which provide us with an area where each Sister City can showcase something of their national gardening style and culture.

In a very recent national quality of life survey of New Zealand’s eight largest cities, Christchurch emerged as a city where people
were proud to live. In the survey, 92 per cent of Christchurch people said that they felt that their quality of life was either good, or very good.

I said in a recent speech to airline executives that we are a city where it is easy to get staff settled, but very hard to get them to move out again. Indeed one of the most tangible pieces of evidence of this is contained in our population changes over the last decade.

Thirty years ago when our Sister City ties began Christchurch was a very monocultural and European city. That has changed quite rapidly. In the last ten years our Maori population has grown by 43 per cent, our Pacific Island population by 45 per cent, but our Asian population has increased by 190 per cent.

We have become a mature world citizen of the Pacific Rim family of nations. Ties such as the Sister City relationship between our two cities have become more relevant and real as the years have gone past and it is wonderful to be able to again formally celebrate these ties.

Again, welcome to Christchurch.