Speakers

Wendy has more than 30 years’ experience as a lawyer primarily working in property matters including Residential and Commercial Conveyancing, Wills, Estates, Trusts, and Relationship Property Matters.  Over the years Wendy has gained extensive knowledge and experience in Estate Administration.

In her experience Wendy has found that one of the reasons it can take longer to finalise an estate is the time it takes for family to find the information needed about the deceased. If all the information was at the Executors’ fingertips from the start the estate administration process would be far smoother and much less distressing for grieving loved ones left behind.

Wendy’s talk will explain why you need to create a comprehensive record of your details and what information you should record.

To assist her clients with their estate planning Wendy created The Estate Planner Book which is an easy-to-follow record book which enables all the important information to be kept in one place.  She recently had the book published and made available to the public.

Professor J R Rowland is the inaugural Pro Vice-Chancellor Global and Graduate Research at the University of Auckland, a role that oversees all doctoral research students and the University’s global research engagement strategy.

Higher education in the developed world has reached a pivot point, sharpened by the pandemic, demographic changes, the digital revolution, and heightened global tensions. Decades of expansion on the back of the knowledge economy, social commitment to equality of opportunity, and the educational export industry, are giving way to leaner times. In this talk, Professor Rowland will place the New Zealand university sector in a global and domestic context and explore the notion of the fourth-generation university, an emerging concept in higher education. She will explain why, despite the shifts in public support and outright attacks on autonomy in some jurisdictions, universities are critical to the function of a healthy, free society, and must be supported to deliver high quality education and frontier research without undue interference.

Kerry Gibson is a Professor of Psychology and clinical psychologist based at the University of Auckland. She leads The Mirror Project which highlights the lived experience of young people experiencing mental health distress and identifies their own priorities for mental health support.

We try to understand why mental health problems amongst young people have increased so rapidly in recent times. While there is considerable debate amongst adults parents and professionals about the ‘crisis’ in youth mental health, young people themselves are seldom included in these conversations. Drawing from my research with young people around New Zealand, I will talk about the big issues affecting young people’s mental health and share some ideas about how to tackle this issue.

Kerry is the author of numerous research articles on youth mental health, including the book: What Young People Want from Mental Health Services: A Youth Informed Approach for the Digital Age published by Routledge in 2022. Kerry is a fellow and former president of the New Zealand Psychological Society and currently serves on the Youthline Trust Board.

Marama Royal MNZM, JP has been a Director of Ngati Whatua Orakei Trust since 2010 and served as Chair since December 2O17. The Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust is the governing entity, whose purpose is to receive, administer and protect the Trust’s assets to ensure the cultural, social and commercial development of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei for the benefit of its members.

Mārama holds several directorships and chair roles across Tamaki and Aotearoa and has recently been appointed as Pro Chancellor at AUT. In addition, her current voluntary roles within the community include serving as a Justice of the Peace and as an Independent Marriage Celebrant.

Her fields of expertise include extensive experience in strategic planning, relationship management, leadership, governance, and organisational change. For Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, as the tangata whenua of Central Tāmaki, climate change and sustainability of our environment are top priorities. The protection and restoration of our whenua and moana are key to the future. Marama is passionate about achieving positive outcomes for whānau, especially our kaumatua and is a servant of her people.

Hapaitia te ara tika pumau ai te rangatiratanga mo nga uri whakatipu: Foster the pathway of knowledge to strength, independence and growth for future generations, especially the tamariki and mokopuna, our leaders of tomorrow

John Montgomery is emeritus professor at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Auckland. “Approaches to Auckland” is the classic Hauraki Gulf chart. We can use this chart as a metaphor to highlight the importance of our harbours and surrounding ocean to Auckland’s identity. Through images and background stories he will discuss Auckland’s place in the oceans. Where we came from geologically, the pulse of the gulf as it now is, and how we might chart a sustainable future. People are very concerned about the Hauraki Golf at present and marine reserves. Professor Montgomery has done a lot of good research on marine topics including fish and neuroscience.

The Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery celebrates painter, architect, ecologist and visionary Friedensreich Hundertwasser and contemporary Māori artists. The Austrian New Zealand artist Hundertwasser, who lived in New Zealand from 1973 to 2000, was first and foremost a painter but became involved in architecture and environmental activism because of his concerns about the exploitation of natural resources and ruthless urbanisation. The design of the Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery was based on initial sketches by Hundertwasser himself thirty years ago. In this presentation, Dr Joost de Bruin, Director of the Hundertwasser Art Centre, will reflect on Hundertwasser’s legacy and how it is represented in the Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery. He will discuss Hundertwasser’s vision of the ‘Five Skins’ that articulates how we are all defined by our bodies, our clothes, our homes, our identity and the earth on which we live.

Matthew Hooton will summarise the main findings of his recent PhD thesis (under examination) on principles of conservatism, drawn from ontology, epistemology, ethics, metaethics and political philosophy.

He will then apply them to the controversy over the taniwha Horotiu in 2011, at which time he was an advisor to the Independent Māori Statutory Board, and consider how they may have assisted the board and Prime Minister John Key manage the issue differently

Peter Lineham is Professor Emeritus of History from Massey University, where he taught for 40 years.

His talk is entitled “Judge William Martin of Judges Bay, the first Chief Justice of New Zealand and his friends”

Peter was awarded the MNZM in 2019 for his services to religious history and the community.

He is awaiting the publishing of a new book called “Weteriana Methodists” 

Our speaker for October is Carmel Claridge.  Carmel may already be known to some of you from her time as Deputy Chairman of the Orakei Local Board. Carmel has an eclectic background, working at various stages of her life as a lawyer, fitness consultant, cleaner, dog groomer, social housing navigator, and now Coordinator of Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou/Court of New Beginnings.

 Carmel is passionate about her mahi at Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou and feels privileged to share the TKTH journey with some of our most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of society – the homeless.

Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou/Court of New Beginnings, is a therapeutic specialist Court set up  in 2010 in response to concerns about recidivist, low-level, public nuisance offending  in the Auckland CBD area. Evaluations of the Court have shown a significant reduction in arrests, nights spent in prison, and accident and emergency visits. Te Kōti o Timatanga Hou is a proven“circuit breaker” for many caught in the revolving door, between prison and the street. It offers guidance and hope to a better life path for those who have the courage to change.

Our September speaker will be Simon Mitchell, Professor and Head of Department of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland.

Simon works as an anaesthesiologist at Auckland City Hospital, a diving physician at North Shore Hospital (Auckland), and is Professor of Anaesthesiology at the University of Auckland. For the last 3 years he has been ranked by Expertscape.com as the world’s foremost expert in both decompression sickness and air embolism.

Simon has a long career in sport, scientific, commercial, and military diving. He was first to dive and identify three historic deep shipwrecks in Australia and New Zealand, including one in 2002 which was the deepest wreck dive undertaken worldwide at the time. He was conferred Fellowship of the Explorers’ Club of New York in 2006, and was the Rolex Diver of the Year in 2015.

Simon is going to give a talk about the rescue of the Thai school boys from the caves in the Tham Luang Forest Park in the far north of Thailand in July 2019.