Speakers

James Duncan grew up in Auckland during the 1960s and 1970s when Auckland was served by a large and extensive electric trolley bus system.  These vehicles fascinated him as a child and thus began a passion for electric street transport.  At age 15 he joined the Tramway Division at MOTAT and has now been an active volunteer member of the tramway for 49 years. He’s packed a lot into his 49 years at MOTAT – he’s been a tram conductor, managed MOTAT’s tram system for many years, he’s a motor examiner, issuing tram drivers’ licences, and even wrote the guide by which all MOTAT tram drivers are trained.

Most of his working life was spent in retail, but in 2011 he was asked to take on managing the operation of the new tramway down in Wynyard Quarter. 

Today, together with this role, and a full-time position at MOTAT looking after the infrastructure for the MOTAT Tramway, he says he is now like a pig in mud!

Troy will outline a few of the fish-hooks inherent in becoming a           retirement village resident.

Troy Churton was the National Manager for Retirement Villages at the Commission for Financial Capability between 2014 to the end of 2020. During that time, he advised to Ministerial level, led stakeholder forums and collaborations, producing improved information resources for consumers, implemented Code variation changes and designed a nation-wide community education programme, partnering with the RVA and reaching thousands of intending residents. He brought intel from those diverse activities to light in a policy white paper.

Since then, he has retained independent consulting services to consumer groups and is regularly asked to facilitate in retirement village complaint situations. He retains Commissioner certification for Resource Management matters, holds governance roles on the Orakei Local Board and the Auckland Marine Rescue Centre Trust, and has an executive position with the Financial Services Council of New Zealand.

Troy has recently been re-elected to the Orakei Local Board.

Michael Littlewood is a retired lawyer, employee benefit consultant, director and academic. He worked in New Zealand, Vanuatu and the United Kingdom. Michael has written extensively about public policy issues associated with saving, retirement and pensions, including a book How to create a competitive market in pensions – the international lessons (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1998). He maintains an interest in those issues.

He had a ‘Who do you think you are?’ moment in 2010 when he first saw a photo of his great-great-great-grandmother, Tiraha Cook. That prompted him to write William and Tiraha’s story.

Paihia, 1823, and William Cook is injured and abandoned by his whaling ship. He is nursed at the Mission by Tiraha, whāngai daughter of the great chief Nene.

Fifty years later, this couple’s grandson meets his grandparents for the first time and hears the story of their long life together.

Abraham senses long-buried secrets as his grandfather tells how, abandoned once again, this time with a young family in the isolated deep south, he and Tiraha drew on the knowledge and skills of both their cultures to survive, and to escape.

Pioneer shipbuilders on remote Stewart Island, and making ingenious use of scarce resources, William and Tiraha eventually cross the Tasman with their growing family to deliver a new-built vessel for the Weller brothers. They return, finally, to the Bay of Islands to witness the coming of British law, the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Flagstaff Wars. Despite the tensions from their own divided loyalties in these turbulent times, William and Tiraha grow to understand each other and the new country they are helping to shape.

Michele Leggott is a poet and editor with a consuming interest in archives and the poetics of memory. She has published 11 collections of poetry and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007–9. Her archival work spans anthologies, critical editions and web projects that address New Zealand and Modernist American poetry. She received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2013. In 2017 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Her most recent books are Face to the Sky (Auckland University Press, 2023) and Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris (Te Papa Press, 2025) with co-author Catherine Field-Dodgson.

Michele’s talk is entitled “The Way Back: Two kinds of writing that helped save my life.” Face to the Sky, my poetry book, and Groundwork are the two faces of the writing that saved my life emotionally and intellectually as the Malaghan scientists transformed my immune system so that it could find and destroy the cancer and give me a shot at a second life.     

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.