Professor Sir Paul Callaghan, Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year 2011, is currently in the UK and has agreed to talk to Kea UK members on Wednesday, October 12. Sir Paul is a charismatic speaker with an important and controversial message about what New Zealand needs to do to get ahead in the world.

A Prosperous 21st Century New Zealand: Educating for the New “Tiger Economy"

Over the last 3 three decades, New Zealand has experienced a relative decline in prosperity, whether measured against the OECD average, or our ”lucky cousin” Australia. This lecture will argue that such decline is largely a result of our own choosing and that we have the capacity, simply by thinking and acting differently, to rapidly move ahead. A key element of that transformation will involve attracting home talented kiwis from the diaspora, along with highly-skilled new migrants, based on the principle of New Zealand being  “a place where talent wants to live”.The fundamentals are right.  We have a good education and health system and a strong work ethic. We are efficient, corruption-free, market-sensitive and well-connected with Asia, China being our second biggest trading partner after Australia. Most importantly, we are resilient to climate change, abundant in water and energy supply, enriched by natural surroundings and untouched wilderness, and our multi-cultural and tolerant society operates via a civil political discourse. This is an extraordinarily pleasant country in which to live.What holds us back is a self-serving mythology and a failure to gain leverage from our education system. Overcome that and we unleash our full potential.  We have proven exemplars for highly productive, knowledge-based  New Zealand businesses selling effectively in the global marketplace. With a factor of 10 increase in that business activity, the outcome of 100 brilliant entrepreneurs achieving at the scale of our 10 best companies, we exceed Australia’s per capita GDP. The real opportunity for potential migrants or returning New Zealanders is the chance to participate in New Zealand’s economic transformation in a leadership role.

About Sir Paul:

Sir Paul Terence Callaghan, GNZM, FRS, FRSNZ (born 1947) is a New Zealand physicist who, as the founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at Victoria University of Wellington, holds the position of Alan MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences and is also immediate past-president of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.A native of Wanganui, Paul Callaghan took his first degree in physics at Victoria University of Wellington and subsequently earned a DPhil degree at the University of Oxford, working in low temperature physics. On his return to New Zealand in 1974, he took up a lecturing position at Massey University where he began researching the applications of magnetic resonance to the study of soft matter. He was made Professor of Physics in 1984, and was appointed Alan MacDiarmid Professor of Physical Sciences in 2001. The following year, as its founding director, he helped establish the multi-university MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology.Callaghan is past president of the Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand and has published over 240 articles in scientific journals as well as the books, Principles of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Microscopy in 1994 and Translational Dynamics and Magnetic Resonance in 2011. He is also a founding director and shareholder of Magritek, a technology company based in Wellington, which sells nuclear magnetic resonance and MRI instruments. He is a regular public speaker on science matters and, in 2007, one of his radio series appeared in book form, As Far as We Know: Conversations about Science, Life and the Universe. A 2009 book, "Wool to Weta: Transforming New Zealand's Culture and Economy", deals with the potential for science and technology entrepreneurialism to diversify New Zealand's economy. He is also the presenter of a concurrent documentary, "Beyond the Farm and the Themepark", which deals with the same issues.In 2001 Callaghan became the 36th New Zealander to be made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He was awarded the Ampere Prize in 2004 and the Rutherford Medal in 2005. He was appointed a Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006 and in 2007 was recognised by a KEA/NZTE World Class New Zealander Award and the Sir Peter Blake Medal. He was awarded a 2 year James Cook Research Fellowship by the Royal Society for New Zealand in 2008. He was knighted on 14 August 2009.In 2010 he was awarded the Günther Laukien Prize for Magnetic Resonance and shared the New Zealand Prime Minister's Science Prize. In 2011 he was named Kiwibank "New Zealander of the Year".