2018 is going to be a signature year for the Canterbury Justice of the Peace Association.

We have just finished hosting the 90th Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting of the Royal Federation of New Zealand Justices’ Associations and on the Sunday the 1st of July we will have a luncheon to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Canterbury Justices of the Peace Association.

The Conference and AGM was a very successful event. It opened at mid-day on Friday the 2nd of March with a formal Powhiri (Maori welcome) and then we had a Presidents and Registrars meeting followed by a Regional; meeting led by our Southern Regional Representative Cathy Hurst.

That was followed by the formal opening at 6.30pm where I welcomed all the delegates and guests and we had two great speeches from Hon Andrew Little, Minister of Justice and Hon Aupito William Sio, Associate Minister of Justice.

Saturday’s conference started with a welcome by National President Denise Hutchins then we had a very enlightening speech by our Patron, Justice Lester Chisholm. Justice Chisholm spoke on the challenges of the future, the internet, economics verses justice and influencing the public mind. As always Justice Chisholm was informative and gave the delegates much to consider.

We were also privileged to be addressed by the Chief Judge for the District Court of New Zealand, Judge Jan-Marie Doogue. Judge Doogue started by throwing away her prepared speech and gave us an amazing insight to a week in her world.

The rest of conference was about adopting the Constitution, voting on Remits, a number of workshops and other general business.

President Denise Hutchins has completed her term as President and handed the reins over to Racheal O’Grady.

This also meant that Immediate Past President Graeme Kitto stood down from the Board and the Central Region Representative Terry Byrne also elected to stand down.

On behalf of the Canterbury Justices I acknowledge the incredible contribution of all three and wish them well in their future endeavours.

I would like to acknowledge the amazing work done by Ian Hay and his committee organising what was a very successful conference. There is a lot of work done behind the scenes organising these events and Ian’s Team ensured that all bases were covered and that everyone was able to enjoy a very good conference.

I have received a number of emails thanking us for a great conference and that is always a good indicator of success.

I would like to finish by encouraging any Justice who is not Accredited to attend one of the Education sessions to become Accredited. The Education sessions are run in a group environment and are designed to help you complete the on-line questions. Also a reminder that there will soon be a requirement for those who completed the original Accreditation to complete a renewal, you will receive a notification when it is due. We would like to increase our Accredited Justices total by 10 percent within the next three months.

Keep up the great work

BJ Clark

Proud to be your President