 Tēnā koe Fiona, nama hinu i kiekauta katoa, nau mai haere mai whakatau mai rā, ki te ūpoko o te ika Māui. You'll probably wondering why this picture's up here. That'll become apparent very shortly. Now welcome to Wellington. I know there are many Wellingtonians here. You know how beautiful our lovely city is. Good to see you here. And for all of those non-Wellingtonians, welcome to the head of the fish of Māui. It is a wonderful city. Two-thirds of us aren't actually from here. And likewise, I wasn't born in Wellington. I grew up in the deep south of Macargal, which I'll reference later. Now we are proud in Wellington to be recognised as a capital of culture. That doesn't mean to say that we are the only cultural capital in New Zealand. There are lots of other places where culture permeates throughout our towns and cities. But we are very fortunate and rather privileged to be the home for a large number of our national institutions. Including archives New Zealand, Ngā Taonga, Sound and Vision, and this wonderful facility we're in right now, Te Papa. With this privilege comes great responsibility. We need to make sure these organisations are well funded, they're well supported, and that we let them grow their knowledge in their base and contribute to broader New Zealand. When I was elected mayor a year ago, I took on the arts and culture portfolio within council. And I had a number of people come to me and say, why on earth are you doing arts and culture? Why don't you do something important? To which I responded, I don't see anything more important than arts and culture in our city. And I want to make sure that we celebrate in Wellington a decade of culture and we'll be rolling that out in our 10-year budget from next year. I know you'll hear of a coming day to talk about the digital world and knowledge and transformation. And I think back to my own youth and the first time I went overseas in 1996 and spent a year living abroad in Germany. I wrote about 300 or 400 letters home that year around Germany. It would take two weeks for a letter to get from my post box in my small German village in East Germany all the way back to Invercargill. And then even if my correspondent wrote and responded to me on that very day, it was two weeks before it got back to me, so a four-week turnaround time, a month. In the last week of my exchange, I had an Argentinian friend who lived nearby come to me and say, I've just sent an email home. I wrote it last night and I got a response this morning and I said to him, what's an email? Because I had no idea. No one had really, except for those incredibly well informed, heard of the internet at that stage. I was bewildered. I remember starting the next year at Otago University and then telling me that snail mail, writing letters was a thing of the past and we'd all be writing emails in the future. And I thought, yeah maybe your geeks will be. But us romantists will be writing letters forever and a day. A New Zealand post has a very solid and secure future. You can see that I'm clearly not made out to be a futurist. And then I compare that to my children today. I've got two girls, Madeleine, Harriet, seven and five. Every screen they see, they want to swipe. I expect there's a reasonable likelihood they'll never write a letter in their life, although they do enjoy the tactile nature of pen and paper and love to read and write. But their life will be a much different world to the one I've experienced and to the one many of you will experience. And that's why it's so important that we do have the digitisation of our national resources, our national treasures and archives so that they are made accessible to people. And that's why I have this picture here too. Because I want to have a bit of a shout-out to the Invercargill City Libraries social media team who are doing knowledge fun. And you can see here they've done an incredible job of making it fun. I still remember back when I was a student or at high school doing my research at the Invercargill Central Library learning about the Titanic, learning about the encyclopedias because again these are in pre-internet days. But I'm also comforted that children that I talk to today at public libraries never want to see them close. See them as valuable learning institutions where they can go and read and learn. So I do want to acknowledge the conference participants. Minister Clare, congratulations on your appointment to your new role and good luck to your new government as well. To the Organising Committee, to the Digital Forum Board I'm sure they've got plenty of action and story for you over coming days. If you do get a chance, we've got some wonderful new ways of being constructed around Wellington. I've got some wonderful new craft beer bars, brewed fresh local beer as well. If you get the chance and some of our wines from the Wai Rapa aren't too shabby either. Enjoy your time here. Ngamahinui kia koutou katoa, noraira tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Kia ora.