QB Honours 2017

No surprise there. Every living former PM has either a knighthood/damehood or membership of the Order of New Zealand. Am pleased for Bronagh.

DNZM

Julie Claire Molloy Christie

For services to governance and the television industry
Emeritus Professor Peggy Gwendoline Koopman-Boyden
For services to seniors

Dame Julie is pretty well known already and odds are you have watched many of her TV shows. Dame Peggy is a very respected researcher.

KNZM

Graeme Dingle

For services to youth

Michael Niko Jones

For services to the Pacific community and youth
Professor Timoti Samuel Karetu
For services to the Maori language

Sir Graeme Dingle and Sir Michael Jones are pretty much household names. Sir Timoti is a former Maori Language Commissioner.

Stuff has a nice interview with Sir John Key. Sounds like he is not lacking things to do:

“I’ve got so much i really don’t know what to do with. I’m doing some stuff for (Japanese billionaire Haruhisa) Handa in Singapore, a charity, and then to Sydney with Prince Harry for the announcement of 500 days before the launch of the Invictus Games in Sydney.” Two more board appointments in Australia and New Zealand will soon be announced. “I am doing something in China for a big US ($200b) corporation –  they’ve just got some issues there and they’re making this multi -multi- billion dollar investments there- well it’s certainly $15b investment – so I am doing some work for them. And I’ve gone on the advisory board of a big fund out of New York so that takes me up to London and New York theoretically four times a year though I can phone on a little bit. I have really been saying no, or putting on hold, a whole host of other things because I am not 100 per cent sure how busy I’ll be with the three board appointments one of which I’m chairing in probability.”

He has also been on the speaking circuit, the latest with accounting firm PwC talking about the Australian Budget to a crowd of 2500 in Brisbane and 1000 in Perth.

Not many former PMs could pull an audience of 2,500 in Australia.