New Year Honours: Wellingtonians in line for applause

A philanthropist, an art collector and a medical scientist are among those made knights and dames in this year's New Year Honours. Nationwide, three new dames and four knights have been announced - and the capital is home to three of them. Reporter Kate Green spoke to the Wellingtonians about their work, their motivation, and their new titles.

• Read the full list of New Year Honours here

Sir Graham Le Gros is on his gap year.

It's a little later than most, but the recently retired director of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research told RNZ he firmly believed in taking time to "calmly" think through his next step.

"I very much believe one has to retire from the job and let the other younger ones come over and do things before they get too old, so it's been great passing on the role to Kjesten Wiig, who's the new director."

Now, with a little more free time, he spent his days trapping pests in the Orongorongos and catching up on 30 years of home maintenance - while still maintaining a seat on the institute's trust board.

On Wednesday, Sir Graham is being appointed a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to medical science.

He said it was those young patients with cancer - one 30-year-old mother of three still stuck with him - that pushed him to explore what was, at the time, a novel concept: using the immune system to treat cancer, and help people who "don't deserve to die so young".

"Science was the way to solve problems," he said.

His directorship at Malaghan began in 1994. And since 2014, the institute has more than doubled in size to some 130 staff, and grew its operating budget from $7.5 million to more than $30m by 2024.

Malaghan developed major new programmes in cancer immunotherapy, vaccine development, inflammatory disease and RNA technologies. Sir Graham's leadership in bringing CAR T-cell therapy to New Zealand to build the institute's cancer immunotherapy capability was a defining achievement.

"Now, you take it for granted that of course you use the immune system to fight cancer. But 30 years ago, there was a whole lot of people who thought, no, it may work in mice Graham, but it won't work in humans.

"We just put our heads down and found part of the whole wave of new immune therapies for cancer."

The Covid-19 pandemic brought a whole new set of challenges - but also, opportunities.

Sir Graham played a key role in the local development of vaccines, and under his leadership the Vaccine Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand was established.

"I was very proud to be a part of that coming together of a group of New Zealand scientists to make a vaccine for Covid, on-time, have it in the fridge ready if we needed it in case the Pfizer vaccine didn't work - you know, we had to stand up for ourselves."

In a statement alongside the announcement, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Sir Graham had "helped shape a generation of scientific leadership in New Zealand".

For Sir Christopher Parkin, it was a successful property development career that fuelled decades of support for the arts - from visual arts, to music and film, theatre and dance.

On Wednesday, he is being made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to philanthropy and art.

"I was brought up in a family that was inclined to be generous, I suppose," he said. "The arts itself has always been in my life."

In 2013, he established the Parkin Drawing Prize, a national art competition which has awarded more than $300,000 in prize money, mostly to emerging artists, and he's the principal financial supporter of the arts funding website Boosted, which has so far raised more than $16m for more than 2000 creative projects.

But his initial response to the news was disbelief.

"They basically send you an email saying that you've been recommended [for a knighthood], and they're going to recommend you to King Charles. My immediate reaction was this is just another scam - I was just waiting for the line that says if you just send us your bank details..." he laughed.

"It was a pretty emotional experience really when it comes out of the blue like that," he said. "A very warm feeling - obviously you start reflecting on your life, and what you've done to deserve it."

As an art collector, more than 150 pieces of a 250-strong art collection are displayed at the QT Hotel Wellington, which he previously owned as the Museum Art Hotel, and still lives in today.

Some of it hung in his Wellington apartment and the hallway outside ("much to the delight of our neighbours"), and throughout a property in Martinborough.

A career highlight, he said - or perhaps the moment that really "turned a few lights on" - was a speech by New Zealand painter and graphic artist Robyn White, who gave a stirring address about the arts at Te Papa and strong desire to paint being one of her earliest memories.

Why the arts? Parkin said he, too, had spent a long time pondering this exact question.

In the end, he'd steered away from platitudes like "art for art's sake", and instead took a practical view.

"We're unique as a species in that we put an enormous amount of effort into the arts for, really an activity, in terms of preserving life, [that] is almost completely pointless. It doesn't feed us, it doesn't strengthen us.

"I've come to the conclusion that the artistic way of thinking contributes to our intellectual capabilities in other areas that in fact allows us to make the incredible scientific breakthroughs that really do contribute to our quality of life."

Luxon in his comments called Sir Christopher's contribution "significant".

News of her honour might have been "very surprising" for Dame Dorothy Spotswood, but for anyone who knows the extent of her philanthropic work, both alongside her partner Sir Mark Dunajtschik and independently, it's no surprise at all.

The couple donated $53m for the build of the Wellington Children's Hospital, Te Wao Nui, which opened in 2022, and earlier this year, they announced $10m for the base build of a new charity hospital - to be known as the Dorothy Spotswood Charity Hospital.

Dame Dorothy told RNZ it was about giving back to the city. On Wednesday she is being appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to philanthropy.

"As Mark said, it's been a kind city to him, and a kind city to me - we've always had work," she told RNZ. "So we repaid the city with a children's hospital."

Sir Mark was made a knight in 2022.

The couple had made their money through property development. "When we started off, we had flats. Mark had his business, and I was working for an insurance company," Dame Dorothy said.

In their spare time, they worked on their properties and kept investing.

"Mark is a very hands-on person, we did all the renovations ourselves, the fixing ourselves, and if we built new, we did the building ourselves. I've poured concrete. We were a hands-on couple."

More recently, Dame Dorothy had bought land and funded several homes for the Hōhepa Trust, to help establish care facilities for children and adult residents with intellectual disabilities in Kāpiti.

That was a cause close to her heart - the Spotswoods' adult niece, who had Down Syndrome, died earlier this year.

The Prime Minister said: "In honouring Dame Dorothy as a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit we are reflecting the enormous contribution she alongside Sir Mark have made to New Zealand, particularly the Wellington region."

The country "remains humbly grateful" for their contributions, he said.

To all the recipients, Luxon expressed his appreciation.

"Thank you for your dedication, hard work, and service to New Zealand. I would like to congratulate all 177 recipients of this year's New Year honours and on behalf of the thousands of people who have benefited from your efforts, please accept my personal thanks."

Read the full list of recipients here

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