CCO Review and Appointments Subcommittee

last two presentations. We think unfortunately Karen Fifield won't join us for the zoos presentation, but we'll do Whiakopu Niki first. So nau mai, Diana and Alisia. Welcome, and you have 10 minutes, and we'll have 10 minutes for questions if there are any. So welcome. I was going to say as I introduced you that I had seen pushchair traffic jams outside Capital E, which was amazing. Obviously in the new facility being very much enjoyed by parents and tamariki.

Something? Oh yeah, our numbers have tripled since we've moved there. It's been a really great outcome. O tēnā koutou katoa. Alicia and I are going to do a double act today, and Martin Matthews, our chair, sends his apologies, he couldn't be here today. So first of all, I'd just like to talk about the opportunities that we see in Wellington, and I know that last year— last night, sorry, we had some challenges challenging news about our city, but I think it's really important that we double down on the work that we've done and the green shoots that our organisation is seeing everywhere. Wellington is going to fix Wellington's problem, and I think we need to focus on good news rather than all the negatives that we keep hearing about our city. So I just think about Tanako. We've moved into Matetehe with Kāporeleni nō koutiao, and City Gallery is opening in a fortnight with our fashion show, our first event after it's reopened. But our administration is on the top floor of Te Matapīhi. We feel very privileged to be there, I might say. It's very unusual for an arts organisation to have such a beautiful office. But what you can do when you stand at the top of Te Matapīhi is look out down our cultural corridor. And we can't quite see Courtney Place, but it starts with the Embassy Theatre, it moves to BATS, it moves down to Te Papa and Tākina, just getting a word in there, then over to Toi Uponiki, Circa Theatre, down to the Whare Waka and the Boat Shed, shared over the bridge to the most amazing cultural precinct. I think it is the only arts and cultural precinct in the city, and that is Tanako, our beating heart. We've got City Gallery, we've got Te Matapihi, we're opening with the Town Hall next year. We're working very closely with the New Zealand School of Music on that opening, by the way. Yesterday I saw the NZSO outside City Gallery. Did any of you see that? They'd actually built these fake Town Hall columns, they'd put seating, it was amazing. It was really innovative and imaginative, and that just shows what the possibilities Communities can provide. The Council has put their money where their mouth is. They've really invested in this, and now it's time to double down on it. You know, in 2024, the arts and creative sectors contributed $17.5 billion to our economy. That's 4.2% of GDP. So the arts is not decorative. It's not a nice-to-have, which is often a common misunderstanding about arts and culture. It's necessary. And, you know, if you think about great cities that people go and visit, like in Europe, Florence, for example, The infrastructure is not very good, but the stories, the museums and galleries are really important. And we've got a beautiful city which we can all now see around our waterfront. And we've got that whole arts and cultural corridor to Narko Square and real opportunities to make something happen special. And then if we build out into the city, we've got all the other experiences that our other CCOs have. So now is the time to double down. And, you know, while infrastructure is important, it makes the city livable, but it's, it's the arts and culture and the other experiences that make it lovable. So just onto our quarterly report, we've reported a year-to-date surplus of just over $1 million, and we're projecting a surplus of about $769,000 at the end of the year. Now some of that surplus is due to closures of gallery, but we've also worked really hard to change our budgeting process, improve our capability and capacity within the organisation, and we're really seeing fruits of that labour. Our spend per visit is $4.75, and our physical visitations, we didn't have the Douse figures because we're co-presenting with the Douse obviously while the City Gallery is closed. We didn't have those figures when we put in our quarterly report, but they've ended up meaning that we've exceeded our City Gallery target. 71,000 went to our Douse exhibition. And I might add, 45% of those were from the Wellington region, so Wellingtonians are seeing it. It was quite a small number from Lower Hutt. I know some people have raised that as an issue, but it's for the whole Wellington region. And that was for our Blood is Thicker, include an enormous number of works, and there was a lot of return visitation. So we will easily achieve our year-to-date target of visitation, and obviously next year our expectations are much greater. But if you just think about that number, 71,000 over a few months, it's quite a remarkable achievement. Right, Alicia.

So highlights—

both Wellington Museum and Space Place received gold Callmark ratings in the last quarter. Conversations Evaluation has also started regarding design and development opportunities for the old E building, so there is much work to do here, with an opening date looking at possibly mid to late 2027. This space will, we hope, become an extension of City Gallery Wellington, as well as an amazing agile space in the heart of Tanako. So CGW continues its work away from home, with exhibitions at the National Library coming to an end this week after 18 months of working together with the National Library. Wellingtonians will get a glimpse inside City Gallery Wellington between the 5th and 7th of June, with the gallery hosting Common Material. This is a celebration and showcase of Wellington creatives through fashion, production, craft, and the realities of making fashion in Aotearoa. Many of these shows have already sold out, which is just fantastic, and we've been working alongside brands such as Koto, J'Palm, Yume, and 27 names. Kapuae Nokotiao is now settled in its new home in Te Matapēhi. In its first 9 weeks, PlayHQ has welcomed over 12,000 under-fives who have accepted our invitation to play. This compares to the same time last year in Queen's Wharf, where we welcomed just over 4,000 people. So that is amazing, and as you noted before, we have a push chair jam at times.

Congestion.

But actually, we also have to stop. We can't let everybody in because we've got a maximum per head, and so we have to turn people away.

So we're working on what that looks like in an ongoing reality. Cable Car Museum continues to be a positive financial contributor, performing close to last year's financial outcomes despite a lower visitation, which has mostly been driven by the cruise ship arrivals. And finally, we continue to invite people to Shop Wellington with our online store and branding. This is a retail platform that is celebrating Te Whanganui-a-Tara, its makers and creators, and that is performing incredibly well.

So our challenges, our financial challenges, I guess the major one is the geopolitical instability, particularly with our exhibition from overseas, but we've had an update on our freight costs. They're only 4% more, which is a surprise to us. We were allowing for up to 25% and then we were going to look at other options. They're coming from 4 places around the world: Japan, New York, London, and Spain. And we have contingencies if it had got over, over the amount that we were able to withstand, that we might have been able to let one go. But it looks like we're in a really strong position. We don't know what freight's going to look like on the return because it closes in March, but we're feeling okay about where we're at with that. Obviously visitation will be affected and we need to look at strategies around that. I just of us personally, and this is personally, anecdotally, have noted that prices internally on planes are higher than increases overseas. So hopefully we can still attract some of the Australian market, which we're hoping to do with the Cornelia exhibition, which is the one I'm referring to. Our non-financial challenges, obviously the ongoing issue of Wellington Museum and the Bond Store, but other than that, I feel like many of the challenges that we've had, we've been able to now manage and work our way through, and we feel like we're in a really strong position to forward with the City Gallery reopening, the move into Te Matapihi, so we're seeing green shoots. I guess we just hope that those green shoots are capitalised on.

So coming up, Te Ao Kaporniki has joined with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage to provide visitor experience at the recently reopened Pukeahu National War Memorial. For us, this really is an opportunity to continue to weave stories of Te Whanganui-a-Tara into our visitor experience. and it's about connecting people in place and bringing their stories to life. Space Place has actually just closed on its very first film festival. This was a very first for Aotearoa. It's Australasia's only full dome planetarium film festival, and we bought the best of the best of Melbourne's Dome Under Film Festival, also known as DUFF. And this is around our strategy to continue to invite new audiences to experience Space Place. City Gallery Wellington curators are developing a NEN Street takeover that will open on July 31st, and this continues our work to connect with new audiences and open up more diverse stories within our spaces. And tomorrow we reawaken the building of City Gallery Wellington. Our staff have been away from home for 2 years, and we move home, which is so exciting, and we're moving towards October to open to the public.

Sorry, it's quite a moment for us.

So yeah, we're really looking forward to that. We're looking forward to opening the doors permanently again in October, and we'd love to see you there.

You can see there's a lot of staff buy-in here. I think everybody feels really emotional. Many of our staff have wanted to get in there as soon as possible. They feel a real connection with the building. Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to present. Any questions?

I have a question because like you, I'm I'm very excited, my apologies for tomorrow, but that I understand there will be a hospitality offering coming soon. So do you, I'm looking forward to the day where I'm gonna be able to have a glass of wine in your whare, is that correct? In the City Gallery?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we've always had wine there, haven't we? Don't worry, we actually have purchased a bar because our other one was rusty. So we're really prepared for that, Rebecca.

Sorry to lower the tone. Councillor Osborne.

Thanks, Chair, and thanks for the work. It sounds like you guys are doing good mahi, and it's awesome to hear about the pushchair jam around Capital E. I wonder if we need to look at some pushchair ways. I did just want to quickly note, it's good to hear that you're doing some work around the old Capital E building. I don't know if other members, that's the first you've heard of it. Told about it, it was going to be shelved. So it's good that it's good. You— it seems like a natural fit, so I'm pleased to hear that. Um, I have a couple of questions. Sorry, so one was, you, you mentioned in your report that you have some anecdotal concerns that the international fees that you're charging at Wellington Museum is leading to international visitors essentially choosing between Te Papa and Wellington Museum, and Whilst Wellington Museum is great, and I don't want to suggest anything otherwise, obviously Te Papa has a very strong pitch to the international market. So I wonder if there's any work you've done to look at that, and whether it might be possible to combine with Te Papa and offer a two-for-one or a package deal, anything along those lines.

Well, I'll answer your second question first, and Alessia can answer your first question last. We We have had discussions with Te Papa about should we move in next door and about shared ticketing. We haven't had discussions about our current museums, so that's something to think about, but I'll pass you on to Alicia to explain some of that anecdotal feedback that we've had.

Yes, despite this sense that people are choosing, international visitation this year was actually up on last year, and we had very little pushback on the charges. I think it's that we've been pushing for growth and we probably haven't got quite the growth that we wanted, and we just see that dwell times are increasing. So for a look around, they're purchasing their admission, they're taking their time, and they're getting their sense of money's worth, and we feel that that absolutely will have an effect on visitation growth because you're getting one or the other.

Just one more, if that's okay, Chair. I also noted that your year-to-date expenses were quite a bit lower than what you had budgeted for. I'm just wondering what's driven that.

So we've— a lot of that's around personnel costs. We have relooked at how we've structured our personnel, made changes appropriately. We also have made a significant saving in our front of house costs. Alicia put in a new process and system which has enabled us to better program and put in a better roster, and we've made savings around that year. And that's been, work's been going on for 18 months, but it's now coming to fruition, the systems and processes that you've put in place. Our exhibition costs are down. That's partly originally we were going to do the Cornelia a bit earlier, and it's moved financial years. And also we're always very cautious about cost. We are very careful if there's ways to save money or opportunities to save money or not make purchases, we don't. We also now looking at how we move forward with our capital expenditure, bearing in mind that that has an impact over 5 years rather than 1. And that's something that we've got to work on now too, because obviously we've got funds to purchase. But if it's over 5 years, for example, we want to make sure that we're operationally resilient to that.

Thanks.

Are there any other questions? There appear to be none. I just want to acknowledge all the work, you know, I see, and under your leadership, Diana, you know, the transformation that has been happening under quite difficult circumstances. So credit to you and your team and all the very best for tomorrow and going home.

Thank you.

I would now like to welcome Jamie Tuta and Amy Hughes on behalf of Te Nikaua Wellington Zoo. Welcome. I'm sorry that your glorious leader is not with us. I was looking forward to calling her Karen Minefield in front of a room full of people.

She won't forgive me for that one. I'm getting updates from Kinapuru, so she will be here for 12:30.

Ka pai. E me hiana ki a tātou i tēnei atā. Mītima i ki a Karen, kā wehenei i a mātou tēnuku ao, hueno tēnā tātou. So, thank you all. So, you've got Amy and I. I had sort of primed Karen up to make some parting shots, but she could probably do that informally at 12:30. I think as you will see from the report from Council officers, you know, we still have— we're still operating within a challenging sort of environment. In terms of visitation, which we'll sort of talk through today. But I think to sort of step back and if we think about our year-to-date performance and the quarter that has been, I mean, we're still delivering strongly for Wellingtonians on education, our conservation initiatives, animal welfare, visitor satisfaction, and community value. The main pressure point, as you will see from reports, and we'll talk about later through the presentation, is revenue. Which is driven by visitation and visitor-generated income, which is sort of below budget by about 15%. So that's our big sort of challenge at the moment. I think despite those challenges, you know, there are some positive sort of shoots within the organisation and the business in terms of learning revenue, which is up and above budget, and some of our operational grants and sponsorships and bequests is sort of ahead of budget, which I think is really sort of useful. And, you know, that's sort of, I think we're sort of 12 and a bit percent above there. Total operating revenue, as I said, is below budget at 6%. You would have seen in the report that we're forecasting a deficit for this financial year of $750,000. I feel like a broken record, and I know Karen sort of talked about this, you know, there is the sort of downward cycle that we find ourselves in, which I think if you look across a lot of visitation in our region, most are challenged at the moment. But I think, you know, it's important that I think the Council reflect on the funding model for Te Nukuau, because I think some of this is structural when you think about 42% of of the contribution from Council relative to what Tū Nuku-āu was sort of generating ourselves. So I think that's an issue for the long-term plan that needs to be sort of addressed, or just some clarity as we sort of move forward into the future. But I think really as a board, we're really pleased because despite the sort of fact that visitation revenue is down, you know, what do we control? We control our expenditure, and so that's sitting 4% below budget, which I think is really, is great from the team's perspective given we have fixed costs which are increasing such as food and other things for animals. So we've got some encouraging indications for April, which we might sort of touch on as we go through the presentation. But as I say, I mean, the biggest sort of challenge for not only the Zoo, Te Nukuwal, but also councillors really, the Zoo's sort of structural funding model, which is something we've been talking about over the last couple of years. And so that's just something again to put on the table, and Karen encouraged me to do that today in her absence. So we'll work through the presentation and I'll hand over to Amy. And I just want to acknowledge councillors who attended not only Karen's farewell, I think there was a beautiful night at the Zoo, but also those councillors and particularly the mayor that got them behind the 120th birthday celebrations and also acknowledge the broader CCO whānau who again sort of worked in partnership with us to bring that celebration to life. I'm gonna hand over to Amy now.

Thanks, Jamie. So I think Jamie's touched on most of this. The exciting part of this is we have work has commenced on phase 2 of the Giraffe House house project, and that's been fully externally funded by Pub Charity. And we have built a, a yard for the giraffes so they have more space. And also the, the next phase of that phase, it will start in a few weeks, and we're enclosing the house to make sure we can manage the temperature, keep it warm, and manage all the giraffes separately. As, um, Sunny, our male giraffe, is very large, we need the ability to be able to separate them from the other drafts at times for various reasons.

Yeah, no further comment needed.

And as Jamie said, our students and young people that we're seeing coming to the zoo is way ahead of target already. We're ahead of year-to-date target at the end of March. Our learning workshops are ahead of target. We're ahead of our Ministry of Education target. So we're seeing a lot of young people which is actually really nice for the zoos because zoos internationally, they struggle to attract young people, but I think our young people have grown up with a good zoo in Wellington over the last 10, 15 years, and they come and visit it and they're proud of it. Visitor numbers, as Jamie said, are behind target, so I'll just skip over that one. I think it is mainly We know that there is a lot of issues in terms of disposable income. We are affected by a drop in domestic tourism, and as the fuel crisis embeds and the cost of fuel is higher, that, that really affects us. So that is what we'll be looking at. We haven't yet seen a drop-off in schools coming because the buses are getting more expensive, but we, we're anticipating that as well and thinking about what we might do around that piece. We have, uh, in April we beat last year's, um, target, uh, year-on-year visitation target, so I'm really happy with that. And last weekend, for our Welcome Weekends, which are discounted entry, we had 2,200 visitors one day and 2,400 the next, which is like a peak summer day. So that also shows to me that people are price sensitive at the moment.

The other, and going back to the price sensitivity, it's interesting because those that are coming to the zoo are spending more on retail.

Yeah.

And we've got products like Close Encounters have increased, so it just shows that those that have disposable income where they are able to spend continue to do so, but then we've got the sort of, yeah, the sort of lower socioeconomic segment and then, you know, those that are making choices around, you know, where they put the additional, you know, the disposable income. Which we are starting to feel, well, we are feeling.

Yeah, our visitation's about 16% behind target, but our revenue's 5% behind target. So as Jamie said, when people are coming, they are spending. And then the operating grant per visitor, that reflects that same reality. So our speckled skinks, we talked about them last time. So we've had the birth of 4 babies now. So there's 7 known in total. We have been looking after some jeweled geckos for DOC that were seized from that legal wildlife trade, and so we quarantine them at Te Nukuau before they go to Otago Museum where there are other jewelled geckos. We talked last time about the seabirds and our, our fundraising for that was off the back of caring for a lot of albatross. We've just had two of our zookeepers travel to Tasmania to work with Save the Tasmanian Devil program, which is a conservation partner that we support and they are sent there through a staff conservation fund grant. So we, all of our staff have the opportunity to apply to go and work with conservation partners. And we have a chimp baby born to first-time mom Malika. She was about a month premature, so we were a little bit worried, but now she's caught up to when she would have been born and she's starting to look, according to the chimp team leader, like a proper baby chimp. And we have developed an animal welfare strategy which will— it's based on the Wazza Will Do and Aquarium Association animal welfare strategy. We had a big operation for Nia, the young giraffe. She was showing some signs of, um, some breathing issues, so they did some exploratory work and it seems there's not an ongoing problem, so that's fantastic. And unfortunately we've had to say goodbye to some animals over the last couple of months, which has been really tough, including Bashir the tiger in April. We have partnered with PlayStation to have an installation at the zoo on climate action, and we launched that with the City Council Climate Action Festival that was on, enabling people to, through VR, see the reality of climate action— climate change and what that looks like in different parts of the world. After the Wellington floods, because they were so centralised around the zoo, we offered free entry to people from those most affected city suburbs. We had 619 people come that weekend, or that Saturday, which was fantastic, some of who participated in that climate station and said how much it really brought that home to them. So that was a really nice thing we could do for our closest community members. I am going to skip ahead to the 120th because I see that we're running quite tight on time, but as some of you may know, April was— this is the challenges, we've talked about that as well— the 120th birthday. So we are New Zealand's first zoo, we're Wellington's oldest conservation organisation, And we really wanted to celebrate that we've been an integral part of the city for 120 years. And we really wanted to highlight the fact that it is Wellington Zoo, like it's all of our zoo. It's not this kind of just thing that sits off to the side, but we've welcomed 5 generations of Wellingtonians to Te Nukuau. We really wanted to celebrate that generational importance of the zoo. We plastered the city, including a tiger bus. With celebrations. We had amazing media coverage including features in The Post, coverage on TVNZ, RNZ, and Newstalk ZB. We had great collaborations with some of our CCO whānau and other Wellington organisations, so Cable Car, libraries, Aiko Aiko, the airport, Chocolate Factory, the City Council, and Wellington Museum. We had an amazing celebration weekend and the highlight was this community support that we saw that we didn't even anticipate. Like, a group of volunteers planted some native plants opposite the zoo for the 120th, and we didn't even know that they were doing that. It was really lovely.

Council land.

Yes. And, um, just the support of people and how much they loved it. And in our visitor surveys, we're still seeing people say, we're coming because it was 'cause the zoo's 120th and we wanted to celebrate. So these are just some photos from our celebrations. It was a really special weekend. And I think to Jamie's point about the zoo, the visitor numbers may not be where they are, but it's my team who's responsible for putting on these celebrations and attracting people to the zoo and delivering great visitor experience. Talk about the vibes are really good at the moment. Like the visitors are loving the zoo. The staff are happy. It feels like such a nice place. The only thing that's holding us back is not as many people coming as we would like to. So apologies for going a bit long. And there's the baby.

Aw.

And she is a female, which is— is good. It's nice to have a new female in the family.

Alright, are there any questions? Yes, Councillor Osborne.

That's frequent flyers today.

Certainly. Couple of questions actually. Oh, we heard earlier from Zealandia and they talked about the impact that climate change was having on their business, um, and that they were looking at sort of contingency of 2 to 5% each year to try and overcome those impacts of climate change-fueled storms. I'm just wondering if the zoo is thinking about anything similar, and also just if you could give a, an indication of the impact effects that the two most recent storms we've had had on your revenue?

I think in terms of the effect on our revenue, we— I think, you know, the zoo— I've worked at the zoo for over 20 years, and this financial year is the first time we've closed the zoo. We've now closed it 4.5 days. And also the increase so until I think it was 3 years ago, there were no red weather warnings, and now that there are red weather warnings, it's not only affecting— people aren't leaving the houses as much, so there's also a lot of comms about people not going outside. I mean, not that— we've never had zero visitor days, so even in the worst weather, there is always— again, in my 20 years, I've never seen a zero visitor day, so someone will always brave the weather. But having to shut— so for the celebration weekend, the first the Saturday we saw about 1,800 visitors, and the Sunday there was a cyclone weather warning and we saw 150. So we have put everything on the table to get visitors to come, and there was 10% of visitors on the Sunday compared to the Saturday. So it is having an impact on people's willingness to leave the house and come to visitor attractions. So substantial, yeah.

Thank you. And then my second question was, I just noted that you've brought in quite a lot more grants, sponsorship, up in donations this year— excuse me— than previous years, and I'm just wondering what you might attribute that to.

So we— quite a few of those grants are specifically for the native reptile work that we've been doing, so the work with the critically endangered Whittaker's skinks and the Saint Arnaud lowland speckled skinks. Um, so that specific conservation work. So we've had funders who have indicated they'd like to fund conservation work behind the scenes. So we've had visibility of the work of Te Kohanga the Nest after the storm and the amount of seabirds we saw and we've treated, and that native animal work. And then the other funders tend to fund us for our community programs and for like the children aspect, learning and education. So specifically having those specific projects like the reptiles, te kōhanga, and our learning programs has helped us with that. And the capital projects like the giraffes, because that is a cool project for people to fund as well. Councillor Compton. Thank you, Chair. You noted that there's a drop in domestic tourism. Is that local or New Zealand-wide tourism to the zoo? So I was on a Tourism Industry Aotearoa call the other day, and they had the chief executive of MBIE and some from Tourism NZ talking about it. So they haven't quantified that drop in domestic tourism yet, but we are normally in our April school holidays, we see people from Whanganui, from Palmerston North, from New— because we are essentially the lower North Island zoo as well. So we are still seeing people from Wellington region, but more from Wellington City, but it's more of those people who might come drive down for a couple of hours that we are starting to see drop off. When I first met Karen, I asked her, you know, what is she disappointed— you know, after spending so long, what has she said sad to not have seen progressed. And I'm going to bring up glamping. Okay, yeah, it's fine. It's my understanding that these types of attractions are significant and could bring in a significant amount of economic benefits to the city. Um, and I, I've asked some questions in the Q&A around that, and I'm just wondering, are you looking to put it back in the long-term plan to try Renew Hope? And if you are to do that, are you considering a PPP or a private partnership type model where essentially ratepayers who are tapped out wouldn't have to fund it and we could look at some private investment?

Yeah, well, I think this goes to the structural funding sort of piece around, you know, all of these. We go back to the master plan. and all of the assets including the animals are owned by you, so owned by the council, and then so we as a trust are operating to Nuku'alva Zoo, and I think, yeah, it's striking the right balance around sort of council contribution for the foreseeable future, what we believe from a trust standpoint we can generate, and what does partnership look like in terms of having an attractive proposition central to the glamping opportunity is the master plan and the sort of steps and stages of that, because we need to reconfigure the existing footprint of the zoo to enable that to sort of happen. And I think we've talked about this previously around lions and those sorts of things.

Yeah, and we do need the commitment from City Council and the LTP in terms of— because the zoo land and buildings are all owned by Council, And once we have an indication that there is support for glamping in the LTP, that's when we would work on business cases and look at external funding and the possibility of a PPP or whatever that looks like, possibly similar to— we are the landlord for the café, so it might be something similar to that. But we do know that internationally glamping has worked at zoos all around the world, and in a large zoo in Australia they're actually moving to an accommodation-first model, so that is their number one and then the zoo is number two. So we've talked to Wellington NZ about it and they are also excited about the possibility of increased accommodation and unique accommodation in Wellington, so it's just really a a commitment, and then we will get going on it. Yeah.

I think that's the end of our questions. Thank you so much, both of you. And I just need to acknowledge formally the amazing contribution that Karen Fifield has made over her many years at the zoo, and we will miss her very much, and we very much look forward to welcoming Meg Rutledge in her new role.

Kia ora koutou.

Kia ora. Alright, we will now move the paper. Nau mai, Jamie Crump. Ki te hora e tiko rero. Please welcome Jamie Crump to introduce the report.

Tēnā koutou, nau tōki whakahaere e sisi o whānau. In introducing our CCO Q3 report paper, I'd like to reiterate what you've already heard this morning from our CCOs despite the visitation challenges for some of our more tourism-related CCOs due to the inclement weather and cruise ship cancellations in the last quarter. Our CCO Whānau continued to provide significant positive benefit for Pōneke. I'd also like to reiterate what the Chair's just said, really want to acknowledge Karen Firefield retiring after 20 years of outstanding service as Chief Executive of Te Nukuāoa Wellington Zoo. Karen's contribution to the The city goes well beyond the zoo, and her legacy will certainly be felt for years to come. Happy to take any pātai on the report. Kia ora.

Are there any questions of Jamie? Thank you, Jamie, and thanks again for all of your work with our CCOs. Councillor Randall is going to move the paper.

Yes, I'd like to move this report. We've had some quite bad news in Wellington about government moves and that sort of stuff. What reassured me about the reports today is the optimism that I saw coming from all the CCOs. I really think it's easy to fall into doom and gloom in these times when we keep getting a series of bad news, and I was really reassured at the optimism and the energy that as being reported. The CCOs, I think, are doing pretty well in trying conditions, and you can see that they're also very focused on their own delivery, and they can report on progress on most everything. Yes, there are some challenges, financial and otherwise, and because of their dependence on tourism, the disruption from the Gulf War and high fuel prices is getting in the road of them being as successful as we know they should be. But they're doing very well, and I do also want— so I do want to genuinely thank the leadership of the CCOs, but also the staff who are making it all work. So I move this.

Kia ora, and I'm happy to second. Is there any debate? There appears to be none. That is carried. I am now going to move that we move into public excluded to protect the privacy of individuals. Do I have a seconder? Yep, Councillor Randall. Thank you. We will go to the vote on that. That is carried, and we'll just take a minute to adjust. Thank you, and we'll see you soon, friends. I think I was probably exaggerating our YouTube audience there when I said they were terrible. Kia ora ki a tēnā koe, tētina nā tē wairua, e te ara takatū koe ara e rungo, waka iria aki kirunga, kia ora, kia ora, aera, kua wātia. Thank you, everybody, and we'll see you soon for celebration for Karen Blackfield. Thank you.