This year, the SCNZ Conference was held in Tauranga from 13 – 15 March. We attended this conference and our Director made a speech about “CLAIR Sydney’s Role in Sister City Relationships between New Zealand and Japan”. The main theme of the conference was how to promote sister city relationships from an economic perspective. The key words seemed to be “collaboration” and “cooperation”. Many of the speakers at the conference emphasised these two things. We hope the sister city relationships between New Zealand and Japan will continue to move forward and be successful in the future, as more Asian countries are growing and becoming a source of competition for Japan.
The SCNZ Annual General Meeting was also held at the conference, and Hiromi Morris, the former Vice President of SCNZ, was appointed to the position of President. We look forward to keeping in touch with SCNZ and working with them on future endeavours.