New Zealand

WWI Centenary panel announced

18:41 pm on 6 July 2012

The Government has announced a panel to help organise the commemorations for the 100th anniversary of World War I.

The panel will be chaired by New Zealand Post chief executive Brian Roche.

The Governor-General, Lieutenant-General Sir Jerry Mateparae, has agreed to be the patron and says he is looking forward to working alongside the panel to ensure the commemorations reach the hearts and minds of New Zealanders.

Just over 100,000 New Zealand troops served overseas from 1914 to 1918 from a population of barely 1 million.

Of those, about 18,000 died and 41,000 were wounded.

Panel members

Sir Peter Jackson, film director.

Rick Barker and Wayne Mapp, former government ministers.

Bob Harvey, former mayor of Waitakere City.

Dame Anne Salmond, anthropologist and academic.

Monty Soutar, academic and historian.

Matthew Te Pou, former Treaty of Waitangi settlement negotiator, coach of the New Zealand Maori rugby team and a Vietnam veteran.

Carol Hirschfeld, general manager of production at Maori Television.

Peter Biggs, managing director of advertising agency Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne.

Cervantee Wild, a winner of the National Bank RSA Cyril Bassett VC Speech Competition in 2011, who brings a youth perspective.