Registrar at Lincoln for over 27 years

Press, 17 September 1976, Page 15

Registrar at Lincoln for over 27 years

One of the names that is inextricably linked with the dramatic growth and development of Lincoln College in recent years is that of Mr H. G. (Gordon) Hunt, who ends an association of more than 27 years as registrar and treasurer of the college today.

When Mr Hunt came to the college in .June, 1949, he was still not 32 years of age and very young for a registrar and remembers having difficulty being accepted because of his youthful appearance. Then there were only about 15 on the administrative and services staff, including three typists. Today the registrar controls more than 100, and including the typists serving the institutes and research units now based at the college there are today no fewer than 30 of these.

One of the aspects of the Lincoln appointment that attracted Mr Hunt was that it represented for him a continuation of working with and handling people, something that had been very much part of his working life up to that stage in the Pensions Department, the Social Security Department and the Education Department.

Also an attraction was that it represented an association with agriculture. Mr Hunt’s war-time service had taken him to Bougainville in the Northern Solomons, north of Papua New Guinea, as a movements officer with the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and in this area he said he had seen country which he believed could well be the food basket of the region, if only the “agricultural know-how” could be applied to exploit its productive potential. He holds strongly to the view that the greatest contribution New Zealand can make to the underdeveloped parts of the world is in its expertise in agriculture and management of land resources.

For every person engaged in agriculture in this country, he says that the number of others who can be fed and clothed is in the “nineties,” compared with only in the “thirties” even in the United States. It was because of this that in 4956, while on a visit to Australia, he spoke

to officers in Canberra about the possibility of using Lincoln students and New Zealand agricultural skills in Papua New Guinea, and while there was some encouragement for the idea Mr Hunt said that there was not sufficient to give reality to the concept, so that it was a matter of disappointment that students with a missionary and pioneering zeal at that time could not find a niche for their enthusiasm, with the decline, too,, in opportunities in the Colonial Service.

But another aspect of the utilisation of New Zealand’s agricultural and land use skills to help feed people elsewhere in the world better is in the training of overseas people in New Zealand, and here 'he influx of both Malay and Chinese students from Malaysia had been a success story, he said. At one stage overseas students had constituted up to 20 per cent of those attending courses.

The wav that these students had been accepted when they returned home seemed to a reflection of the fact that they used their scientific knowledge in a way that indicated that they had actually done what they were speaking about, so that they spoke in more relevant terms. That now sometimes a Chinese occupied a top agricultural position in a district and a Malay the No 2 position and vice versa meant that the college had also been able to cross religious and racial barriers.

It was gratifying that the participation of Malaysians in Lincoln courses had had some part to play in their country’s prosperity.

At a time when opportunities for students from overseas to train in New Zealand were being reduced, Mr Hunt said he believed that this country should still take as many as it could in the interests of supporting their own university institutions —

the problem remained a tremendous one. Mr Hunt believes that Lincoln should remain a specialist institution on its present lines rather than develop into a multi-fac-ulty university. Where an agricultural faculty had become part of an expanded university, he says that its growth has waned. This has been due to its inter-dependence with other faculties and also to the fact that it draws its staff and research personnel from other disciplines. And Lincoln, in any case, was in a unique situation in that it had access to the nearby multi-faculty University of Canterbury, while still retaining its independence. As well, Mr Hunt sees plenty of scope for further development of the present type of institution.

It had already started to move into the field of water management, and he believed that it needed to do much more in the marine environment, something that could be given greater importance if New Zealand was given control of territory within a 200 mile limit of its long coastline. Unless New Zealand did much more about the exploitation and management of this great new territory others would, he said.

When he came to Lincoln its student roll stood at about 190, including a few degree students, but mainly based on diploma entrants. In the last 25 years there has been a five-fold increase in staff, students and the financial side of running the college. The student roll was now 1200 and the accent was on degree courses for people who would be in

the role of supporting agriculture rather than being producers in an occupational sense.

Now again, he said, they were looking at reinforcing the sort of general practitioner concept of those they trained to make more efficient use of the country’s limited land resources.

When Mr Hunt came to Lincoln he was given the responsibility of pushing for implementation of the building development programme which had been approved before World War 11. Then there was a paddock in front of Ivey Hall, the original building at the college. One of Ihe first official functions he was associated with was the laying of the foundation stone for Hudson Hall. Since then most of the programme has been completed, with only slight modification. The administrative part of the new Registry block is somewhat bigger and the Burns wing is additional to the programme originally envisaged.

Mr Hunt has also seen changes in the college’s land holdings with the disposal of its endowment properties in the Kirkliston range in the Hakataramea district in South Canlerbuty and Mesopotamia Station, and its acquisition of a hill country property near Waikari in North Canterbury and an irrigation property in MidCanterbury. One of the major developments that Mr Hunt has

been involved in has been the setting up of institutes on the college campus. These are the Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute and the New Zealand Agricultural Engineering Institute. He recalls that a former member of the council of the college. Mr E. Reid, following the publication of the report of the Royal Commission into the Sheepfarming Industry in the late 19405, persisted in advocating the concept of a body bringing together ail people interested in the high country . and performing a catalytic role. Although intitally he was not given much support, in 1951 the council agreed to call a meeting of interested groups which was attended by a former Minister, Mr C. F. Skinner. Then a committee was set up which acted to promote the institute idea, and with the interest and enthusiasm of such members as the late Mr D. A, Campbell, it subsequently became a reality. Mr Hunt was the secretary of that committee and he has been secretary of the management committee of the institute from its inception, and has also filled a similar role for the management committee of the Agricultural Engineering Institute.

The concept of the latter institute he recalled, had long been advocated to Federated Farmers by the late Mr A. W. Riddolls, of the college staff, who had, however, not lived long enough to see it become a reality.

Another interesting recent development at Lincoln has been staff and student exchanges between the college and American universities. The staff exchanges are allowing the participating organisations to take advantage of each others special expertise and the student exchanges are adding further new dimensions and facets to student life.

There have already been staff and student exchanges with Oregon State University, student exchanges with the University of California, and staff exchanges with Colorado and Guelph in Canada.

Mr Hunt has been active in many aspects of college, life. “You name it — I have had a go at it” he commented recently: Fie was secretary and treasurer for the recently completed residential buildings appeal that brought in more than $300,000 from the public, and which with student, college, producer organisation and Government help has made more than SI.4M available for building of mainly residential accommodation at the college.

Mr Hunt was born at Auckland. His father was a cost accountant and his mother, who came from Christchurch, was a parttime music teacher. The family was brought up on a five-acre section at Northcote where they had room for a house cow. His parents ran poultry, his father being secretary and treasurer of the Auckland Poultrykeepers’ Association.

Out of Auckland Grammar School, where he completed his university entrance and medical preliminary examinations, he joined the wholesale office in Auckland of Kempthorne Prossers in February, 1935. While there for 18 months he did all seven jobs in the accounts office and received a very good grounding in the handling j of a commercial accounting! office that has since stood' him in good stead) In 1936 he joined the Pensions Department, ini Auckland in the days when an application had to, be| made to a magistrate for al pension.

After the Social Security Act was passed in 1938 he was one of 10 selected to establish a new office for the Social Security Depart nient in Auckland and to eventually train a staff of one hundred and give substance to the new legislation.

Mr Hunt recalls that the national superannuation scheme now being introduced by the National Party had first been proposed by the Labour Party in 1938, when it stated its intention to merge the age benefit and the universal benefit into a national superannuation scheme when they were both the same amount. The age of eligibility for the universal benefit was also to be steadily reduced from 65 years to 60. He was in the head office of the department in Wellington when he enlisted first in the Air Force and then in the Army soon after the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and he entered the Air Force at Harewood in May the following year. Because of his eyesight he was rejected for air crew but was commissioned in the administrative and special duties section and given responsibility for organising medical services in the northern part of the North Island. Subsequently he was transferred to air movements and in this capacity wgnt to Bougainville in the northern Solomons with the Royal New Zealand Air Force working with the American forces there.

Returning to the Social Security Department in Auckland after service lasting five years and a half, he was one of those selected to form a task force to reorganise adminis-i t ration in the Education Department, which had suffered from loss of administrators during the war. This group spent three months together in a Wellington hotel working with the department in Wellington in the mornings and then in the afternoons on a plan for reorganisation of the department’s administration.

Mr Hunt was one of those who set up an office for the department in what, had been the Newmarket school in Auckland and it was from the department that he moved to Lincoln in 1949. In 1948 Mr Hunt completed part-time studies for a bachelor of commerce degree through Auckland University. He is a fellow of the New Zealand Society of Accountants and also a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. He is a member of the council of the New Zealand Division of the Commonwealth Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators and chairman of its education comfnittee. Fie was mainly responsible for the introduction of the first two training courses for university administrators held last year and also this year at Lincoln. Mr Hunt has travelled widely overseas and in 1966 was honoured in being invited to join the Presidents’ Institute at the Woodrow Vvilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, which was confined to university presidents who had not been more than three years in office. In other spheres he is also active. He is at present president of the Automobile Association (Canterbury) and a member of the council of the New Zealand Automobile Association and a member of| the board of management, of the Traffic Accident Re-1 search Foundation. He isj also a member of the | Orton Bradley Park Board. I