Official Opening of the New Queensland Office of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand

Vice-President; other senior representatives of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand; ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to join you on this important day for CA Australia and New Zealand, nationally, and in Queensland.

I also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, and express respect for Elders past and present.

Accountants have my sympathies: like my erstwhile contemporaries in the law, they are, occasionally, the subject of jokes.

But accountants have the last laugh. No other profession can claim, for instance, to have been instrumental in the invention of writing. The proof is in some of the very earliest examples of writing from five thousand years ago. They are accounts.

Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand does not go back quite that far.

But each of the Australian and New Zealand bodies that formally merged in 2014 has a much longer history – in the Australian case, back to its first Royal Charter in 1928 and arguably earlier.  

Since the 1920s, the power of the technology available to accountants has changed to an astonishing degree. That is of enormous importance to the profession.

But of even greater importance has been this organisation’s commitment to the highest standards of skills and experience among its members. Without those skills and that experience, the technology is merely a means without an end.     

CA Australia and New Zealand puts that commitment into practice through a set of member services that is impressive in range depth including lifelong training and education, certification and advocacy.

Alliances with international accountancy bodies offer further support to members for what is a highly transferable set of skills and experience, thanks in large part to trust in the CA ‘brand’.

Thus equipped and empowered, members of CA Australia and New Zealand make an enormous contribution to the economy, and therefore to the community, in critical areas such as governance, analysis, efficiency, and planning, in the public and private sectors.  

I congratulate the Board, Council, executive and membership of CA Australia and New Zealand, including 11,000 members overseas, on the acquisition of this new office. Its location, in an area of Brisbane not unknown for its association with accountancy practices, is clearly not a random choice!

I wish CA Australia and New Zealand in Queensland a successful future from this new base. And it is with great pleasure that I now declare the Waterfront Place office officially open. Thank you.