7 April 1999 Lincoln Honours Two Top Kiwis

New Zealand's Foreign Minister, the Rt Hon Donald McKinnon, and the former head of New Zealand's largest public company, Fletcher Challenge, Sir Ronald Trotter, both Lincoln University alumni, will be awarded honorary Doctor of Commerce degrees at Lincoln University's Graduation Ceremony on 16 April.

Don McKinnon, New Zealand's Minister of Foreign Affairs since 1990, and one of the Commonwealth's longest serving Foreign Ministers, studied Agriculture and Valuation and Farm Management at Lincoln in 1960-61 and was Vice-President of the Students' Association at the time. From Lincoln he went on to work as a farm management consultant and ran his own real estate business before entering politics.

Sir Ronald Trotter entered Lincoln in 1948 also to study Agriculture and Valuation and Farm Management. He already had a Commerce degree and subsequently entered the stock and station industry where he advanced speedily through the ranks. He became a protégé of Sir Clifford Plimmer, Managing Director of Wright Stephenson & Co Ltd and later succeeded him as head of the largest stock and station agency in the Southern Hemisphere.

In a connection between the two honorary doctorate recipients, Sir Clifford Plimmer, who played a seminal role in Sir Ronald Trotter's early career, was also Don McKinnon's maternal uncle, and the young McKinnon did some of his early farm work on one of the Plimmer properties.

Rapid advances based on conspicuous leadership ability characterised the careers of both men. Soon after becoming a Member of Parliament for National in 1978, Don McKinnon was appointed Junior Whip, then Senior Whip, a position he held until 1987 when he became Deputy Leader of the National Party.

Following the change of Government in 1990 he became Deputy Prime Minister, a position he held for six years. In 1992 he was elected Leader of the House of Representatives and was appointed a Member of the Privy Council.

In Foreign Affairs Don McKinnon has had many successes, one of the most notable being the brokering of peace in war-torn Bougainville which earned him a nomination in 1998 for the Nobel Peace Prize. For the last round of peace talks and signing of the final accord, Don McKinnon brought the representatives of the warring factions to his alma mater, Lincoln University, and the peace agreement carries the Lincoln name.

Like McKinnon, Sir Ronald Trotter was identified for his leadership potential early in his career. At 29 he was a branch manager with Hawkes Bay Farmers Co-op and was recruited and promoted from that role into a number of increasingly senior positions. By 1962 he was Rural Finance Director for Wright Stephenson and six years later was Managing Director of the Company.

Subsequently, after the successful management of two major mergers, Sir Ronald emerged as the head of New Zealand's largest public company, Fletcher Challenge.

Believing that the key to national prosperity lay in government policies to encourage economic growth, Sir Ronald played a pivotal role in the affairs of the Business Roundtable and was its chairman for a time in the mid-1980s.

In 1984 Sir Ronald chaired the steering committee of the New Zealand Economic Summit Conference, an example of his wider involvement in aspects of the New Zealand economy.

A realisation in those years that New Zealand's financial policies were driving the country into a cul-de-sac led Sir Ronald to begin arguing for radical reforms needed to change the economy from a protected and highly controlled one to one that was realistically open to market forces.

He was knighted in 1985.

The honorary doctorates for the Rt Hon Don McKinnon and Sir Ronald Trotter, both Doctor of Commerce (honoris causa) are only the 10th and 11th awarded by the Lincoln University since it began the practice in 1993.

Ian Collins, Journalist, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand