Our first Breakfast for 2017 was held on 10 March. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt Honourable Bill English spoke to an audience of over 350 guests on the issues he considers are important for New Zealand in the medium term.

The breakfast was very well attended by diplomats, councillors and school representitives from the Wellington and Wairarapa regions. At the end of the Breakfast session, students were treated to a talk from Sir Anand Satyanand about his career.

We are very proud of our energetic team’s participation in Wellington’s recent Round the Bays event. Four ran the half marathon race, one ran the 10km race and one walked the 6.5km event. Our participants ran fast for the firm!

The women scored the best times in the half marathon, completing it at 1hr 44mins and 1hr 53mins. All involved enjoyed the event and are looking forward to the challenge again next year

We are pleased to welcome back Senior Associate Sarah Cates who has returned from sabbatical in Colombia, South America.

Sarah spent a year accompanying local human rights advocates and lawyers and carrying out international observation of the human rights situation in Colombia for Peace Brigades International. She has written two articles about her work for Law Talk, in August 2015 and August 2016.

Sarah pictured talking to a human rights advocate and member of AHERAMIGUA, an organisation accompanied by Peace Brigades International

Brigadier David Allfrey MBE, Producer and Chief Executive of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, was guest speaker at the Cullen Breakfast event on Wednesday, 17 February 2016.

Brigadier David Allfrey retired from the British Army in 2011 to become Producer & Chief Executive of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.  The Tattoo is being brought to Wellington by the New Zealand Festival and is running for four nights ahead of the main Festival. This is only the fourth time the Tattoo has performed outside of Scotland in their 65-year history.

The Brigadier gave an eloquent and humorous talk about his involvement in the Tattoo, and how it connects Scotland to the rest of the world.

Kerry Prendergast has chaired the New Zealand Festival for several years, with this year’s Festival being her last one. Kerry provided the audience with insightful guidance on the Festival.

Brigadier David Allfrey, Peter Cullen and Thomas Harding, Pipe Major at Scots College

We were honoured to have the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Rt Hon John Key, speak at our last breakfast. The Hon Jim Bolger and Joan Bolger also attended as guests of honour.

Mr Key talked on a range of diverse topics including his recent visit to Iraq and his views on issues in the Middle East, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, New Zealand's need to address climate change and the resulting impact of this on our economy, and future threats posed to cybersecurity from the world's increasing dependency on technology and the internet.

He also fielded a series of questions posed by school leaders and gave great responses, at times very amusing.

Peter Cullen with the Hon Jim Bolger

As gold sponsors of the 2015 annual Human Resources Institute of New Zealand NZ HR Conference and Expo, the team from Cullen - The Employment Law Firm packed a lot of energy and enthusiasm into their time at both the Conference and our stand at the Expo.  More...

We were very privileged to have James Shaw, newly elected co-leader of the Greens Pary, speak at our last breakfast.

He spoke of his vision for the party, in particular for the Greens to be a part of Government.

He not only talked about how businesses can be environmentally sustainable, but gave examples of global and local businesses that have been successful in their efforts to significantly reduce their environmental footprint.

^{L-R: Matt Lamason (Peoples Coffee), Raveen Dias and Andrew Kelly (Scots College), Calum Cartwright (Cullen-The Employment Law Firm), James Shaw, Peter Cullen, Greg O'Connor (NZ Police Association)}

We were very privileged to have James Shaw, newly elected co-leader of the Greens Pary, speak at our last breakfast.

He spoke of his vision for the party, in particular for the Greens to be a part of Government.

He not only talked about how businesses can be environmentally sustainable, but gave examples of global and local businesses that have been successful in their efforts to significantly reduce their environmental footprint.

^{L-R: Matt Lamason (Peoples Coffee), Raveen Dias and Andrew Kelly (Scots College), Calum Cartwright (Cullen-The Employment Law Firm), James Shaw, Peter Cullen, Greg O'Connor (NZ Police Association)}