Baker became a trusted household figure from the moment the pandemic took hold in New Zealand and helped inform the Government’s Covid-19 response. He also won the science and technology category. The award is just another to add to the trophy cabinet for the public health physician, who was previously awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Prize as a member of HHRP and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. In accepting the award, Baker said given the competition he had thought an epidemiologist winning was a “low probability event” Baker said we had seen strong recognition of the importance of science and evidence in the past year, and he was accepting the award “for all scientists across the country”.
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Elwyn and Russel Scott and their daughter Lisa Butcher at the opening of the Whistling Sisters Brewery which is the only hospitality business the Scotts will keep running to raise funds for secondary breast cancer in memory of their daughter, Karen Hunter.
Veteran Wellington publican Russel Scott is bowing out, almost completely, from of a lifelong business career in the brewing and hospitality industry. Scott, in his 73rd year, founded some of the capital’s best known and loved pub businesses like The Backbencher and Flanagans started by him and other ex-Lion Breweries staffers. Scott has agreed to sell three well-known businesses in Featherston St to sharemarket listed company Good Spirits Hospitality (GSH) for $3.4 million plus stock on hand of $75,000.
Mountain Scene
By PHILIP CHANDLER
The owner of Queenstown’s Muskets and Moonshine restaurant/bar is hibernating his business to stop losing money.
Chris Buckley, who also owns the resort’s still-thriving Pub on Wharf, says ‘‘we don’t want to put ourselves in a position, while it’s quiet, that we dig such a big hole that we can’t pay people’’.
‘‘We can’t just keep throwing away food like we’ve been doing.
‘‘It’s just silly to keep operating.’’
Buckley, Hospitality New Zealand’s former Central Otago president, says he’ll consider reopening when the Aussie border opens.