Hayes John: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hayes John: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 10 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2207. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I find it really disappointing that both the Labour Party and the Green Party are opposing this Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill because I think it is really important that all New Zealanders support the arts. If we are going to encourage all New Zealanders to support the arts then we need to move the community view from “The Government is going to put its hand in the pocket to pay for it.” to “Let’s all share the burden and let’s encourage philanthropy.” There are many hundreds of New Zealanders who are very supportive of the arts. I think about people like Mike Camp here in Wellington Fran Ricketts in Auckland Richard Cathie Ron Scott up in Upper Hutt Chris Parkin across town the Deanes—Rod and Gillian Deane—Eion and Jan Edgar down in Queenstown and John Todd here in Wellington. These are people whose names crop up time and time and time again because they are the ones we go to to say: “Would you please give us some money for this purpose or another?”. These people are very very important people in our community for the contributions that they make from their pocket to the growth of the arts and our culture in this country. 
The solution to encourage those people to continue giving to the arts and more important to grow the pie by engaging with the 30 and 40-year-olds in our community to get them into the business of supporting the arts is not to have some sort of wasteful top-heavy laborious collection of entities that are all involved in developing strategy and ideas and are having meaningless discussions about the arts rather than getting on with the practical business of efficiently running the structure.  
I particularly want to commend Chris Finlayson and pick up on Grant Robertson’s comments about what a wonderful job the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage does in actually putting his hand in his own pocket and contributing to the arts. Chris Finlayson knows what has to be done. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Is there such a thing as culinary arts? 
JOHN HAYES 
: When was the last time Mr Cosgrove you made a contribution to culture in New Zealand by buying a painting or even visiting an art gallery? You must come and have a look at Te Papa one day. I am pleased that your art gallery in Christchurch did not suffer too badly in the earthquake. When I was there last time nobody had even seen you set foot inside it such is your support for the arts. No you are into creating jobs for all sorts of people by having top-heavy structures. We are not going to go down that road. I commend the Minister for compressing the administration into an efficient entity because if we do not have efficient management of the arts we are not going to encourage philanthropists to put in their money to grow that business.  
I would just finally like to wind up by saying that about 3 percent of the total arts funding comes from private donors. It is from gifts from people like Mr Cosgrove who donate generously to the arts—3 percent! What we have to do is encourage young people into the business of giving and I am very pleased that John Key helped to do that by lifting the tax credit cap on the amount of money people could donate to good works. I have not the slightest reservation in supporting this legislation and I commend the Minister for bringing it back to the House. Thank you.