Brownlee Gerry: Christchurch City Council (Robert McDougall Gallery) Land Vesting Bill — Procedure Second Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Christchurch City Council (Robert McDougall Gallery) Land Vesting Bill — Procedure Second Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8781] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 I am sure that the motion will be agreed to. I want to speak about the background to the bill because in many ways this could best be described as a bill that deals with the transition from the way that things were done some 78 years ago to the way that things are done in today’s world. I would like to say to the many people who have expressed concerns about the future of the Robert McDougall Gallery that this bill most certainly does move to protect the gallery’s longer-term interests. In his speech Tim Barnett mentioned Janet Begg and Anne Dingwall. Those two people have put a great deal of time into this matter ably assisted by Hamish Douche and as Tim Barnett has said their contribution has made the bill even more resolute. It has also given us a lot of opportunities to consider just what various clauses in the bill effectively mean. 
The first point I make is that this gallery is a very grand building. As Tim Barnett said it was built in 1925. It sits right at the back end of the museum and faces out on to the beautiful botanic gardens in Christchurch. The land was annexed from the botanic gardens in order for the Robert McDougall Gallery to be built in the first place. When the gallery was gifted to the city its purpose was to be a place of display for the arts and crafts that Christchurch City owned at that time. Over the years that collection has grown to be a very substantial one and it is now housed further down the road in the new Christchurch Art Gallery. 
I ask people to picture this. The botanic gardens are to the south-east of the city the Robert McDougall Gallery is on the adjacent land and the museum is immediately behind that. It is then about a kilometre up the boulevard to the city cathedral in Cathedral Square and along the way on the right there is the Arts Centre of Christchurch—formerly the Canterbury University site—and on the left just a bit further down the road there is the brand new art gallery which is a splendid building. Of course one can also ride the tram all the way across the Avon River to Otautahi the former provincial library which has now been converted into a meeting place for people in the city and then into the square itself. What is slowly happening in that area is that most of the arts per se are relocating and one can see an arts precinct developing there which I think will be good not only for Christchurch but for the Southern Hemisphere. So in many ways protecting this building by making it part of the museum and giving the Canterbury Museum a very long lease over it is very positive for the city. 
One of the concerns that the group initially raised with the Local Government and Environment Committee and subsequently with other members was the issue of the encroachment of food service arrangements into the footprint of the old McDougall building itself. That is an issue that cannot really be dealt with in the bill and as the previous speaker said it is best left to the resource management process. But because the people who are involved do have sensitivities about the use of the building a revised resource consent plan will be in front of the city council as soon as this bill is passed. It will see a very small amount of the McDougall building used only for seating and not for the servicing or food preparation associated with cafeteria-type operations. 
There was also worry about the provision in the bill that states that the purpose of the gallery is for the public display of art decorative arts and crafts and ancillary activities. The basement of the McDougall building is set up as an area in which artworks can be conserved and repaired allowing for programmes for the restoration of pieces of some merit. That would be defined as an ancillary purpose. If the bill were to exclude ancillary purposes that could not progress. More than that the McDougall building is also occasionally used by the Symphony Orchestra for very exclusive concerts. I know chamber music concerts are held there and it is very appropriate for that to occur. Her Majesty the Queen used the building briefly to freshen up in 1990 before a reception on the Archery Lawn which is immediately below the McDougall building in the botanic gardens. All those activities would have been prevented as well had ancillary activities not been allowed. The group understood eventually that it is the resource management process that will manage the activity that goes on in that building. The legislation very strongly links the ancillary activities to the display of art decorative arts and crafts. 
The other issue was a suggestion that should the building no longer be used for those purposes it would revert to the botanic gardens. The difficulty with that of course is that the building itself is registered as a category I building by the Historic Places Trust and cannot be pulled down. Secondly if the museum were to relinquish the lease the Christchurch City Council would become the owner and the council would be vesting the land back in itself because obviously it owns the botanic gardens. There is very strong protection there for the land and for any future use. My own confident view is that the building will continue to be a significant gallery for the display of artworks. The Canterbury Museum has a collection of some 8000 artworks. Many of those are early pencil sketches of Canterbury landscapes and they will be on display. Many of those sketches were done by famous people from the Canterbury district and they will be on display. 
I dare say that there will be the opportunity in this gallery to have a Helen Clark wing in which some of the Prime Minister’s artwork could be on display. I say “the Prime Minister’s artwork” but perhaps some of the artwork arranged by the Prime Minister could be put there. It would be appropriate for the Prime Minister to have artwork that she has purchased displayed in the gallery. It would be entirely consistent with this bill for the Prime Minister to have a gallery full of her art. She would not need to sign it because the wing itself would be named the Helen Clark wing of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. I suspect some of the things we would see in it would be some of the plates that are being prepared for the new currency notes that we will soon have in circulation with Helen Clark’s photograph—and no doubt her signature—on them. Some of the stamps that will bear Helen Clark’s head could be in there. Those are all things that are entirely consistent with the display of art and decorative arts. 
I would not be at all surprised if the McDougall gallery makes a request to the Hon Judith Tizard the Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage for some of her knitting for display there. That would be OK. Perhaps it could be a bit of knitting that has been done in the House—a bit of a Madame LaFarge effort knitting as the guillotine comes down on the Government. 
But in general we can say that all those people who worried that that building might not be used for its original purpose should be content that the bill protects it as much as possible. The original gift from the McDougall family—from Mr McDougall himself—was a generous one. His intentions were clear and they are maintained in this event. It is my understanding that Robert McDougall’s descendants are very happy that the gallery will continue to carry his name and that it will be a significant part of the museum’s redevelopment. It is interesting to note that in an airspace between the old museum and the McDougall gallery itself a marae will be built and a full meeting house will be put in place so that the earliest descendants of Otautahi can also be recognised in that cultural precinct.