Delahunty Catherine: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 22 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2237. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Art is important to life and the art of political rhetoric has been quite big in this House lately. Unfortunately we lack minimalists and we have a lot of surrealists. But let me get away from those surrealists because the Greens are naturalists and we would like an extremely natural way of dealing with a very important restructuring issue. Restructuring of the Arts Council in this second reading is very interesting. Like all restructuring we have to ask the question whether it will make things better. We have looked at the bill and unfortunately we are not yet convinced.  
The Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill presents some major challenges to us. We voted in the first reading for it to go to the Government Administration Committee because we were hoping to get clarity on the views of the arts communities from around the motu. There were 15 submissions and three were presented. Unfortunately these did not really clarify our position. We had to then talk to a number of artists from the Maori and Pasifika communities and they expressed serious concerns about the need for this particular change. Although we do believe there are some good changes in the bill unfortunately we cannot fully support it. 
Former Green MP Nandor Tanczos who is on the arts board gave us considerable assistance. He is in favour of these changes because he believes they come to grips with some of the issues. But the possibilities around arts development in business which are excellent in the bill and which Nandor drew our attention to are not our central concern. We do think it is a good thing that artists through this bill will receive more opportunity to understand the business side of arts development because as we all know the artist struggles with business. It is not a natural synergy. So this bill does a good job on that. But our major question is like all restructuring is this really justifiable in terms of equity? Unfortunately the feedback remains extremely mixed and there is strong proof that Maori artists and Pasifika artists do think that subsuming Te Waka Toi and the South Pacific Arts Committee will not necessarily be a positive step for them. So there is a question of the principles at play. The principle of mainstreaming to get to the table and get more share of the pie is one principle in terms of those cultures versus the other option of strengthening and improving the functionality of Te Waka Toi and the Pasifika arts committee. 
Senior Maori artists have expressed concern to us that this process was a fait accompli and although they agreed Te Waka Toi needed to be changed they did not support mainstreaming. In fact their desire was for a Maori arts council. That is what they felt manifested the Treaty most effectively and in the absence of strong evidence otherwise we continue to support that Te Tiriti perspective from those Maori artists. The history of mainstreaming even in a strong dynamic and established Maori arts lobby has not been great. A minority voice does remain a minority voice at the table. But equally we recognise the effect of being sidelined and this is the question that we must consider in terms of the benefits to Maori and Pasifika artists. 
Pasifika artists were even more concerned than Maori artists about the loss of the Pasifika committee because it is quite difficult for many Pasifika communities to get engaged around funding for Pasifika arts and although the committee existed and even though there will be two members on the restructured board should this bill go through the Pasifika artists whom we spoke to already find it an unfamiliar and alienating process. To lose an identifiable committee where they feel that they can identify with the people on it to be replaced by those two positions on the main committee is not seen by them to be a step forward. So again that issue of mainstreaming versus an independent voice is a difficult issue. We do not believe that the bill is a disaster but we are concerned it may be a Eurocentric approach to restructuring. It may be Eurocentric in terms of who actually gets heard and who actually gets their funding. 
There are some other really important issues in the bill—community arts providers. This issue of community arts is very important in terms of maintaining rural involvement and community engagement and I agree with some points that Tracey Martin made about this. We do need community arts funding and although I do believe that there are some good aspects in the bill in terms of practical restructuring there are some fundamental flaws around the loss of a strategic plan. So if we do not have strategic direction if it is completely controlled through a central body and you do not get that feedback from the flax-roots and the grassroots and if you do not have those two committees representing groups that have been marginalised in the past it is difficult to give the bill our wholehearted support. The Green Party would very much like to be able to do that. At this stage we do think that possibly this restructuring which may go through will then be changed in a few years and we will have those committees set up again because humans often do this. We often think that what we need to do is restructure the structure and everything will be OK. But the Green Party stands with the Maori artists and the Pasifika artists who said to us that they wanted this not to happen. So at this point we still are unable to support the bill. Thank you.