Fitzsimons Jeanette: Christchurch City Council (Robert McDougall Gallery) Land Vesting Bill — Procedure Second Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Christchurch City Council (Robert McDougall Gallery) Land Vesting Bill — Procedure Second Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8793] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 It was a great pleasure to take the Local Government and Environment Committee to Christchurch to hear submissions on the bill for a number of a reasons. It was a pleasure to have a trip laid on for us around this gracious and historic building early in the morning—in a biting frost I must say but they turned on the heating especially for us. The gallery is a very beautiful building constructed with special-purpose lighting and designed to maximise the display of works of art. Clearly a purpose-built building like that needs to continue to be used to display materials that need that very good lighting and physical layout. It was interesting to hear the story of the imitation marble columns and the special process that had been pioneered here to make those columns. It was interesting to see the very extensive basement where there are restoration facilities storage and workshops. Indeed it is an impressive building. It was exciting to hear the plans to combine that building with the museum as an extension of a very significant public building and display in Christchurch. 
It was also a pleasure to hear the very strong community feeling that the people of Christchurch have for this building for their public buildings generally for the Botanic Gardens in which the gallery sits and for its purpose as an art gallery. Quite a number of submitters argued very strongly that the important thing to them was that this gallery remained a public building and freely accessible to the public of Christchurch. There is a real fear out there that in times of change buildings like the gallery will somehow end up in the commercial sector and no longer be freely available to the people to whom they were originally given as a bequest. Submitters argued strongly that the word “public” should go before the word “gallery” in clause 6 to reinforce the idea that this was a public building and it should stay a public building and the committee agreed with that request. As I said there was a lot of suspicion about the risk of losing public ownership and control of an asset such as this. 
Also very strong representation was made to the committee that access should remain free that there are now very few public facilities for recreation and education that are accessible to poor families who have difficulty enough affording the bus fare and the lunch for a day’s outing without having to pay admission charges as well. That has always been the tradition in the McDougall gallery except for special exhibitions where a fee can be charged. The committee agreed with the public that it was important that that be maintained. 
Some concern was expressed about the word “ancillary” as in “ancillary purposes”. Here again there was a fear by people that the building might be taken over by commercialisation by souvenir shops selling tasteless junk or extensive food and alcohol premises thus reducing the space available to display works of arts or of historic interest. Quite a strong argument was presented to the committee that we should remove ancillary activities altogether from the bill. We did not feel that was a logical or feasible thing to do given that we wanted to provide for all the curatorial and other activities that go with a museum or an art gallery. We also thought it quite reasonable that a cafe should be provided where people could have a bite of lunch when they were visiting. But it is worth recording the strong feeling of the people of Christchurch that this building should be public space used for the display of works of art and should not be used for just another commercial activity. 
There was also concern about what might happen if one day the building were no longer required for the purpose that this bill provides. Strong representations were made to us that if that were the case it should return to the Botanic Gardens. On the face of it the Botanic Gardens have nothing to do with the purpose of this bill. In fact that is where the gallery is located and the citizens of Christchurch laid their concerns before us that the Botanic Gardens had been gradually whittled away with little bits here and there having been taken for other purposes and no longer part of the gardens. They argued strongly that if the McDougall gallery were no longer to be used as a gallery the land should return to the Botanic Gardens. We thought that was putting too tight a constriction on people in 50 years’ time when the lease will run out if it is not renewed but we thought it was important to provide some process whereby the purpose of the gallery could not be changed and the ownership of the land could not be changed without a full process of public input. In the end officials recommended to us that it was difficult to do that with certainty for a time 50 years into the future without our ensuring that if that were the case it should come back to Parliament. So despite being one of those who argues that we get too many local bills taking up the time of the Local Government and Environment Committee and that it would be good for local government to solve more of these issues itself rather than bring them to Parliament to respond to the strong feelings of the people of Christchurch that they want a legal guarantee that the purpose function and ownership of this very special place could not be changed without their input we have provided that if that change needs to take place in 50 years it will come here again as a local bill and therefore they will have input into it. 
I commend the bill to the House. I think the changes made to it by the committee are valuable and I look forward to seeing it passed and implemented.