Robertson Grant: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15190. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. I know that I am not allowed to refer to the absence of members but the participation of the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage in this particular part of the debate would be useful not only because obviously we all enjoy his company in the Chamber but also because I have a number of questions around Part 2 that I think the Minister might be able to shed some light on.Part 2 deals largely with community arts providers and I want at the outset of my contribution to make clear that the Labour Party is a strong supporter of community arts councils. We believe that at the grassroots level community arts councils play a critical role in providing opportunities for local communities to participate in the arts to provide support and funding for that and to ensure there is coordination of arts activities at a local level. Right throughout the history of New Zealand’s artistic and creative endeavours community arts councils have played an important role so we strongly support them.But the language that is contained in Part 2 of this bill is at times confusing vague and weak. I actually agree with Tracey Martin about the fact that if as set out in clause 18 we are going to have administration of community arts councils by local authorities let us just say it. Let us just say that is what we are going to do. At the moment we have this odd permissive phrasing in clause 18(1): “The Arts Council may appoint a local authority to have administrative responsibility for a community arts council”. But itmight not as well and what happens in the situations where it does not? In fact the whole clause is full of negative language about what will happen when funds are allocated and how funds can be taken away from community arts councils. But it does not go into much detail about what community arts councils are there for what they should be doing and how they can be supported. So I think there is lack of directness in Part 2 and it raises a series of questions that I intend to work through in a couple of calls.The first of those is when we come to the beginning of this which is clause 14 “Arts Council may designate community arts providers”. It lists in clause 14(2)(b) that the Arts Council can create one of these if “the body represents in relation to the arts either a specific geographical area or a defined community of interest.” One question I would be asking the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment to take a call on—or indeed the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage if he is listening to us—is this. One of the submitters to the bill was the Taieri Community Arts Council from Dunedin. It made a very brief submission to the Government Administration Committee but it was quite pointed.I will read just the beginning of it. The “Taieri Community Arts Council is in the process of winding up its business and ceasing to exist.” Bear in mind that the Government sat on its tush on this bill for so long that that was in 2010 so we can make a fairly sound assumption that the Taieri Community Arts Council did wind up its business. It said: “This is because Creative New Zealand have decreed that no Community Arts Council may ring fence funding for an area within a local authority.” My understanding of this is that the Taieri Community Arts Council sits within the Dunedin City Council boundaries and presumably Creative New Zealand and the Dunedin City Council were saying that they could not agree to funding an area like the Taieri Community Arts Council within that local authority.My question for the Government is whether this change in Part 2 allows an organisation like the Taieri Community Arts Council to operate in the way that it wanted to before it wound itself up. What it was saying was that it had a defined area of interest which is the Taieri Plains area around the township of Mosgiel for those who come in from Dunedin Airport. The Taieri Community Arts Council was providing opportunities in that area that it did not feel were being provided by the local authority and it wanted to be supported for doing that. Like a lot of community arts providers it also then went on to say that it felt that Creative New Zealand over the years had let community arts dissipate and that there was too much concentration—in its words—on “high art”. We know that the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Chris Finlayson is a great fan of high art and that is all very well but community arts councils do operate at the core of arts provision in New Zealand. So that is a question for the Government. Would an organisation like the Taieri Community Arts Council have the ability to be able to operate and ring-fence funding for an area within a local authority? That is a question that we would like answered.I then want to go on to clause 16 of the bill which talks about the establishment of community arts councils in relation to geographic areas. This is where Tracey Martin is absolutely right that if you—Tracey Martin: Cool.GRANT ROBERTSON: I know; there is a first time for everything.Tracey Martin: Ha ha!GRANT ROBERTSON: No no! This is where Tracey Martin is correct: community arts councils are here being established under clause 16 for specific geographical areas but then if we flick over to clause 18 suddenly we are giving localauthorities an administrative role. So which is it? Is it both? How do they work together? I am uncomfortable passing a law that is so vague in this regard.I think that when this passes into law it will end up causing more confusion for local authorities and more confusion for existing community arts councils as to how they are meant to operate in this new regime. Bear in mind that this bill repeals the previous Act so this is it. There is nothing else. Clauses 14 through to 18 are it for community arts councils and I simply do not believe that there is sufficient guidance in here for community arts councils and local authorities as to how they should behave in this part of the law. So there are some questions there for the Government that I believe it should answer.If it cannot answer them I think it should support Tracey Martin’s Supplementary Order Paper 35 because at the very least that gives some certainty that it is local authorities that will be doing this. I would want within that the assurance that there is flexibility for sub-areas within a local authority to be able to form a community arts council. I think that probably that flexibility is contained in the other clauses here but at the moment I think this is an extremely vague and confusing area of the bill. Unless the Minister in the chair is able to explain what the Government is actually up to here we certainly cannot be supporting Part 2 of the bill.