Peters Jim: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Peters Jim: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8362] 
JIM PETERS (NZ First) 
: 
 As we know the Auckland War Memorial Museum stands on a commanding site and has stood there for 70 years. It is a very worthy memorial to those who died in the service of our country. It is therefore fitting that at this stage some 40 or so years after the last work was done this bill comes to the House. On behalf of New Zealand First I am very pleased to offer our support for the expeditious passage of the bill. 
In so doing I recognise that we are correcting errors of the past. We have recently had retrospective legislation in the House and this is one such piece of legislation as well. It is perhaps an oversight but we all agree with it. This House recently considered an Act retrospectively and this is another such bill that when passed will correct the mistakes in a lease lasting over 70 years. 
The Auckland War Memorial Museum has always been an educational place. It is quite fitting therefore to pay tribute to the past directors and staff. From the time that I had a brief teaching acquaintance with the museum right through to the present time there has always been a lack of space. Staff were always in the back rooms trying to put collections together. But for those of us involved in education the final effort—the actual work seen by the students who went through the museum and the collection boxes that were sent out—were first rate and gave many country children their first insight into the work of a museum. 
One of the things I found very hard to understand in the past was the lack of Government support for the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It makes quite a contrast to the taxpayer gift to the city of Wellington on the waterfront which incurred huge costs. Therefore it is quite fitting the Government has recognised that in the dollar for dollar funding contribution that has been set up. 
The fact that the museum had an educational impact is important because those of us in rural districts—and I mentioned this in the earlier debate—saw the Auckland War Memorial Museum as part of the former Auckland province. That is recognised in the names of those up there on the higher floor and of those who have passed on. It is recognised in some ways by some of the former county councils and borough councils that made financial contributions pre-war and up until after the war. But I said to the director when I met him recently that in recent years that overall response from the Auckland region which goes from Taupo north has not always been seen in the understanding that people in Auckland have of their museum. 
It was an Auckland provincial museum and that is particularly important for Maori who gave willingly to the collection that was put together in terms of their objectives. So it is probably quite pertinent to look very quickly at the role of the Auckland War Memorial Museum—namely the recording and presentation of the history and the environment of the Auckland region of New Zealand the South Pacific and in more general terms the rest of the world. In particular the collections for Maori and the South Pacific are first rate world class and unlike collections in any other museum in the world. In that way the museum is a world first and a world best as well. 
I turn now to heritage issues. Educational work in recent times has concentrated upon the heritage aspects of the museum being represented in a modern way and in a modern dress. The promotion of scientific and cultural scholarships is one of the issues for a museum in order to portray the past in a vital way and show that the technology of the past was important to people’s lives—to people living day by day 20 30 50 or 100 years ago. That is the sort of historical promotion that museums can do very very well. 
Hopefully museums can also promote themselves with prudent financial management but that has not always been one of the issues for them. If we look worldwide the prudent management of international museums of note in New York Boston London and so on is quite an issue at the present time. It is very difficult to maintain the overall services that a museum wishes to provide not only for those who are near but for those who are far and come to visit and to do that in a way that is efficient in a funding and financial sense. 
It is difficult most of all to give to the wider community something of our past in a way that I have to say as a teacher many of our young people just do not understand. They do not understand—as we did in our day because we had a limited range of resources—just how important historical records are and how important the visible record is in the museum. That record is one thing the Auckland Museum has always had. 
On behalf of New Zealand First I am very pleased to endorse the support that other parties have passed on. As I said earlier the prime role of this museum was to be a war memorial and that is still the hallmark of the place. Pansy Wong mentioned the Anzac Day services. Our family in our time in Auckland were there each year. The Maori Battalion made the annual Anzac parade one of its features of the year particularly for Maori. Unfortunately as my friend Bill Gudgeon knows those service people have passed on. Again we give our support for the bill and our support for its quick passage through the evening’s debate. May the board prosper in its endeavours.