Delahunty Catherine: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15410. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): I am happy to take a brief call on Part 3 of this very interesting bill the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. Clause 21 in Part 3 is what I want to address. I certainly do support Supplementary Order Paper 364 from Jacinda Ardern on this one because the Green Party opposes the dissolution of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee. We thought about this quite deeply because there is an argument to be made that everyone is better off sitting at the table. That is the argument that was made particularly for Māori—that it is actually high time that Māori art is recognised strongly enough in this country at this time and that the best representation and the most effective way to be represented is to sit at the table with the other members of the Arts Council rather than through Te Waka Toi. It was also argued that for Pasifika arts that was the case as well and therefore there was logic to dissolving those two committees. But on further investigation I have found that that was not how Māori artists felt. In the end it is not what the bureaucrats think; it is actually what the artists think. The artists were very concerned both in terms of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee about what they would lose.It is a very interesting idea because it is based on the assumption that if everybody is at the table somehow the table will be equitable and that having a voice at the table is better—in terms of the result and in terms of access to resources and recognition of your culture’s artistic contribution—than having your own group that you can identify with support specific artists with and lobby. We were open to the argument but that is not what we heard from the artists whom we discussed this with. They said that they valued Te Waka Toi and although the assumption is that tangata whenua are widely recognised in every forum and that they were going to be equally recognised on the main Arts Council that is not what those artists felt was in their best interest. They felt that it was still possible for their issues to be overlooked and their issues to be marginalised. And for the up-and-coming the emerging and the less well known they felt that they would not have this nurturing voice and this clearly identified body that they could actually work with.So I am thinking about young artists who are now making a success of themselves but who have really benefited from having a strong Māori arts focus in this country. I am very proud of a young man from my area Hauraki-Coromandel who just won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award young JamieMcCaskill. Jamie was in my youth group when I was a youth worker and now he has just won the Bruce Mason award. We are all incredibly proud of Jamie. But Jamie writes about things like domestic violence. He writes about things like Māori in prison. It is not easy to be writing about these radical themes in this country unless you have got an Arts Council that has a very strong understanding of a very specific Māori voice that needs to be heard. We are not yet convinced that there will automatically be that nurturing if the Māori representation through Te Waka Toi is dissolved and it all becomes part of the one Arts Council.It is even more so with Pasifika. I think it was one of the previous speakers from the Labour Party who pointed out that there is no such thing as the Pasifika voice and that there is for a start Micronesia Melanesia and Polynesia and then within that there are a number of nations represented in our country now with large communities or smaller communities who are not prepared to be lumped in as just “the Pacific” andrightly so. They are still at a different stage of recognition and in all our statistics remain marginalised in many ways and they rely on and have relied on that Pasifika committee to be their nurturer their advocate their voice at the table and their clearly defined although never enough amount of money that comes their way. So these Pasifika artists and the people who have supported them are not at all keen on the dissolution of the committee.The Green Party came to the conclusion that clause 21 was counter-productive and that we wanted to support the maintenance of those two committees until the people say they do not want it. When the artists say—not when the arts administrators or the arts bureaucrats or the arts experts or the art buyers or the politicians say—“We feel we are best served by sitting at that table without separate committees.” we the Greens will change our mind about this and we will support that approach. But until that time we will continue to support the idea of these discrete entities. I would just like to continue briefly on the matter and say that these discrete entities have a whakapapa if you like. They have a tradition. They have nurtured and supported some of the most fantastic artists in our country and the people want that to continue to happen.So we are not able to support Part 3. We obviously had a critique of Part 2 when we were talking about community funding and community providers. We have had a critique of the bill on a number of levels. We understand the desire to rationalise and to examine the value of the way in which arts administration takes place. We understand that that was what was driving the bill and that is fair enough. But we do not believe that what has resulted is going to stimulate the grassroots and flax-roots art and the community art. There are two groups—and possibly there will be more; I would say that there will be more as multicultural demographics develop—that want to have someone who stands for them and them alone so that they can be strong at the main table. That is about power—it is always about power. And if power is going to work the arts are very much part of the expression of the different power relationships in this country just like many other laws that we talk about in this House. This is about power and we need the artists themselves to be able to have and keep their own bodies until they feel they are powerful enough to actually not need that kind of advocacy. Many times on many other bills I have heard people say: “Oh we don’t need this any more. We don’t need that because we’ve matured as a country and we’re all one people.” and blah-blah. Actually when it comes to money and when it comes to unique expressions of culture we have to be very aware of who still holds the power who is the dominant group and who gets marginalised.We are very clear about that in terms of this bill and we will support the Supplementary Order Paper to remove clause 21 because we do not think it is in the best interests of those arts communities. We have not heard that from the artists. So we will continue with our opposition to the bill because we think there is a better way and that better way is about asking the artists what should be done to restructure the arts community. If there needs to be change let us see what it is that the arts community thinks needs to be done because if we do not listen to the voices of those artists not only will the legislative regime be poorer but the whole country will be poorer. The whole country needs a fantastic diverse and unique series of voices and they need to decide how they are advocated for. Thank you.