Jones Dail: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Jones Dail: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8367] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 It gives me great pleasure on behalf of New Zealand First to join other members in supporting the Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill. I have had the pleasure and the privilege of living in Auckland for 43 years. One of the major sites in Auckland—a site that makes one feel one is an Aucklander—is the domain and the museum located on it. 
I believe that we now have a wonderful array of attractions in the Auckland area so much so that I think many Aucklanders should perhaps consider in their summer holidays taking a visit to Auckland for a change as I did one year. One of the first places they should go to is the Auckland War Memorial Museum. 
 Too often people dash up north to Paihia or to Russell those who can afford it go down to Pauanui and others go to Hawaii or to Surfers but I think consideration should be given by Aucklanders to visiting Auckland. They should consider visiting the museum taking a trip across the harbour to Rangitoto walking up the volcanic cone and enjoying the view of the Waitemata Harbour and the Hauraki Gulf from the top of Rangitoto. It is quite an amazing sight to see the Hauraki Gulf from that viewpoint. There is also the Museum of Transport and Technology. 
There is another development on land. When we go down Meola Road—and those of us who lived in the Grey Lynn and Point Chevalier areas as I did in 1960 and thereabouts remember Meola Road as a tip site—we see how wonderfully that has been developed in recent years. Again there is the Second World War influence especially on Meola Road when we take the shortcut to go from the North Shore to visit people who live in the Point Chevalier and Mount Albert areas. Then of course the other thing people should do when they visit Auckland as an Aucklander is walk the harbour bridge. That is a wonderful walk as well. There is quite a nice package there for Aucklanders to have a look around Auckland itself starting as I said with the Auckland War Memorial Museum. 
I take Dianne Yates’ point. It is very exciting to think that this museum is embarking on a $46.5 million redevelopment in October 2003. It is such a wonderful museum already. I take Pansy Wong’s point about the history of New Zealand and there not being enough of an Asian theme to it. On reflection I cannot recall anything in the museum about say the gold-mining days and the influence that the Chinese people had on the Otago gold mines at the time. 
Judith Collins 
: It was Otago? 
DAIL JONES 
: Yes it was Otago but it was a New Zealand concept. If we look at the main legislation the Auckland War Memorial Museum Act of 1996 which created the museum we see that section 11(a) states that the objectives include the recording and presentation of the history and environment of the Auckland region New Zealand the South Pacific etc. 
Another aspect is the Middle Eastern viewpoint. Many people do not seem to realise the remarkable contribution that Lebanese people made to New Zealand in the middle of the 19th century. Dunedin used to be very wealthy and it was the Lebanese who made a significant contribution. There are still Lebanese families around the area. Perhaps their contribution is not as great as it used to be but they are in the background still. One thinks of perhaps the Corban family as in a more obvious way coming from Lebanon but that was in about 1901. But in the early days in the Otago area and such like the Lebanese made a significant contribution to New Zealand. So there is that thought as well—that the new museum could have an area set aside for the contributions made by people who have been virtually forgotten over time. We have taken where we are for granted. I recommend to the trustees that this development should take those early developments into account. 
I have been in New Zealand for 43 years. I came to Auckland in 1960. My first visit to the Auckland War Memorial Museum was in the 1960s. It was quite an eye-opener to see all the canoes and the various things from the Polynesian area and from Micronesia as well. I remember when I did History 1 in 1961 at Auckland University. I was asked to do an essay on the Maori Wars. I got an F for that because I could not find any information on wars in New Zealand for a start—nothing that really amounted to a war. So that was hard. Then finding information on Maori wars which I thought would have been fought amongst Maori was also a failure. Keith Sinclair wanted me to write an essay based on his thesis which was on the Maori Wars. That was fine. University lecturers always ask their students questions that relate to a book they have written. So finding anything on the Maori Wars was impossible for me at that stage. I ended up with an F but I had the great advantage of going into a tutorial with Mr Stone who was given all the duffers to handle—the ones who were totally ignorant on the subject. Professor Stone as he now is has written the book on Auckland. I always feel that I was quite lucky to take the view that I did and of course it seems that I am right now. People say that the Maori Wars were actually in the 1820s and 1830s and what we had in the 1850s and 1860s were the Land Wars. So I might get a better mark for that essay today on the New Zealand wars just to show how history can work. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Barnett can disagree with me but I suspect that I know a lot more about New Zealand history than that even more recent immigrant would know about New Zealand. 
The Auckland War Memorial Museum was very helpful to someone like myself in the 1960s. I think there might be quite a few people who did what I did. When a man first meets a young woman he fancies he thinks of what he is going to do and how he is going to pass the time away. Of course that excludes some people all together. My then fiancée and I spent some pleasant times at the museum because I lived in Birdwood Crescent just around the corner. One did live in Parnell if one was a university student in those days and the Auckland War Memorial Museum was in the middle of our respective addresses. So I walked past the Auckland War Memorial Museum at about 4 and 5 o’clock in the morning quite frequently. [ 
Interruption 
] Yes quite frequently. It was very safe to do that in those days. People cannot do that today—not with this Government. However that is another matter. 
The Auckland War Memorial Museum has played quite a significant part in my life. Members may also remember the Parnell Lawn Tennis Club. Those who played lawn tennis and I emphasise the words “lawn tennis” might remember that it was just on the museum site as well. It is extraordinary when I look back on it how the museum could play a part in one’s life without one fully realising it. 
My colleague Judith Collins reminded me that today was the date of the beginning of the Second World War when New Zealand declared war on Hitler half an hour before anybody else. There is a lovely piece of  
Hansard 
 to read if members bother to read it. There was a short debate members sang “God Save the King” and in the space of half a page of  
Hansard 
 we had declared war on Hitler before Britain did. That was the way we used to do things in those days. 
One of the best sections of the Auckland War Memorial Museum from my point of view is the Palestine section. Not many people appreciate the role played by New Zealand in liberating Palestine from the Turks and the Germans. I refer especially to the role of the Australian Light Horse Brigade which was really infantry on horseback. They would ride their horses to a certain point and get off and do a lot of fighting. It was a funny way of doing it. The Australian Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealand soldiers with the British force under General Allenby liberated Palestine in 1917. That section of the museum is the only place where I have seen something on the liberation of Palestine—something I had read about in those jingoistic very youthful books as a young person. 
There are these odd sections of the museum that are to be commended to people. If people including Aucklanders take a holiday in Auckland over Christmas that is one of the places they should visit. I really look forward with excitement to the way in which this seven-storey building is to be erected and the things that are likely to be going into it. I also look forward to more opportunities in the future to display the areas of the museum that are not fully shown today.