Henare Tau: Protected Objects Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Henare Tau: Protected Objects Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4264] 
Hon TAU HENARE (National) 
: 
 Thank you Madam Chair for your indulgence. I want to pick upon a couple of issues. The first is colloquially known as “shrunken heads”. I travelled— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: What! Nobody knows it as “shrunken heads”. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: The woman who has been playing on her telephone for the last half an hour—texting whoever not listening to whatever the members have said in the last half an hour—suddenly comes to life because she has found the “send” button. For goodness’ sake! Members have been making really good speeches really interesting korero in the Chamber tonight about protected objects but she has to go and ruin it by waking up! I was going to talk about what is called in the business “shrunken heads” or “stolen shrunken heads” in my— 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: Nobody calls them that except Brazilian ones. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: Here we go! For goodness’ sake! Take the pill and close your eyes. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Will the member please withdraw and apologise for that remark. 
Hon TAU HENARE 
: I withdraw and apologise. When I travelled to England and Scotland some years ago to retrieve those taonga—as I believe they are—I thought that what we really needed is legislation to protect everything in this country. I am glad to stand up and support this bill. My colleague referred to the Elgin Marbles but that situation would not have happened if there had been legislation like this and everybody had signed up to the deal. I know and most members of the House know that cultural taonga was stolen from this nation hundreds of years ago and they lie in the back offices of museums around the world. My great-uncle my grandfather’s brother at the closing stages of the Second World War talked to a few of his mates in the 28th Battalion and they were on the cusp of doing a raid on some of the international museums on their way home to bring some of those taonga back. I am glad that the parties are signing up to the bill. 
One matter I want to talk about is Charles Upham’s VCs. There was a bit of a furore not so long ago about who owned them and whether they were taonga to the nation. I see in schedule 4: “New Zealand military history means the history of—” and it lists a definition of that. The bill states “protected New Zealand object means an object forming part of the moveable cultural heritage of New Zealand …”. I am not so sure there is anything in the bill that protects the issue of an individual person’s property as a taonga that belongs to the person. In the case of Charles Upham his VCs were gifted to his daughters even though we all believe that he did such a wonderful job and he won two VCs on behalf of the nation. There is nothing in the bill that says that those people who owned those taonga can do what they want with them. 
I am glad that the bill states that the Crown can purchase on behalf of the nation. That is absolutely fantastic. There can be a horrible situation where because the nation is interested in a taonga or object the price is pushed up on the open market and even on the black market. So we have to be careful. Some years ago I proposed that if we were to go down this track in terms of a revamp of the Antiquities Act—at the time I called it the “Taonga Maori Protection Bill” and that may have been naive of me—a trust should be established whereby not only the Government could put funds towards purchasing protected objects but also the private sector could contribute. Fund-raising could go on so there would be a fund for those national treasures. It would have taken a hell of a lot of money.