Martin Tracey: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15404. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]But then the bill gets to clause 21 which does the dirty work of this bill. It dissolves the two arts boards one of which is Te Waka Toi and the other of which is the Arts Council of New Zealand—Creative New Zealand as we know it today in its operational form—and the Pacific Arts Committee. It gets rid of those once and for all.For the Labour Party members of this House this is the crux of why we cannot support the bill in its current form. By dissolving Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee the risk is run that those important parts of our artistic community will no longer receive the attention that they deserve. In earlier parts of the bill the Minister in charge of this bill the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage has said to us: “Don’t worry. It’s all fine. It will be completely possible for the reconstituted Arts Council to be able to create a Te Waka Toi to create a Pacific Arts Committee if that’s what it wants to do.” He even said that he thought it might be quite a good idea. Well why on earth are we debating a bill that dissolves those organisations in Part 3? Because he said in this Chamber that it would be OK by him if those bodies were recreated and in fact he thought it would be quite a good idea.Tracey Martin: Less funding.GRANT ROBERTSON: Tracey Martin says to me that it is all about the money—follow the money. If that is the case and if that is the driving force of what is behind this bill from the Minister then that is very sad for arts organisations right across New Zealand.The last public event that I was at with the Minister was the Arts Pasifika Awards an absolutely fantastic night organised by the Pacific Arts Committee which was lauded for its great work. Sitting there and seeing the tremendous Pacific artists who were in front of us and whose ability to shine had been facilitated by the Pacific Arts Committee is I think frankly incredibly sad. But that is what clause 21 does. Itdissolves the arts board and essentially sets up the process for all of—what would happen in a normal situation—the property and assets and so on of the board to be redirected.Jacinda Ardern has Supplementary Order Paper 364 which covers this section of the bill and which asks for this clause—clause 21 which I am currently talking about—to be deleted. From our point of view that is the only solution we are now left with after various amendments that have been proposed in the earlier parts of the bill completely failed to gain the support of the National Government and its support parties. We are left now with wanting to delete clause 21 so that we can continue to have Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee.It is worth having a brief reflection on the submission of the Human Rights Commission to the Government Administration Committee. I will assume that members may not recall the submission as it is dated 1 October 2010. That is when the Government was last—Darien Fenton: Why has it taken so long?GRANT ROBERTSON: Well that is a very good question. Why has it taken so long? The Minister has been unable to answer that because apparently the great urgency with getting rid of these boards has not taken place.In 2010 the Human Rights Commission raised serious concerns about the changes that were being proposed here. In particular it raised the fact that the potential loss of distinctive identities and practices of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee is potentially damaging. It said that it is possible that now that there is going to be a small number of representatives of those groups the dominant operating practices of the Arts Council will become the norm. What is being discussed there is the fact that by having the distinctive identities of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee it was possible for the decisions about funding for artists for those groups to be made in a way that was culturally sensitive and that was in line with the operating practices in those cultures. That has now gone and the new council will have to try to endeavour to find a way in which artists from those groups can continue to be supported. Why not just leave the bodies in place? It just does not stack up. If the Minister is completely prepared to see these bodies continue it just does not stack up for clause 21 to not be taken away.The Human Rights Commission raised a further concern which was one that was raised earlier in the debate by members of the Labour Party. That concern is around the fact that by removing the Pacific Arts Committee and having a council where there will be two three or maybe four representatives of the Pacific community the risk is run that that does not give broad representation from across different parts of the Pacific community. It is all very well to say that there will be three or four people at the table who will represent Pasifika people but we all know that across a range of different Pacific cultures there is nuance and there are different kinds of views. If there are two Samoans a Tongan and a Niuean who will represent the Tuvaluan and the Tokelauan communities? The beauty of the Pacific Arts Committee is that by having a broad range of people on that committee from different Pacific ethnic backgrounds we can ensure that we have the representations required. That is what the Human Rights Commission put to the select committee. It said that the council would have to work very hard to ensure that those communities are adequately provided for.Then there is the whole question of the way in which advice comes to the Minister and comes to Creative New Zealand about Māori and Pacific communities. I do believe that those people who will now end up on the Arts Council representing Māori and Pacific communities will have huge pressure on them to be able to be representative and to give advice. It is actually very unfair to put that burden on those people and to say that they are the representatives and the ones who have to carry the weight of theirwhole communities at that table. I simply do not believe that a justification has been put forward to the Committee by the Government for why it is that dismantling these bodies as we are doing under clause 21 is justified when we know that they provide effective advice they provide advocacy and support for Māori and Pacific artists and they ensure that funding goes directly to those artists from people who understand those communities. That is now going to be put at risk in my submission.So our view on this side of the Committee is that we would ask members to support Supplementary Order Paper 364 in the name of Jacinda Ardern to delete clause 21. We believe that is the only way that we can ensure that Māori and Pacific artists continue to be represented. The transitional provisions that are here continue on with the somewhat odd drafting in parts of this bill which we discussed in the debate on clause 2 where none of us were any the wiser about what those clauses meant. In this case the boards are being dissolved but we have a Minister who has told us that he would actually quite like them to continue. Well if that is the case National should support JacindaArdern’s Supplementary Order Paper and stop dissolving boards that it actually wants to carry on.