Coddington Deborah: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12307] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is not supporting this bill. We do not see that it is necessary and we are not quite sure why the Minister is putting it forward. We are not sure what she is trying to fix—what is broken. On reading through the legislation it appears to me that we are actually making the situation worse than it is at the moment especially when we see it being brought in under urgency. 
If we look at the history of this legislation we see that there are some very serious anomalies in the bill and there are some serious omissions from it. On reading the history of the legislation I see that some of the most important submitters to it—the player representatives themselves—have been ignored. I wonder why that is so. I wonder why the Minister is so averse to having a representative from the actual orchestra on the board. Is there an assumption that because one is creative and artistic one therefore has no knowledge of governance and financial matters? That is an arrogant assumption. There is no evidence that just because somebody can play a musical instrument to the standard of being in a national symphony orchestra that person does not have the ability to sit on a board and take part in the daily indeed annual running of the orchestra. 
The primary purpose of this bill is to turn the orchestra from a limited liability company into an autonomous Crown entity—in other words as my colleague Heather Roy said during the first reading so that it cannot go broke. One would doubt whether any Government would let the orchestra go broke because even if they do not like going to listen to the symphony orchestra everybody in New Zealand likes having it there. If their children learn musical instruments membership of the orchestra is something for them to aspire to. Indeed as a parent who has forked out thousands of dollars for musical lessons I know it is an incentive for urging one’s children on to practise. 
If we take the annual report of the symphony orchestra for the year ended June 2002 we read that the chief executive stated in his overview: “In most months of the 2001-2002 year we recorded better than budget income and lower than forecast expenditure. This reflects sound management underpinned by sure-footed artistic decisions that have resulted in significant increases in audience numbers through the country.” If we take that on its own we have to wonder why we are bringing in this legislation. 
If we go a bit further we see chairman Selwyn Cushing lamenting the fact that sponsorship has been dropping off. I think that two of the main sponsors Air New Zealand and Telecom New Zealand did not continue their sponsorship. Maybe that is what the Minister is trying to fix with this new legislation. If the organisation cannot go broke maybe corporates will be more prepared to sponsor it. But I would argue that the reason that corporate sponsorship is dropping off from organisations like the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Opera New Zealand etc. is because companies in New Zealand—small and medium as well as big companies—are facing increasingly high compliance costs. They are spending more of their profits on having to comply with legislation that we put through this House in urgency and outside urgency. 
We have only to look at what has gone through in the last 18 months to see legislation that has forced companies to spend more of their profits not on sponsorship of things like the symphony orchestra but on things like health and safety stress management and now increased holiday pay. That had already been built into wages over the years but now it has to be added on top. We will see more and more sponsorship of those sorts of organisations drop off unless we get serious about improving the economy in this country and let companies and individuals keep more of their own money so that they can become donors or sponsors. Simply passing legislation to turn something into a Crown entity will not solve that problem. 
If we take clause 8 we will see what the principal objectives of the orchestra are. The orchestra will be required to perform music “to an international standard”. Says who? Who will police that? What will happen if it does not? Will they take out the piano player and shoot him? Will they sack the lead violin? Why are we legislating for those sorts of things? Another objective is to provide an orchestra that has “strong community support”. It already has strong community support. How do we legislate for an “artistically imaginative” orchestra? It is ridiculous that we are introducing those sorts of terms into legislation. 
Being “artistically imaginative” is something people are born with. They can develop it through hard work they can hone it they can improve it but we cannot legislate for it. A symphony orchestra is simply made up of a number of individuals all of whom have artistic imagination. We cannot pass legislation and by law order a group of musicians to have artistic imagination. It seems to me that this Government is reaching new heights in ordering and bossing people about and telling them what it expects them to do. 
I come back to the issue of board membership. We will be supporting the Supplementary Order Paper introduced by Mr Marc Alexander of United Future because it seems to me that—despite the Minister standing up and saying that she supports artists and everything in this country—by not having a representative of the artists of the orchestra on the board she is not supporting the artists at all. 
The players committee made submissions which were very well set out on why there needs to be a representative of the permanent players on the board. That has been totally ignored. I would like the Minister to take another call and explain to us why she has deliberately left that provision out of the legislation. Why is she so adverse to it? It is not simply an oversight; it seems to me to be a deliberate slight to the players in the symphony orchestra. 
The Minister would obviously rather read her newspaper than consider how the players in the orchestra feel. Perhaps if one of them were good at knitting he or she would get on the board. I would argue that we cannot have the board of a symphony orchestra without a representative from the musicians on it and that is why we will be supporting Marc Alexander’s Supplementary Order Paper when it comes to the vote.