Ardern Jacinda: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionArdern Jacinda: Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 05 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15336. Text is subject to correction.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to give a contribution on the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill. I was grateful to be able to follow my colleague Eugenie Sage because I unfortunately was not able to sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee which considered this bill. I thought her contribution was really helpful in terms of breaking down some of those key issues. I on behalf of the Labour Party want to traverse a few more issues that are of concern some of which relate to the new governance structure for what was previously the Historic Places Trust.Firstly I want to just to cover off again the main purpose of this bill which the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Hon Christopher Finlayson has brought forward and which I would add has taken quite some considerable time and has caused a bit of uncertainty for those who work in this sector many of whom are volunteers as has been referred to and who are now facing a very different governance structure for their overarching body. The main purpose of the bill has been to promote the identification protection preservation and conservation of the historical and cultural heritage of New Zealand.As part of that much in the same way as the Minister has restructured the Arts Council he has done the same thing again with this new body. The Government has changed the name of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and it has reformed the Government’s structure for that body. Currently the trust has a board the Māori Heritage Council and then branch committees made up of the paying members many of whom are the life and heart of course of thecurrent wider Historic Places Trust in New Zealand. But the bill disestablishes the branch committees it also removes three positions for elected board members and creates two new positions for board members appointed by the Minister. So as I say it is much like what we have seen with the Arts Council restructure.The question that has to be asked is what the motivation for this arbitrary slimming down of these boards is. Have we got some demonstration that they are too clunky and are not working? But also there is the switch to an appointment process. The bill was in part around clarifying the role of what was the Historic Places Trust which is now Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga as a Crown entity. That was part of the reason for this bill. But I think it is still important to be very clear that despite being a Crown entity it has an advocacy role. That does cause some issues for those bodies that are caught between that difficult status of being a Crown entity but having to advocate sometimes against the Crown under certain circumstances or for instance other bodies like local government.I want to spend a little bit of time just reflecting on the loss of those branch committees. Most local MPs would have had some engagement at some point with their local New Zealand Historic Places Trust branch committee. The branch committees do a huge amount of work. They are a dedicated extremely well-informed and committed group of people. As a consequence of this bill those branches now obviously being disestablished are to having to transition into new forms of governance.I want to pay homage here to Anna Crighton from Christchurch who established Historic Places Aotearoa as an overarching body to give an anchor to those branches as they transition into their new roles their new status and to give them the kind of support that previously was offered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and to I guess give advocacy advice and a bit of a pseudo-leadership role to those local branches. I really want to congratulate Anna on playing that incredibly important role and on getting it ahead of the game by not waiting for this bill to come through but really already proactively working with those groups. I thank her for that work.I do want to come now to what I was talking about earlier around that balance between advocacy and so on because not only will the new board have two individuals appointed by the Minister but also there will be the ability to appoint the special adviser. So the responsible Minister can appoint the chief executive of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage as a special adviser to the governing board of Heritage New Zealand. Look there might be occasions when that could be a really important and useful function but equally I do think we need to be cautious about the level of pseudo-independence that this board is able to exercise.I come then to clause 12(1)(a) where there was a recommendation from the committee but not from all of the committee “to make clear the nature and extent of the Crown entity’s advocacy role by stipulating that it is limited to advocating its interests in a public forum or a statutory planning process in which it has standing under an Act. This is intended to ensure that Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga maintains an appropriate statutory role; that is presenting a professional heritage perspective in appropriate contexts such as council hearings.” The thing that I find interesting about that is the need to be that explicit when constraining the places where this body is able to take on that advocacy role. It gives me some concern. We need strong voices on heritage. We have seen time and time again in New Zealand situations where we all throw our hands up and say: “How is it that under our current planning laws or our heritage protection laws could we have lost X or Y building?” and yet it constantly happens.To say that the only voice or appropriate time that this body—which has an advocacy role but as a Crown entity—can speak up on those issues is in certain circumstancesbrings me back in my own mind to reflect on a situation in Auckland not too long ago that related to a historic building in which some individuals saw more value than others and that was Shed 10. During the Rugby World Cup there was obviously quite a lot of contention around what would happen down on the wharf and what facilities would be put in for the Rugby World Cup. There were two sheds down there. Murray McCully was very clear that he wanted a new building or even a temporary structure to act as a gathering point for those celebrating the Rugby World Cup and also in the future to act as a terminal for visitors coming via cruise ship into Auckland.Of course there were some on the other hand though—and I was one of them—who felt very strongly that the loss of Shed 10 would be a loss from a heritage perspective for the whole country and particularly Auckland. We felt that there was an ability and indeed an opportunity to upgrade that building preserve it and use it as a future facility for the city. We ended up in the middle ground where eventually one shed was saved and the other was not but I explicitly remember that there was a decision to take both sheds down. I remember visiting Shed 10 and seeing in there what I believed at that time were people who had been sent from the Historic Places Trust to simply document elements of the building before it was taken down to register what was where and what it looked like at the time that it was being taken apart. The role of the trust at that time I would have thought would be to be able to feel free to give a true perspective on the historic value of that building but now we know that it is literally being constrained in its advocacy role and confined to very specific scenarios. I find that unsettling because there will be times when a Minister will take a certain view and the Historic Places Trust—now Heritage New Zealand—may take another.One final point that I would like to make is that there were considerable concerns raised about Christchurch heritage issues during hearings on this bill and I think that raises the wider point. Some time ago Labour tried to instigate an inquiry at a select committee into heritage issues and the disconnect between public expectation around preserving heritage buildings and the reality where the reality hits the road. We actually have issues like insurance costs meaning that private owners cannot afford to upgrade their buildings which leads in some cases to simple demolition by neglect or for instance we have council time frames for repairs for earthquake-prone buildings being so tight that private building owners cannot afford to upgrade their buildings.Dr David Clark: There should be an inquiry.JACINDA ARDERN: We should be looking into those issues. Those are the substantive issues facing heritage in New Zealand. They cannot be delayed. This bill is one thing but preserving heritage for the next generation is a second entirely separate issue.