Walker Holly: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 22 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18265. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green): I want to use my 5 minutes in this Budget debate to talk about the arts. From a quickHansard search of the debate so far I think I might be the only person in the whole debate to have done that so far.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Oh you wait Holly.HOLLY WALKER: I am pleased to see that the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage is here.This Budget allocates $282 million to arts culture and heritage. To put this in context this represents 0.33 percent of total spending in the Budget and 0.12 percent of GDP. It gives a sense perhaps of the value of the arts to this Government. The biggest and indeed the only increase in the Budget for arts culture and heritage is associated with marking the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings next year—$3.6 million for the National War Memorial and $700000 for commonwealth war graves. It is absolutely right that we mark this anniversary appropriately. That complex chapter in our history needs to be appropriately recognised and we need to have meaningful national conversations about what these events mean 100 years on. We saw some of this begin to happen on Anzac Day this year. So you will find no argument from the Greens against the inclusion of that extra funding to mark this important centenary. However funding the commemoration of Gallipoli is not the same as funding the arts. If we remove those items related to World War I commemorations from the Budget the spending on arts culture and heritage has actually fallen by 1.5 percent in Budget 2014.This is not as the Minister asserted a year ago a golden age for the arts in New Zealand—far from it. I recently conducted an online survey of people working in the arts culture and heritage sector because I wanted to know directly from those working in the area what the major issues facing the sector and facing them were. I was delighted and slightly overwhelmed to receive over 1200 responses most of which contained substantive policy suggestions and constructive engagement and ideas for fostering the arts in New Zealand. It seems that the creative sector was very keen to be heard and not one person who filled in my survey said it was a golden age for the arts.What they did say could be grouped into three clear themes.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Name them.HOLLY WALKER: I will. The first was resources. Artists are very—Hon Christopher Finlayson: No the people—HOLLY WALKER: There were 1200 of them Minister. It would take the rest of my call to list them all.The first theme was resources. Artists are very worried about funding for their work. They feel that there are insufficient funds to go around and that the process of cobbling together funding from multiple sources can be time-consuming confusing stressful and demoralising. The second theme was recognition. Artists feel that the arts are not adequately recognised both as a vital part of our economy and for their intrinsic socialcultural and democratic benefit to the public. Choosing the arts as a vocation is not a well-respected career path in New Zealand. Despite the fact that we all benefit from the fact that some people make that difficult choice it is not reflected in their experience particularly when trying to deal with Work and Income. To have your choice of career respected whilst accessing the financial support needed is very difficult for people in this sector.The final theme was reach. Artists said that as well as funding and promoting the arts themselves effort needs to go into building audiences and customers for their work because there is no point in making creative work that disappears off into a void. Fostering participation and appreciation of the arts is just as important as fostering creative work itself. So those are the threeRs. We could add another one as well—the regions—because another strong theme that emerged was that outside the main centres artists found it very difficult to forge a career in the arts or get recognition for their work.I was keen to see whether any of these things would be reflected in the Budget. Unsurprisingly I am sad to say they were not. There were no new resources as I have said. It was actually a fall in funding for the arts if you take out the Gallipoli commemorations. There was no recognition. Not one person certainly not the Minister has put out a press release about what the Budget does for arts and culture. And there was nothing to assist artists to reach new areas. In fact there was less funding in that area due to the funnelling of funds into the new Screen Production Incentive Grant in the previous financial year. Finally for the regions—well we saved the worst for last. Not only does the Budget contain nothing to foster community arts in provincial and regional New Zealand but it slashes funding for regional museums by 25 percent. That is a quarter less funding for regional museums just like that.The Government’s attitude towards the arts was best revealed in the now infamous comment by the Prime Minister John Key in a written endorsement to the New Zealand Literary Heritage Trail: “While our literary heroes may never challenge the glory and respect given to our All Blacks we still need role models to inspire us.” I have news for the Prime Minister: our literary heroes indeed all our creative heroes already challenge the All Blacks but they will not do more of it with the help of this Budget.