Worth Richard: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Worth Richard: Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8373] 
RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom) 
: 
 It is with a sense of privilege that I looked to the Order Paper and found that this bill was listed on it. Without involving you in the comments that I seek to make Madam Chair I just say that in the context of your being a past Mayor of North Shore City you would also be aware of the debate that has raged about the appropriateness of the title for the Auckland Museum. There are those who have led a march to say that this should be called the “Auckland Museum Bill” and there are those who in my view have led a stronger march to say that it should be called the “Auckland War Memorial Museum Site Empowering Bill” which is the title I support. 
Looking across the Chamber and hearing the previous speaker I have been very heartened to see a politician seated beside him whom I hold in the highest regard who in the course of the speech made by his close friend saw it as his duty—and I think properly so—to read the newspaper. We have good speeches bad speeches and hopeless speeches in this Chamber and in the comments made by the previous speaker I think we have been hugely privileged to hear one of those speeches that did not really hit any of those thresholds—even the lowest one. The Hon Judith Tizard has laboured long and hard to see this bill passed through the House tonight and as a committed Aucklander I have worked determinedly with her; thus I speak in support of this bill. 
I am not for a moment put off by the comments of the MP for Dunedin North or Dunedin South—whichever it is. He is a newly arrived player in politics who in my view is yet to prove either his mettle or his worth and he is wise to remain silent as he generally does because the contributions he makes to this Parliament are unhelpful unwise and in many cases lacking in merit. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member needs to stick to the title. 
RICHARD WORTH 
: In dealing with the title—and I am very conscious of the fact that this is a very confined debate and I plan to speak in that light—I would like to pick up some of the themes raised by the previous speaker on the history of the founding and building of the museum. I will start by saying that the Auckland War Memorial Museum is situated on the hill known by Maori as Pukekawa. I am tempted to offer the balance of my comments on the bill in Maori but I will not do that—even though I see that the interpreter is here—because I think that those who are listening will get a better flavour of the sorts of issues I am talking about if I do so in the English language which is what I plan to do. 
It was as far back as 1852 that Auckland’s first museum opened in a two-room farm cottage in Grafton Road—and what a long time ago that was. There was one room for the collection and one room for the custodian’s accommodation. We then saw a significant change when the museum moved first into the provincial council building in 1867 and then again in 1870 to the old post office building in Princess Street. There were a series of strategic moves that positioned the museum for the pre-eminent role that it now plays in Auckland City. The museum moved into its first custom-built premises in Princess Street in 1876. 
I am conscious of the comments of the previous speaker; I am not going to repeat them but I will say that war memorials are very important to New Zealanders. Almost a third of the men who were killed in World War I have no known graves and the remainder are mostly buried on the other side of the world. If we look around this debating chamber we see a very fitting memorial to them on two levels. On the upper Chamber surround the particular theatres of war in which people served are depicted within emblazoned circles.