Goudie Sandra: Walking Access Bill — In Committee; Cultural Property (Protection in Armed Conflict) Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goudie Sandra: Walking Access Bill — In Committee; Cultural Property (Protection in Armed Conflict) Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18579. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I rise to support my most esteemed colleague Christopher Finlayson. National is supporting the Cultural Property (Protection in Armed Conflict) Bill.  
When I looked at what this bill actually does I wondered about what would happen if we were suddenly in the midst of armed conflict. I sincerely hope that the country we are in conflict with no matter which country it might be has read the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. I hope it has that piece of paper close at hand and knows that if we are all gathered here in the House with the rest of the population of Wellington we are safe. If it has not read that United Nations document I wonder where that would leave us—which creek we would be up and whether we would have a paddle. But if we are in this building and the country has read it we may be protected. A heck of a lot of reliance is being placed on a piece of paper.  
The other thing that really intrigued me was what happens when in the midst of armed conflict that country—whether it has read the convention or not—bombs Parliament House. Does that particular country then get hauled through the courts? With the penalties in the bill for criminal offences against cultural property will their commanders be extradited to New Zealand where we will take them through a court of law to bring about some justice for the loss of a building? Of course they would never reinstate the building. However we may lose some of the very poor legislation that has been put through Parliament over the last 9 years and we could start afresh—we could certainly do so on the Electoral Finance Act. So actually when we think about it we see that there are some positives! I was intrigued to see that a soldier is actually being convicted under the War Crimes Act. We have to wonder how far this type of responsibility will actually go how many of those in charge would be liable for prosecution and whether we could bring that into effect. 
When I looked further at the support for this convention I saw that we received only a handful of submissions including submissions from the Historic Places Trust and one or two people who support our heritage—a worthy cause of course; we all value our heritage. Only last night I discovered the ship manifest for the  
Lady Egidia 
 which docked in Port Chalmers with 400 passengers in 1861. That was a huge number of immigrants to come into New Zealand in 1861. I am quite interested in that type of thing. I value our cultural heritage—as I know many many New Zealanders do—and it is important to protect it. However whether doing that is feasible in a realistic sense during a time of conflict remains to be seen.  
We have become a signatory to the Hague convention. What does that mean? We now have to go through the process of deciding which of our buildings or cultural heritage assets are the most important to us. For instance we have to decide whether the building we are now in Parliament House is one of the most important places to us in terms of our cultural heritage—I would suggest that it is. Once we have decided we can at that point put an emblem on the front of the building identifying it as being protected under the Hague convention.  
It is a rather interesting emblem. It looks like an open upside-down envelope. If we put that on the front of the building then everybody will know that it is protected under the Hague convention. In the event of conflict people from another country will see that. In fact they probably could see it from their own country because satellites are so powerful these days that we can google anywhere home in on a street and see who is there. That is what satellites do so it is not too silly to suggest that other countries might be able to see the emblem. It is also not too silly to suggest that it might prevent this building from being bombed—or whatever technology is used at that time to destroy something or someone. Advances in technology are such that people can target pretty precisely where they want to do the most damage.  
Next we will have to decide which aspects of our cultural heritage we want to protect the most. We will also have to provide a limited number of refuges intended to shelter movable cultural property in the event of armed conflict. Cultural property will need to be moved from one place to another to ensure its protection and we hope that the site where it is stored will protect it. Under the legislation certain centres will be defined as “containing monuments”—we must not forget our monuments. A huge number of our monuments pay tribute to all of those who died in wars while protecting our democracy and freedom. Sometimes when we are debating a bill in the House we feel like we are on the beaches of Dunkirk trying to hold back yet another tidal wave of poor legislation that is imposing costs on our citizens—the people of New Zealand—by whatever means. That legislation has been brought about through the misjudgment and misguidedness of the current Government as it puts more and more costs on to the citizens of New Zealand. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Order! 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: I will come back to the bill Mr Deputy Speaker. The debating chamber is an important war memorial. It is a part of our cultural heritage. It feels at times as if we are on the beaches of Dunkirk; that evacuation is also a part of our heritage and the monuments to the world wars are very much a part of it. That is why I refer to the fact that when one is standing here debating bills it feels very much like one is trying to protect that cultural heritage from an avalanche of legislation that constantly undermines our freedom democracy and choice. So that is the linkage to those principles. Unfortunately they are not protected by the Hague convention from being undermined by the current Government.  
We go on to the decision about which cultural property deserves enhanced protection. Well enhanced protection is of course for “cultural heritage of the greatest importance for humanity;” as the bill states in article 10(a) of schedule 3. Article 10(b) states that the property must be “protected by adequate domestic legal and administrative measures”. Depending on the degree of intention from a local authority that could be a light-handed or a heavy-handed approach to the protection of our cultural heritage. The other point in article 10(c) is that the cultural property must not be “used for military purposes or to shield military sites”. [ 
Interruption 
] I beg the member’s pardon? 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Tell us about the mangrove swamps. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: They do not need protection. We have a lot of mangroves around the country. I do not know whether we would really want to claim those to be a cultural heritage plant because—no I do not even want to start going there.  
As I was saying article 10(c) ensures that people do not run a war from a cultural heritage site protected by the Hague convention.  
I just hope that any nations that decide to wage war upon us have read the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and understand that we have signed up to it—we ratified that convention on 24 July 2008—and that we will meet those obligations. We hope that other countries have read about our commitment to the Hague convention and will respect our cultural heritage accordingly.