Ardern Jacinda: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: General Debate[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19155. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):It is my pleasure to take a call and speak in this general debate and endorse the comments that have been made by my colleagues around the importance of investing in our future—we focused a little bit with our education spokesperson on some of those issues today—which I think are in stark contrast with the comments made by Government members who have spoken primarily on issues around roading projects. Look no one is going to argue that ensuring that our regions have decent infrastructure is important but the Government is basically replacing what it stripped away and basically replacing what it has taken away from some of those regional areas.I want to reflect a little bit on the other form of investment that we need for our future and that is investing in our past.Hon Anne Tolley: Eh?JACINDA ARDERN: Oh we seem to have forgotten that arts culture and heritage is part of our policy area that I cover as well—children prisons corrections arts culture and heritage. Heritage has become one of those issues that for the region of Canterbury has unfortunately been sidelined in recent times. Obviously there have been a number of competing priorities for that region the first of which has been—rightly so—housing. But we have needed the Government during that period to multitask in order to ensure that we have the retention of an integral part of Canterbury’s tourism their sense of place and one of the things that has drawn so many to that city which has been the gothic revival style of architecture that exists in that place. We know that there are economic gains to revitalisation of our heritage areas. In fact an expert on the economics of historic preservation from the United States came out to New Zealand not long ago and talked about the fact that for some of their main street programmes for every $1 of investment they leveraged $18. So there is a spin-off to that kind of investment.We have seen really good examples—the restoration of the old Government building the Heritage Hotel. That is a category 1 building. The private owner worked collaboratively to ensure the restoration of that fantastic space. Contrast that with the loss of the beautiful Majestic Theatre building in Christchurch which as far as I can tell was removed not primarily for safety reasons. It was demolished under section 38 of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act because the Government had transport plans that meant a widening of the road and meant that that beautiful piece of infrastructure was removed.I think it is time that we listened to what was said in the Heritage Quarterly recently where it said: “Naturally safety must be the primary concern but we are at a point where the remaining buildings are not considered a significant risk or can be brought up to standard.” We have lost 47 percent of heritage buildings in the Christchurch central business district.Jacqui Dean: That’s because we had an earthquake.JACINDA ARDERN: We are 3 years on and no longer are these buildings being removed solely because—these are not buildings that fell down in the earthquake. Many of them are ones that are being demolished under the extraordinary powers that were granted to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority at that time but it is time that we reconsidered the way that we deal with heritage in that city. It is time that we reconsidered those war-time powers. It is time that we actually had a plan for the heritage infrastructure of that region. Labour is focused on a revitalisation plan for Canterbury. We have talked about housing and we have talked about transport. Tomorrow morning we will be talking about our thoughts on heritage for that city and how we can invest in the past in order to preserve something beautiful for our future.Heritage is not the domain of simply the last generation. Heritage is something that we need to keep focused on for the next generation so that we can build our sense of identity of place whether it be in Canterbury whether it be in our small provincial regions or whether it be in my city Auckland which has decimated so much of its historical features. Tomorrow Labour looks forward to building a plan for heritage and preservation in Christchurch and looks forward to showing our positive vision for that region.