Hutchison Paul: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Hutchison Paul: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12313] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Clearly Part 1 of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill is very important because it includes both the commencement date and the purpose of the legislation. I want to make just one point about the commencement date. If one looks at the legislative history of this bill one can see that it was introduced on 10 December 2002. Once again one does wonder why this Labour Government would dawdle its way through such an important bill that is to do with a national icon take 2 years about it and then rush it through under urgency. The Government certainly conforms to a pattern of doing that. As my colleague said the Government should learn how to manage its workload a hang of a lot better than it has managed it over the last 4 years. 
Far more important than that is the purpose of this bill which is to establish the orchestra as a body corporate under the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Act and as a Crown entity for the purposes of the Public Finance Act. It would be very useful for the Minister in the chair the Hon Judith Tizard to take a call to explain to the House why for years she has said that the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has attained some of the finest performances around the world has become an icon in New Zealand’s history and has achieved both artistic excellence and independence under the present legislation when she has now turned round and said no the Government is to destroy that model and bring in classic Labour Party command and control. That seems ironic. Hopefully the Minister will explain that—or was she not really sincere in her comments about the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra over the last 10-15 years? 
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra started in 1946 and it has an extraordinary record. As I have said before the National Party absolutely supports it. We want to see it flourish in an atmosphere of independence. After all one of the strengths of the present legislation is indeed that as a limited liability company the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra does not require prescription as to its purposes and functions nor as to the Government’s expectations of it. That is a great quality. Why is this Labour Government so insistent on wanting to bring in a whole set of prescriptions? 
Further down in the purpose of the legislation I notice the question of providing for the governance of the orchestra for the duties of the board and for administrative matters. I have pointed this out before but I think it is worthwhile emphasising. If indeed the Labour Government was to be consistent—and heaven help us it has a legacy of being very inconsistent— 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Tell us about Don’s tax rates! 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: I ask Mr Clayton Cosgrove to tell us why with an $8 billion budget for the health system he insists on majority-elected health boards yet when it comes to the $10 million budget of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra he wants a pure governance model. We are not against that but we think the Government should be consistent. We think that the Government should have appropriate experts dealing with an $8 billion budget just as it has with a $10 million budget. 
Again I say it would be very helpful if the Minister would take a call to provide us with an explanation of why this Government is not being consistent in terms of its view on managing an $8 billion budget compared with a $10 million budget. 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 I welcome the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill. Part 1 sets out the commencement and the purpose of the Act. I have previously described this bill as an overkill and my colleague Paul Hutchison demonstrated that pretty concisely. I took cognisance of Clayton Cosgrove’s interjection when Paul Hutchison was talking about taxpayers’ money. He is certainly right; this is $10 million worth of taxpayers’ money. We have a whole lot of taxpayers’ money going into the district health boards. The governance structure of the orchestra is set out in a way that just makes for a laugh at the way that the Government has structured the district health boards. There are majority-elected boards in the health sector and here in this bill there is little provision at all for a similar sort of representation on the orchestra’s board. So I think my colleague did ask the Minister in the chair the Hon Judith Tizard a good question and I am sure she will answer it when she thinks it is the appropriate time to do so. 
The purpose of the bill is to establish the orchestra as a Crown entity under the Public Finance Act. This Government in its judgment came to the conclusion that the orchestra’s previous structure under the Companies Act was not in the Government’s view meeting the commercial framework and that it appeared to have had minimal impact on the orchestra’s trading performance. However I wonder whether this new structure will contribute to the overall purpose of the bill which is as I understand it to propose a framework that will encourage artistic independence and artistic integrity. I wonder whether it was necessary to make the changes that are proposed in this bill. 
The purpose clause also sets out the principal objectives of the orchestra its functions and its powers. We will come to that in a minute. But the National Opposition has already signalled that those matters are overly prescriptive. In my view if one states a prescription one should do something if the prescription is not delivered on. When debating the functions and the objectives of the orchestra members will see that in essence although it may be easy to be prescriptive it is not as easy to figure out what one may do if the board cannot deliver on that prescription. We will come to that issue in due course. 
New clause 3(d) inserted by the Government Administration Committee states that one of the purposes of the legislation is to: “provide for the governance of the Orchestra the duties of the board and for administrative matters”. We have said already and we will be saying this again when we come to part 2 that all that those purposes demonstrate is that this certainly is legislation from a Labour Government. It is about State control and State prescription and there is room for ministerial direction. Clause 3 states that ministerial direction is only to be in relation to governance. But when one is prescriptive about the objectives then clearly it is envisaged that if there is a view that the objectives are not being delivered on then there will be ministerial intervention. I have no doubt about that particularly under a Labour Government because that is the way that this Government has behaved in all the years it has been in Government. 
It is clear that the New Zealand public is getting sick of that. The public is getting sick of the nanny State—of State control and of the State prescribing everything. Now we are prescribing how we expect the Symphony Orchestra to perform and that just will not do.