Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage): I am going to use my time in this Chamber today to talk a little bit about this Government's track record and our future plans for the arts culture and heritage sector. I begin with the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund which was a fund that was usually really for historic collections of nationwide importance—buildings and places that were absolutely the crème de la crème. While it is important to support those it has also been important to change the rules which we did last year. This was the first time that the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund had the kind of brief that has seen the announcements that I have been making over the last couple of months. I look around this Chamber and I see many areas represented and hard-working local MPs who have advocated for places within their own electorates and within the regions that really need a little bit of extra support. From a $30 million fund over 3 years we have been able to give money to The Meteor Theatre in Hamilton and to Whanganui—not only to the Whanganui Regional Museum but also to the Sarjeant Gallery. This is a building that is deservedly known nationwide but is a particular attraction obviously for The River City" and it was in dire need of help. The Regional Culture and Heritage Fund is the fund of last resort and it funds to "a third a third a third". There is also Whakatāne's museum and research centre which combined for the first time iwi as well as colonial artefacts and meeting rooms and meeting places and is I think a game-changer for Whakatāne. The Nelson School of Music and Eastern Southland Gallery similarly benefited and the Hawke's Bay Opera House has been given an additional $4 million for seismic strengthening. This is a building that was originally given seismic strengthening by a community that worked hard to raise those funds—and I commend the local council at the time for allowing that to happen—but it needed more money so the fund has enabled it to get to the level now where people are able to access it safely.Similarly with the Whangarei Art Museum otherwise known as the Hundertwasser—an extra $3 million has gone into that and I commend Dr Shane Reti who has been an articulate hard-working and shall we say unswerving advocate for this extraordinary project which is going to do a lot to change the visitor numbers I think to Whangarei. It also involves iwi so there is a modern art gallery for Māori art that will be there in amongst this international attraction.The Heritage Earthquake Upgrade Incentive Programme which we have niftily called Heritage EQUIP came into being in last year's Budget and we have set up an expert panel that now evaluates properties. This is a particular fund that is designed to assist private building owners to strengthen their earthquake-prone heritage buildings. It is about a $10 million fund and we have made announcements in Dunedin and Napier. We are about to make them in Nelson and Christchurch. This is where we feel that the character of a town or a community could be lost if it was left up to individual owners of buildings that require extra maintenance. It is at a much more expensive level than just regular maintenance and it also means that the integrity of the character of that original architecture is kept in place. These are the kind of things that money almost cannot buy—that are priceless—but they need some help from the Crown and we do not resile from a leadership role as we did not when it came to the New Zealand film sector.I have been around long enough to have seen the halcyon days of the 1980s—the movie industry that came and then went. We needed to come in in 2014 which we did and change the archaic labour laws. They marched in the streets but they were wrong. When we got together with the screen sector we understood that the fund was required to attract people to make big blockbuster movies in New Zealand and also to reignite the moribund film sector of New Zealand because it was lacking a professional service. It was lacking people who could guarantee that they would have projects all year round and so it meant that we lost professional people across what I call the craft side of the movies. We have put in over the last 5 years $100 million to make 26 New Zealand productions and we have announced in this year's Budget an additional $220 million for international productions. That is going to be over 4 years. We are evaluating this grant again because it has been so successful and when it comes to the New Zealand productions we have brought forward $25.5 million to enable about $64 million to be made available over a 4-year period to sustain our vibrant screen industry. It makes us all feel good to have our screened stories told in a way that is eloquent."