Sage Eugenie: Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18889. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I am pleased to take a call on the Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust Bill which the Green Party will be supporting. Like other members I acknowledge the Hon Nicky Wagner for bringing the bill to the House and the hard-working and committed members of the trust board.I was privileged to have an office in the Old Chemistry building on Hereford Street through the 1990s and early 2000s. It is indeed a privilege to work in a building that has got such a history of craftsmanship and has been used and enjoyed by so many people over the decades. As you enter the Old Chemistry building the stone steps have a depression in them and each time I walked up them I wondered how many thousands of students’ feet had passed that way before.The craftsmanship in the buildings in terms of the ornamental stonework and the architecture is not found in many buildings today. The buildings the whole complex itself were constructed by some of Canterbury’s early significant and leading architects like Benjamin Mountfort and Samuel Hurst-Seager and that is one of the reasons why it is one of the most significant clusters of heritage buildings in New Zealand. They are not just nationally important; they are internationally important.Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga has recognised the Arts Centre campus as a building with special or outstanding historical or cultural heritage significance and value. It was really disappointing that in the series of earthquakes despite the work that the trust had put into earthquake strengthening prior to the quakes there was significant damage to all but one of the 23 buildings on the campus. But whenever you walk down Worcester Boulevard or Hereford Street and you see the very steady and thoughtful progress of the restoration work that is being done it is very encouraging particularly because it is being done in a careful way. The work is being phased. It is a significant and very large project—one of the largest in the world I understand given the complexity of it.There is a very marked contrast between the thoughtful work that is happening to the Arts Centre and the desolation we have in the rest of the central city because of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s very aggressive demolition strategy in relation to heritage buildings. Its strategy has seen the destruction of over 230 buildings with a heritage listing. It is really disappointing that the same care that is being put into the Arts Centre could not have been exercised by the authority in terms of its decisions on whether buildings should stay or go.The buildings are significant not just for their craftsmanship and their architecture but also for their history. The University of Canterbury was founded in 1873. It moved on to the site in 1876. The buildings were there to accommodate the university and two of the city’s major secondary schools Christchurch Boys’ High School and Christchurch Girls’ High School. When the university celebrated its centennial in 1973 it got the Government’s permission to preserve the buildings and to sell off some of the ones at the western end of the complex and that has been the basis of the buildings growing to form a very special place in the hearts of many Christchurch citizens.We are very pleased to support this bill because it updates and modernises the governance arrangements for the trust and it consolidates the trust’s administration. It includes provisions that will provide for the appointment of a skills-based board and it provides a much more secure future for the Arts Centre because of the provisions that mean that in the event that the trust board had to be wound up the Crown would have to establish a new entity with objects as close as possible to the objects in this bill. At the present time if the board had to be wound up then it could use the assets that the Arts Centre represents for any educational or charitable purpose. So it has a much more secure future with this change.Another one of the improvements in terms of the governance arrangements is that the board will have to hold an annual public meeting because Christchurch citizens are concerned about the future of the Arts Centre. It was very controversial in 2009 with the University of Canterbury’s proposal to establish a new school of music on the site.