Hodgson Pete: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hodgson Pete: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18839] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I think the memorandum of understanding will be pretty useful and I hope it will be made available to members soon. I was going to ask three questions about the memorandum of understanding but one of them has been answered and that is the date it is being written in. The second question relates to whether the memorandum of understanding was itself subject to any scrutiny by the academy council or the academy executive committee. The member in the chair Grant Robertson may want to reflect on that. I would assume that there has been consultation. I would further assume that in the course of the memorandum of understanding there would have been—I do not want to use the term “argy-bargy”; that is not appropriate for the Royal Society—carefully considered variances of view as people trolled through the vicissitudes of their various disciplines to see whether incorporating the humanities into the memorandum of understanding and therefore into the purpose of the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill was a legitimate thing to do. The member may choose at his leisure to give us some insight into the process by which the memorandum of understanding is drafted. 
I think the more important thing for members of the Committee in general is to reflect on the words in the memorandum of understanding that the member referred to when he said that where it was appropriate the Royal Society in making representations to Government would consider whether the humanities had something to offer. That is an area that I think we need to look at a little more deeply. 
Later on in the bill—and I appreciate that we are talking only on clause 4—when we get to section 6(e) in clause 7 it states that it is a function of the Royal Society “to provide expert advice on important public issues to the Government and the community:”. From now on that expert advice will include the advice that we can divine from the humanities. Let us reflect on what that might be. A good way to do that is to go to the British humanities scholarship group—the British humanities council the body of people in Britain who involve themselves with humanities. I suppose in an effort to sell humanities to the British public it produced a book about the sort of information that humanities might offer a Government of the day that might be helpful to the Government of the day. The book came out at about the time of the London bombings so it inevitably included a piece of research in which some sociologists and those who wanted to study the phenomenology of religion spoke at length with the imams of different parts of Britain—with the geographical distribution of imams but also with imams from different parts of the world; for example those who had come from Pakistan from Afghanistan northern Africa and so on. The researchers were able to give by way of this scholarship quite a lot of insight into a nation that desperately needed that insight. It is a good example I think of the humanities being of immediate value to the Government of the day. 
Another example just to get our appetites whetted—because I am sure other members will be able to offer the Committee further examples—is from New Zealand not England. It is not an immediate example it is historical and it is occasioned by the sad death of Judith Binney who of course through the latter part of her life wrote extensively on Tuhoe. I do not want to make any politics out of this but the Tuhoe claim is not advancing or it at least has got itself into trouble. Although I do not know where the Tuhoe claim will go in the future—others will know more than me—it is my assertion that when that claim is settled people will look back on Judith Binney’s work and say to themselves that had she not lived it would have been a different settlement. My assertion is that that is an example whereby one person’s scholarship quite narrowly defined but quite extensively done and most exhaustively written about will actively influence public policy that is in front of us in this country. 
So let us think now about other examples in the area called the humanities in which we the Government including local government those of us who are in the policy elite those of us who get to do the decision making will be informed by the humanities in the future and have been informed by humanities until now. I am asserting that we have been ignoring the humanities; that we have been absorbing their lessons almost in an indirect way in an unconscious manner and that the humanities influence public policy a great deal. 
This comes from a scientist. If members want to know where I have been greatly influenced by science they should refer to the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. That is where I drew my public policy from. It was not from any opening or closing prejudice or predilection or from a general view of the world but from the science alone. Why? Because I had nothing else to go on. This was new. I needed to know what the science said. It was a very good example of where science effected a huge impact on public policy. But very often it does not and the Royal Society would much rather that it did more often than it does. I am making the case as a scientist not only for science but I am beginning to make the case for the role of humanities in public policy. This purpose clause is a good place to do it. 
The member in charge of the bill has reminded us of the memorandum of understanding that exists between the humanities of New Zealand and the Royal Society of New Zealand to bring them together and spoke of the role of humanities when the Royal Society was making representations to the Government or was involved in some educative process. Those of us who think that humanities are nice only that they are just poetry should think again. Poetry may not directly affect public policy a lot but history does and geography does. Just think of the Geographic Board—people who go around renaming things. Think of the role of the humanities in our trying to get the nomenclature of our own place in order. It takes a bit of time and we do not do it without expert advice. So there is another example. I am sure many members will be able to leap to their feet when I return to my seat to give examples of where the humanities have been instructive or have been in some cases perhaps even inspirational in determining Government policy. We do not have to always rely on what the health professionals say what the physicists say what the educationalists say or what the social scientists or political scientists say. We can reach to the humanities. We can ask historians what they have to say about life. 
Hon Member 
: We all have feelings. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: We all have feelings. We can ask people whose skill is with language who are skilled linguists what they have to say about that. We all know that this is the one country in the world where there is a particular language known as te reo which if it does not exist here it will not exist anywhere. We are absolutely beholden to the humanities for the maintenance of that the teaching of language to our mokopuna. There are a bunch of things to which the humanities make a contribution that I think have probably been underrated. 
I am coming to the view that I soon need to resume my seat. I have enjoyed this contribution and I do thank members for their close consideration and careful attention to my modest contribution. Thank you.