Coddington Deborah: Maori Television Service Bill — In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Maori Television Service Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:5066] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak to Part 2 and to continue from where Katherine Rich finished off. She talked about the clause that mentions the statement of intent and said that it was 3 years too late. It is actually longer than that. If we go back to 1997 we find that taxpayers’ money was being spent on setting up the Maori Television Service and commissioning programmes doing research and consulting huge numbers of the Maori community. That was all being done without the benefit of legislation like this which enables that to happen. 
The other area where this part is too late because we have already gone down this road and blundered into trouble is clause 28 which deals with directors having a conflict of interest. I suggest that that is also too late. We should go back and look at some of the people who were involved in the steering groups back in 1997 for setting up a Maori television network and then look at some of the companies that have received funding from Te Mangai Paho. Let us not forget that the Maori Television Service and Te Mangai Paho are interconnected in that the funding of $13 million a year for the television service is only for the actual running of it and the $155 million that will be spent by 2005 is for the making of programmes. Many of those millions of dollars have been spent on programmes before this television service has even come within cooee of going to air. 
But I will come back to the issue of a conflict of interest. I put some questions to the Minister about the full list of grants that have been made for funding. It is very interesting to look at the companies that have been given millions of dollars to make these programmes. If we look at the companies and then do a search at the Companies Office to see some of the directors behind those companies well lookee here we find they are the same people who were involved in advising the Government on setting up the Maori Television Service and the same people who have been given money from Te Mangai Paho to make a lot of these television programmes. 
Iki Animation Ltd is just one of them. It has received several million dollars. Cinco Cine Film Productions appears again and again. We have no idea about the quality of those programmes. The only way that we can judge them is by looking at what has already gone to air before the Maori Television Service was set up. If we take the judgment of some of the people who watch those programmes I would say that they will not be terribly successful. 
What are the boundaries within this legislation for the quality of programmes when we have a conflict of interest which really just amounts to snouts in the trough—the restrictions on the same people appearing again and again who are involved in both the setting up of the service and lining up for the funding? That is already happening. It has been happening for several years and I really do wonder why the Minister even bothered to put this clause in. We will address schedule 2 later on—I know that—but nevertheless Part 2 refers to that schedule. 
I have received some correspondence from a young 18-year-old Maori person who was in the gallery the other night watching this debate. She emailed me and stated that as a young 18-year-old Maori who is studying politics she is very concerned about the Maori language. She is appalled by the standard of spoken Maori on some of the shows like  
Pukana  
and  
Mai Time.  
She said that the language is poor including that used on the Maori news and the current affairs shows. The presenters come across very poorly and unprofessionally and she said that they represent a really fake attitude to Maori things.