Rich Katherine: National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna MAtauranga o Aotearoa) Bill — In Committee 
Rich Katherine: National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna MAtauranga o Aotearoa) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:4942] 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 It is with great interest that I stand on behalf of the National Party to speak in favour of the National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) Bill. We would like for once to commend the Minister in the chair Marian Hobbs for the work she has done on this bill but—not to go too far—we still have a few questions. Sometimes we have to give credit where credit is due. I have done a lot of work on broadcasting with the Minister and sometimes one has to say a kind word or two. I thank her. However in terms of the bill I do have a few questions and concerns. 
First why do we need this legislation at all? We have a perfectly good National Library Act enacted in 1965 that has done an extremely good job for the last 38 years. Passing bills in this House is a very expensive task. The Parliamentary Library tells me that it can cost anywhere from between $300000 and $800000 to pass a bill so we should not pass bills just to make ourselves feel good. I question the reasons behind the Government wanting to pass this one. I suspect it has a lot to do with wanting to do symbolic things to make the arts community feel good. Having looked at this bill of some 29 pages I cannot see any legitimate reason that we should be spending time on it tonight. 
 Things have changed quite dramatically since 1965. Technology has changed. In 1965 some members were not even born. There were no fax machines no colour television and certainly no video. 
Simon Power 
: Ray Columbus was popular. 
KATHERINE RICH 
: I thank Mr Power. Ray Columbus was popular. We did not have the Internet. A lot of the changes to the publishing world have been made since that time and a lot of the bits and pieces that need to be protected within the National Library need to be incorporated within the Act. However we could have done that with an amendment. We did not need a whole new bill. 
I ask the Minister why we are going through this process of establishing a totally new bill and repealing the old Act. I would like her to explain why this is nothing more than perhaps some artistic symbolism and some feel-good legislation. A few excuses were dreamt up about why this bill needed to be put through. The first one was to clarify the role of the Alexander Turnbull Library. It is a very important part of the library with a very important collection. I say “important” but I mean important to the New Zealand culture and the heritage of this country. But once again we did not really need another bill to tell us how important it was. The Alexander Turnbull Library sits there in the middle of the National Library its premises quite separate from the rest of the complex. We do not need a bill to go as far as clarifying the role further. 
The second excuse was to clarify the role of the chief librarian which some would have us believe seems to be one of the most political jobs in Wellington. However once again no real change is necessary. This bill will introduce a whole new range of problems. For example it includes the word “taonga”. This whole country has had a huge problem in defining what that word means in the treaty. So in terms of including it in further legislation when the whole country is not quite sure what the exact meaning of it is right now I certainly have concerns about that. 
The next point I would like to raise is the extended coverage of legal deposit. If we look at what this bill covers we will see that it covers all sorts of things that now need to be deposited with the National Library. Almanacs annual reports books pamphlets—for some reason press releases are not included—newsletters and web pages will be captured. Certainly those people involved in the computer industry are very concerned. They are unclear what will be required of them in offering some of their materials to the National Library and of course technology changes. Years ago in the 1980s I remember using WordStar as a file format. These days we would be lucky to find a computer able to read that. These sorts of technological changes have an impact on how we preserve parts of our heritage. 
Another quite interesting point is that under the Supplementary Order Paper the words “art print” have been removed. I wonder whether that is because there may have been a general concern that the works of Ralph Hotere Stanley Palmer Grahame Sydney or a number of people who specialise in prints were going to have to put their works into the National Library.