Fenton Darien: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15407. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): I have been waiting around for some time over the past few months hoping to take a call on this bill the Arts Council of New Zealand ToiAotearoa Bill. It has moved its way through Part 1 and Part 2 which I was really looking forward to talking about because I have a particular interest in the community arts sector.However now we are on Part 3 and as my colleagues have said this is the guts of the bill. This is the part where it guts the existing Arts Council and takes away representation from Māori and Pacific people and provides none for ethnic communities. What it isis a rationalisation a cutting down of the existing Creative New Zealand—or rather its new name. Creative New Zealand was a council with two arts boards each with seven members and it had a Pacific Arts Committee which was a committee of the arts board and Te Waka Toi. They are going to be gutted. I have to ask the Minister in chair the Minister of Justice: have we learnt nothing about representation about providing the voice of the different communities in our country particularly that of our indigenous people our Māori people but also that of the new people who are now growing in numbers—the people whom this Government likes to celebrate? National members turn up at all the ethnic events year in and year out. That Minister turns up and celebrates them yet National is not willing to give those people a voice on a tiny little board that has a small amount of money that it gets to distribute.The other concern I have about the gutting in this bill the shrinking that this bill does Minister is about what is going to happen to the community arts sector. It is a very important sector of our community—a very very important sector. My colleague Rino Tirikatene said that we were living in some sort of time warp under this bill because of the time it has taken for it to come through. I looked at that because it is quite interesting to look back and see who was on the original Government Administration Committee. We had a number of people who have moved on and are doing completely different things.Grant Robertson: Shifted off.DARIEN FENTON: Shifted off. The bill started out in August 2010. The select committee considered 15 submissions and the bill has meandered its way though this House. I think the start of the Committee stage was in March of this year. Here we are on the second to last sitting day before Christmas—Hon Maryan Street: December.DARIEN FENTON: —December—and we still have not got through this bill which was so important back in 2010 and had to be done.As I said Rino Tirikatene was talking about being in a time warp. I believe it and I have been told by many people in the community arts sector that they think they are living in a time warp. They have been living in a time warp since the time Labour was last in Government and I want to tell you exactly what they mean. I have a letter from one of the community arts groups in Devonport called the DepotArtspace. It has for many many years provided wonderful arts to the community but also an education programme for young people who want to be active in the arts. It has written to all Ministers and to the Labour Party an open letter to express its concerns for the parlous state of the arts and creative industries in the current political environment. It goes on to talk about its involvement as DepotArtspace for nearly 20 years providing services and facilities that support all creative disciplines from the visual arts to music literature performance film production and media. These kinds of organisations exist all over New Zealand but we are going to have an Arts Council that is shrunk down that is cut in half and that will have complete control over how the funding is distributed and I believe that smaller organisations like these are going to struggle for funding.The people from the DepotArtspace believe that the arts are a low priority under this Government despite the fact that the cultural industries contribute over $8 billion to the New Zealand economy and that 7 percent of the workforce is employed in the artssector. Cuts have occurred to every part of the creative sector and they have been especially noticeable in education and employment where aspirations to work in the arts are regarded as unrealistic. The truth is that this Government does not believe that people should work in the arts. It sees the arts as a “nice-to-have” and an add-on that is not a real job and so those arts graduates who may have incurred student loans to pursue a career in their chosen field are being directed to get a real job—a real job.Successful programmes we had under Labour like the Pathways to Arts and Cultural Employment programme have all but disappeared. The tertiary education sector is making significant cuts to courses and teaching staff. Fifty positions have been disestablished in the design and visual arts department at Unitec and there are possible closures in Northland particularly in Kerikeri andRāwene—areas where we need this kind of unique community arts more than ever an area where a lot of people have worked in supported and had funding provided through the old Creative New Zealand through the community arts programme which will be gutted under this bill.As we know of course the film industry is in dire straits—in shocking straits—after all of the boasting that has been done by John Key. In fact director Andrew Adamson says that the film industry is effectively dying when we have done so much to build it up. Then of course just to make it even worse community education funding was cut. That was about community art as well. That was about people learning to paint or to sing or to play an instrument. That has been cut with National dismissing arts classes as it did as hobby courses.So you can understand why we are concerned about this bill why we are concerned about Part 3 and why I have no idea why the Government under clause 19 of the bill wants to think it has ownership of names like Te Waka Toi and for that matter Creative New Zealand or any other name that it says resembles those names. Those names will be returned under a Labour Government and this legislation will have to be repealed because we will not enable this kind of protection of ownership of important names and particularly important names for Māori. Under clause 21 that is as Grant Robertson said where the arts boards are dissolved. That is where you see Te Waka Toi disappear and the Pacific Arts Committee disappear. That is where you see the takeover by seven people and the tokenistic appointment of people to represent Māori who do not even have to be Māori and the disappearance of Pacific representation.I think it is an appalling bill. I do not think it needed to be like this. It is clear from the time it has taken for this bill to wend its way through the House—3 years in fact—that this is not a vital piece of legislation that needed to be done. Looking at the timetable for submitters I see that that seemed to be pretty short. Arts organisations and others have certainly expressed to us their concern on many occasions about the direction this bill is taking and the consequences it will have for the voices of Māori Pacific and ethnic people in New Zealand; for people with disabilities; for children’s voices; for children’s arts houses and community arts centres; and even for wonderful organisations like our Auckland Art Gallery. All of those things are covered by the bill. All of them have the potential to be affected.Next time I see a member of the National Party at somewhere like the arts house in Takapuna or at an ethnic event I am going to be asking myself and perhaps saying on the side “How dare they? How dare they turn up?”—Sue Moroney: How very dare they?DARIEN FENTON: How very dare they? That is right. How very dare National members turn up and pretend that they celebrate and support the arts that they support representation and that they support proper funding—not control from the centre but the flowering that happens when communities are set free to be able to develop the arts and have their own voice around that? Also how very dare they assume that the arts arenot something that our children should aspire to learn and to have good real proper-paid jobs in? How else do we build the culture of New Zealand? How else do we have an identity? How else do we celebrate who we are? How else do we celebrate new people and new migrants who come to this country whom we are embracing? As Rino Tirikatene said there are more ethnicities than the number of countries in the world. I am really pleased to have a call on Part 3 of this bill but also very disappointed that I had to take a call and oppose this provision.