te Heuheu Georgina: Maori Television Service Bill — In Committee 
te Heuheu Georgina: Maori Television Service Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:607;Page:5025] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Maori Television Service Bill sets out the provisions relating to the appointment and duties of directors the accountability of the service—and we have heard a little bit about that this evening—and the establishment of the entities related to that service. On that issue my colleague Murray McCully was absolutely right to point out that this service has been operating for 2 years and doing all sorts of things—appointing directors and spending taxpayers’ money—without any legal right to do so. The pity about this legislation which Stephen Franks made reference to is that even when this bill becomes law there is still no clear accountability or ownership mechanism and no clear process of giving instructions. I certainly agree with him on that. It is an attitude that says this is just a Maori organisation anyway and it does not matter too much. That is just not good enough for the Maori service for the Maori audience and for New Zealand. The Ministers have discharged their responsibilities over the Maori television service in the last 2 years by inferring the same sort of attitude which is: “Well OK they made this mess up here but what the hell—let’s just box on!” It is true Minister. That is just not good enough for Maori for the service and for our expectations of where we think Maori ought to be going. 
I refer to the issue of the appointment of directors. It is the issue about dual accountability. To me that is part of the mishmash of the whole service that has been set up. Who are those people accountable to? I have criticisms obviously of the way the board has been operating in the last 2 years but in a sense one has to have a little sympathy for the interim board. On the one hand it has an electoral college and on the other hand it has the Crown. It is required to have a broad viewing audience which suggests that its functions are to reach all of New Zealand yet at the same time the service is to broadcast mainly in te reo Maori. So the board has that sort of conflict: it has huge responsibilities but has that niche responsibility as well. In addition to that the board is accountable to two bodies. That in itself throws up the issue I raised earlier about who owns the service. 
In this legislation Maori are consigned to a second-hand second-rate format. It is doomed to fail unless the chairman Wayne Walden leading Maori businessmen—which is the one thing this Government has done right and I commend it for that—can make a gold purse out of a sow’s ear. I commend the service to Wayne because it is all on his shoulders. What we have here is a lack of clear accountability and a lack of knowledge of who the stakeholders and the eventual owners are. There is no certainty of funding because we do not know what sorts of dollars are tied up in it—whether they are treaty dollars or welfare dollars. Knowing this Government I suppose that they are probably welfare dollars and it might or might not appropriate the sum in any year. On this side of the House we have some anxieties about funding but on the other hand there is no certainty about it so somehow the chairman has to perform a miracle. This is a greenfield service starting from scratch with responsibilities that are given to no other service. There is a broad audience and a niche market and a big undertaking.