Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill

Peace and goodwill must be breaking out in the House, given the number of bills that the Green Party is supporting today. We are very pleased to support the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill because we certainly agree with the value of modernising our historic places legislation, changing the governance structure of the Historic Places Trust to one that better reflects its Crown entity status, simplifying the archaeological authority consent process, and ensuring that we have an effective system for identifying our historic heritage. We also welcome the improved planning functions that Heritage New Zealand will be required to undertake. That includes doing things like developing a general policy statement as to how it is going to administer the New Zealand Heritage List and the National Historic Landmarks List.

The Local Government and Environment Committee made quite a few improvements to the bill, and I certainly acknowledge and thank the many submitters who raised the issues that led to these changes, and the work and advice of officials. One of those notable changes was to remove the arbitrary limit of 50 on the number of places that could be on the National Historic Landmarks List. Other countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom that have such lists do not have a numeric limit. Just to get on the list a place needs to have outstanding national heritage value and it needs to be subject to appropriate legal protections, so that is already quite a high threshold.

Although the Green Party is supporting the bill, we do have some concerns about it. The first of those is the much greater emphasis on protecting landowner rights as part of what the National Government calls a rebalancing between heritage values and private ownership interests. Seeing this provision here and in other legislation such as in the proposed changes to the Resource Management Act will give greater weight to landowner interests and less weight to community interests. Our second concern is around ensuring that the new heritage advocacy committees at the regional level are well supported. The third is around the emergency provisions for dealing with heritage post-disaster.

Looking at each of those concerns, in terms of the rebalancing, clause 11 sets out the functions of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. It requires Heritage New Zealand, when it is performing its functions, to “recognise the interests of an owner in a particular historic place, historic area, wāhi tūpuna, wāhi tapu, or wāhi tapu area.” This was not in the bill as introduced, and there is no equivalent provision in the functions section of the Historic Places Act 1993, which this bill will replace. The requirement “to recognise the interests of an owner” is a much stronger legal test than “to have regard to” or “to take into account”. Our concern is that this may lead to Heritage New Zealand equivocating and not using its powers as a heritage protection authority under the Resource Management Act, for example, when you have got a conflict between an owner’s desire to modify or harm a heritage building and the need to protect and preserve it.

Submitters such as Historic Places Canterbury said that by international standards, New Zealand has got very weak protection for heritage buildings. In this bill, the heritage list—previously the heritage register—does not have any statutory weight unless the buildings and places in it are listed in a city or district plan. Yet there is no provision in the bill to require councils to ensure that those buildings are listed.

We have seen in Christchurch what happens when you have an emphasis on landowner rights at the expense of the community values of heritage. Post-earthquakes we have had more than 220 listed heritage buildings that have been demolished, and 40 percent of those listed buildings are in the central city. The very oppressive Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority legislation and its noxious section 38 consent process override the normal Resource Management Act processes for demolition. Where you have had landowner rights and interests wanting to demolish a heritage building and take the insurance payout, rather than repairing and restoring that building when there is engineering advice saying that that can be done, then the buildings end up being demolished, and their value in creating an interesting and character-filled city is not recognised. So we think that the bill gives too much weight to landowner interest.

Our second concern is the transition from the voluntary branch committees and structure of the Historic Places Trust to new organisations, and whether these new organisations are being adequately resourced. Before the Historic Places Act was reviewed, the trust had 24 functioning branch committees. Submitters told us that they received $170,000 annually for their projects and administration. That was about 5 percent of the trust’s annual income from membership subscriptions. These new regional voluntary organisations will take on some of the roles of the former branch committees, but they will not get any ongoing funding from Heritage New Zealand in the way that the branch committees did from the Historic Places Trust. Certainly, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage is providing a one-off allocation, but we would encourage the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage to be more generous with this establishment funding so that these new regional organisations are well positioned to do the heritage advocacy work of the former branch committees.

Finally are our concerns about the emergency provisions, which are in clause 58. There is a fast-track procedure here to get an emergency authority to enable the modification or destruction of an archaeological site when there is a state of national or local emergency declared, and for about 12 months after that. So this is about streamlining the process, but this whole streamlined process has been a disaster for heritage buildings in Christchurch, where there was a failure to recognise the need for people with heritage protection expertise to work alongside the emergency services people and the people who are active immediately after the quakes.

We had Christchurch heritage expert and architectural historian, Dr Ian Lochhead, talking about a petition to the Finance and Expenditure Committee recently. His concern was that there is no robust and readily accessible data on the status of heritage buildings and heritage sites and the level of seismic code compliance that would be readily available to civil defence in emergency situations. That could help prevent the quite large-scale heritage destruction that occurred in Christchurch as a result of ignorant, gung-ho actions.

What would also assist is a national register of people with heritage knowledge who could be called in to work alongside the first response personnel. We had about $30,000 of needless damage done to the Government Buildings in Christchurch when people just charged through doors that the building manager had unlocked. That could be avoided if we had a bit more care around the emergency provisions. The Green Party will be supporting this bill because it does include a lot of useful provisions to actually modernise the way in which our heritage is managed.

It is my pleasure to give a contribution on the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill. I was grateful to be able to follow my colleague Eugenie Sage because I, unfortunately, was not able to sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee, which considered this bill. I thought her contribution was really helpful in terms of breaking down some of those key issues. I, on behalf of the Labour Party, want to traverse a few more issues that are of concern, some of which relate to the new governance structure for what was previously the Historic Places Trust.

Firstly, I want to just to cover off again the main purpose of this bill, which the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Hon Christopher Finlayson, has brought forward, and which, I would add, has taken quite some considerable time and has caused a bit of uncertainty for those who work in this sector, many of whom are volunteers, as has been referred to, and who are now facing a very different governance structure for their overarching body. The main purpose of the bill has been to promote the identification, protection, preservation, and conservation of the historical and cultural heritage of New Zealand.

As part of that, much in the same way as the Minister has restructured the Arts Council, he has done the same thing again with this new body. The Government has changed the name of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, and it has reformed the Government’s structure for that body. Currently the trust has a board, the Māori Heritage Council, and then branch committees made up of the paying members, many of whom are the life and heart, of course, of the current wider Historic Places Trust in New Zealand. But the bill disestablishes the branch committees, it also removes three positions for elected board members and creates two new positions for board members appointed by the Minister. So, as I say, it is much like what we have seen with the Arts Council restructure.

The question that has to be asked is what the motivation for this arbitrary slimming down of these boards is. Have we got some demonstration that they are too clunky and are not working? But also, there is the switch to an appointment process. The bill was in part around clarifying the role of what was the Historic Places Trust, which is now Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, as a Crown entity. That was part of the reason for this bill. But I think it is still important to be very clear that despite being a Crown entity, it has an advocacy role. That does cause some issues for those bodies that are caught between that difficult status of being a Crown entity but having to advocate sometimes against the Crown under certain circumstances, or, for instance, other bodies like local government.

I want to spend a little bit of time just reflecting on the loss of those branch committees. Most local MPs would have had some engagement at some point with their local New Zealand Historic Places Trust branch committee. The branch committees do a huge amount of work. They are a dedicated, extremely well-informed and committed group of people. As a consequence of this bill, those branches now, obviously being disestablished, are to having to transition into new forms of governance.

I want to pay homage here to Anna Crighton from Christchurch, who established Historic Places Aotearoa as an overarching body to give an anchor to those branches as they transition into their new roles, their new status, and to give them the kind of support that previously was offered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, and to, I guess, give advocacy advice and a bit of a pseudo-leadership role to those local branches. I really want to congratulate Anna on playing that incredibly important role and on getting it ahead of the game by not waiting for this bill to come through but, really, already proactively working with those groups. I thank her for that work.

I do want to come now to what I was talking about earlier around that balance between advocacy and so on, because not only will the new board have two individuals appointed by the Minister but also there will be the ability to appoint the special adviser. So the responsible Minister can appoint the chief executive of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage as a special adviser to the governing board of Heritage New Zealand. Look, there might be occasions when that could be a really important and useful function, but, equally, I do think we need to be cautious about the level of pseudo-independence that this board is able to exercise.

I come then to clause 12(1)(a), where there was a recommendation from the committee, but not from all of the committee, “to make clear the nature and extent of the Crown entity’s advocacy role by stipulating that it is limited to advocating its interests in a public forum or a statutory planning process in which it has standing under an Act. This is intended to ensure that Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga maintains an appropriate statutory role; that is, presenting a professional heritage perspective in appropriate contexts, such as council hearings.” The thing that I find interesting about that is the need to be that explicit when constraining the places where this body is able to take on that advocacy role. It gives me some concern. We need strong voices on heritage. We have seen time and time again in New Zealand situations where we all throw our hands up and say: “How is it that under our current planning laws or our heritage protection laws could we have lost X or Y building?”, and yet it constantly happens.

To say that the only voice or appropriate time that this body—which has an advocacy role, but as a Crown entity—can speak up on those issues is in certain circumstances, brings me back in my own mind to reflect on a situation in Auckland not too long ago that related to a historic building, in which some individuals saw more value than others, and that was Shed 10. During the Rugby World Cup there was obviously quite a lot of contention around what would happen down on the wharf and what facilities would be put in for the Rugby World Cup. There were two sheds down there. Murray McCully was very clear that he wanted a new building, or even a temporary structure, to act as a gathering point for those celebrating the Rugby World Cup and also, in the future, to act as a terminal for visitors coming via cruise ship into Auckland.

Of course there were some on the other hand, though—and I was one of them—who felt very strongly that the loss of Shed 10 would be a loss from a heritage perspective for the whole country, and particularly Auckland. We felt that there was an ability and, indeed, an opportunity to upgrade that building, preserve it, and use it as a future facility for the city. We ended up in the middle ground, where eventually one shed was saved and the other was not, but I explicitly remember that there was a decision to take both sheds down. I remember visiting Shed 10 and seeing in there what I believed at that time were people who had been sent from the Historic Places Trust to simply document elements of the building before it was taken down, to register what was where and what it looked like at the time that it was being taken apart. The role of the trust at that time, I would have thought, would be to be able to feel free to give a true perspective on the historic value of that building, but now we know that it is literally being constrained in its advocacy role and confined to very specific scenarios. I find that unsettling because there will be times when a Minister will take a certain view and the Historic Places Trust—now Heritage New Zealand—may take another.

One final point that I would like to make is that there were considerable concerns raised about Christchurch heritage issues during hearings on this bill, and I think that raises the wider point. Some time ago Labour tried to instigate an inquiry at a select committee into heritage issues and the disconnect between public expectation around preserving heritage buildings and the reality, where the reality hits the road. We actually have issues like insurance costs, meaning that private owners cannot afford to upgrade their buildings, which leads, in some cases, to simple demolition by neglect, or, for instance, we have council time frames for repairs for earthquake-prone buildings being so tight that private building owners cannot afford to upgrade their buildings.

💬 Dr David Clark: There should be an inquiry.

We should be looking into those issues. Those are the substantive issues facing heritage in New Zealand. They cannot be delayed. This bill is one thing, but preserving heritage for the next generation is a second, entirely separate issue.

I am taking a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill in its second reading. I rise to speak to this bill and to say that New Zealand First will not be supporting it. We do concede that some aspects of the Historic Places Act do need updating. That Act was originally drafted in 1975 and it was amended in 1993. As time has marched on, what has not been regarded as historic under that Act—that is, what has been post-1900—is becoming of significant heritage and historic value now as we move well into the 21st century. For instance, the World War I centennial era is now upon us, so we must be mindful of the importance of such important periods in the history of this country. Important structures to commemorate the Great War are most certainly now being regarded as having historic importance. Likewise, architecture from the 1930s, such as the art deco buildings in Napier, is now coming into that same category of unique historic significance.

However, putting that aspect of the bill to one side, the most controversial focus of this bill, and the area where New Zealand First has grave concerns, is to change the name and completely restructure the Historic Places Trust. That iconic name of Historic Places Trust will become Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and, with it, the whole structure will be radically changed. New Zealand First does not agree with the proposed change that will see, one, the disestablishment of the local branch committees; two, the removal of the three positions for elected members of the trust board; and, three, the creation of two new positions for members who are to be appointed by Ministers. In short, this is another case of this National Government taking over the democratic local interests of heartland New Zealand and replacing it with dictatorial, “we know better” control from the Beehive.

The Historic Places Trust has comprised volunteer committees in communities all over New Zealand, which have provided invaluable time, energy, and local knowledge to maintaining and protecting the history and heritage of New Zealand. They represent all that is good at grassroots level in New Zealand as dedicated guardians of much of our most precious history. These volunteers are being ungraciously moved aside in favour of a more centralised corporate model run from Wellington. The Local Government and Environment Committee heard from many branches and individual members who felt that they were being sidelined by this whole process. They felt that it was detrimental to the heritage movement across the country, and would result in fewer people taking the trouble to volunteer their time and money to this most worthy endeavour: protecting the history of our nation. They felt aggrieved that their annual fees will continue to be taken, but with greatly reduced representation within the restructured organisation.

This is not what New Zealand is about. The history of our country is not another piece of Government property that it can corporatise and commercialise. It is, therefore, with these grave concerns that New Zealand First opposes the intent of this bill, because it certainly does not put New Zealand heritage, and dedicated volunteering New Zealanders, first.

Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I would like to take a call on this bill, the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill, because it is an important bill. Our heritage is vital and central to our nation. We are very supportive of aspects of this bill, and we will be voting for it. I have been discussing with the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage some of our concerns. I also support Eugenie Sage’s speech about the good things that are in the bill. I understand the concerns of the last speaker, Andrew Williams.

Obviously, we need a robust regime for any review of what was the Historic Places Trust. I think it is quite easy to romanticise how heritage has been dealt with in the past. Actually, the Historic Places Trust has been very constrained for quite a long time. It has not had the resources to advocate for all of the issues that it would like to advocate for, and I am not sure that this bill changes that. But we are supportive of many of the changes in terms of the focus on Māori heritage issues. The issues around Māori heritage are important.

My partner was an archaeologist for many years and, I guess, we lived through some of the frustrations of the tension between local Pākehā heritage—and the interpretation of heritage—versus the reality for Māori and their access to the protection of their wāhi tapu and their taonga katoa. This is a very politicised issue, and on the ground it has been hotly contested. History is about whose story we are going to tell, whose objects we are going to protect, and whose landmarks are given pre-eminence. In local communities, for example in Te Tai Rāwhiti, where I live, these issues were very, very contested. For example, whether the story of Te Kurī a Paoa was both Te Kurī a Paoa and Young Nicks Head, or whether it was only Young Nicks Head, was a very interesting issue. It was hotly debated amongst the different versions of history and the different holders of history in our community.

So I am interested in the provisions in this bill that actually allow for tangata whenua to have a greater voice. As a person who speaks regularly about the implications of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, I want to see those voices manifest in all the legislation that we work on and pass in this House. So I have been engaging with Minister Finlayson in a very constructive way about this issue. We have not reached any conclusion.

I am not sure yet that I will be putting up some Supplementary Order Papers in the Committee of the whole House, but the kind of issues that I am concerned about are around words such as “significance” and “minor”. These are very difficult words. If you look at the Resource Management Act, they are very difficult in the Resource Management Act as well. Nobody really has ownership of what is considered to be significant in terms of heritage and what is considered to be minor.

For example, clause 42 is one of the clauses that I am interested in. Clause 42(1)(b) says “if the effects of that activity on the site will be no more than minor”, and that sites can be destroyed without consulting mana whenua hapū. Again, who decides what is minor is a very important question. Is the local heritage committee—or the former local heritage committee—deciding it, or the local Pākehā deciding what is minor? Is it the Historic Places Trust archaeologist in Wellington deciding what is minor? Or is it the tangata whenua who have a historic relationship with a place over a thousand years saying whether something is minor or not? The problem with this clause is that we are not asking them, so how will we know? If we do not ask, we do not know. That is part of the “invisiblising” of the mana whenua voice so often present in the structures that surround our archaeology and our heritage. So that is one the clauses I am very interested in.

I am also interested in the issue—and this is one where we have not reached a conclusion in the debate with the Minister—of who gets to decide which archaeologist is going to work on those sites that are going to be modified and destroyed. At the moment, developers decide the archaeologist, and in the contested field of archaeology and heritage there are archaeologists who are dedicated to getting the job done for the developer as fast as possible in the most efficient manner possible, and there are archaeologists who are dedicated to finding out whether the values of the mana whenua hapū and the values of the history are going to be protected at all costs. That is a real tension because he who pays the piper—and I use the word “he” advisedly—often calls the tune in development. I think that that has been the problem for mana whenua and archaeologists who are passionate about making sure that we do not modify and destroy without at least talking to the right people about what is at stake, and finding ways of upholding, preserving, and researching what could be lost through development. So these are not small things. This is about the bulldozing of urupā. This is about changing the face of wāhi tapu for ever. If nobody asks mana whenua, nobody will know.

Apart from having those concerns, we are supporting the bill. We are willing to see a review of the Historic Places Trust. We do think it has been under-resourced in its role. We do think there is value in the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill, but we do want to see further on, in the Committee stage, the possibility of looking at the word “minor”. Because, really, one of the most laden concepts that we have in resource management in archaeology and heritage is who gets to decide what is minor. For some people the colonisation of Aotearoa was a minor effect, but it did help them gain quite a lot of land. But for other people it was the end of their relationship with their land and their culture. So I cannot emphasise enough the importance of recognising who shall get to decide what is minor, how subjective such terms are in the law, how difficult they are, and how they end up being contested through very expensive appeal processes, which most mana whenua and other people cannot afford. So we need to write legislation carefully. We need to be really clear about what we mean by terms like “minor” and like “significant”. We will continue this theme and this dialogue as we continue to support this bill. Thank you very much.

I rise to support the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill and thank the Greens for also supporting the legislation at the second reading. At a very high level there are some key changes. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust is renamed Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. The bill separates regulatory and community advocacy roles, and we are going to simplify and streamline the archaeological consent process for applicants. The Local Government and Environment Committee did do significant work on the detail of the legislation. I think it is important to note that we are ensuring that non-invasive activity, such as simply walking across a site, will not be considered exploratory investigation under the law. Those sorts of details are important. We are requiring Heritage NZ, when determining an application, to consider all factors before the Environment Court so that future development of a site—those sorts of issues and possibilities—are taken into account. It is very important that that sort of detail is wrapped up in this legislation. It is; I can assure the House of that. I look forward to the Committee stage, where Supplementary Order Papers and new clauses are perhaps introduced. At this stage, I certainly support the bill.