Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill

When we were last considering this bill we had reached Part 3. The question is that Part 3, and this is the debate on clauses 19 to 27 and the schedule, stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for reminding us where we were up to in this bill, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. We are indeed on Part 3, which is the somewhat misnamed “Miscellaneous provisions” section of the bill, because, actually, what Part 3 does is the guts of what is happening here. It gets rid of the Arts Council as we know it. That is what this part does.

The first thing it does, under clause 19, is protect all of the names of the bodies that it is about to disestablish. That is clever. Just in case anyone else out there might have wanted to establish, for instance, Te Waka Toi or a body of that nature, to go on and do its good work, the Government has stepped in and said: “No, we’re protecting those names.” So that is what the bill does, under clause 19.

But then the bill gets to clause 21, which does the dirty work of this bill. It dissolves the two arts boards, one of which is Te Waka Toi and the other of which is the Arts Council of New Zealand—Creative New Zealand as we know it today in its operational form—and the Pacific Arts Committee. It gets rid of those, once and for all.

For the Labour Party members of this House, this is the crux of why we cannot support the bill in its current form. By dissolving Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee, the risk is run that those important parts of our artistic community will no longer receive the attention that they deserve. In earlier parts of the bill the Minister in charge of this bill, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, has said to us: “Don’t worry. It’s all fine. It will be completely possible for the reconstituted Arts Council to be able to create a Te Waka Toi, to create a Pacific Arts Committee, if that’s what it wants to do.” He even said that he thought it might be quite a good idea. Well, why on earth are we debating a bill that dissolves those organisations in Part 3? Because he said in this Chamber that it would be OK by him if those bodies were recreated, and, in fact, he thought it would be quite a good idea.

💬 Tracey Martin: Less funding.

Tracey Martin says to me that it is all about the money—follow the money. If that is the case, and if that is the driving force of what is behind this bill from the Minister, then that is very sad for arts organisations right across New Zealand.

The last public event that I was at with the Minister was the Arts Pasifika Awards, an absolutely fantastic night, organised by the Pacific Arts Committee, which was lauded for its great work. Sitting there and seeing the tremendous Pacific artists who were in front of us, and whose ability to shine had been facilitated by the Pacific Arts Committee, is, I think, frankly, incredibly sad. But that is what clause 21 does. It dissolves the arts board and essentially sets up the process for all of—what would happen in a normal situation—the property and assets and so on of the board to be redirected.

Jacinda Ardern has Supplementary Order Paper 364, which covers this section of the bill, and which asks for this clause—clause 21, which I am currently talking about—to be deleted. From our point of view, that is the only solution we are now left with, after various amendments that have been proposed in the earlier parts of the bill completely failed to gain the support of the National Government and its support parties. We are left now with wanting to delete clause 21 so that we can continue to have Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee.

It is worth having a brief reflection on the submission of the Human Rights Commission to the Government Administration Committee. I will assume that members may not recall the submission, as it is dated 1 October 2010. That is when the Government was last—

💬 Darien Fenton: Why has it taken so long?

Well, that is a very good question. Why has it taken so long? The Minister has been unable to answer that because, apparently, the great urgency with getting rid of these boards has not taken place.

In 2010 the Human Rights Commission raised serious concerns about the changes that were being proposed here. In particular, it raised the fact that the potential loss of distinctive identities and practices of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee is potentially damaging. It said that it is possible that now that there is going to be a small number of representatives of those groups, the dominant operating practices of the Arts Council will become the norm. What is being discussed there is the fact that by having the distinctive identities of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee, it was possible for the decisions about funding for artists for those groups to be made in a way that was culturally sensitive and that was in line with the operating practices in those cultures. That has now gone and the new council will have to try to endeavour to find a way in which artists from those groups can continue to be supported. Why not just leave the bodies in place? It just does not stack up. If the Minister is completely prepared to see these bodies continue, it just does not stack up for clause 21 to not be taken away.

The Human Rights Commission raised a further concern, which was one that was raised earlier in the debate by members of the Labour Party. That concern is around the fact that by removing the Pacific Arts Committee and having a council where there will be two, three, or maybe four representatives of the Pacific community, the risk is run that that does not give broad representation from across different parts of the Pacific community. It is all very well to say that there will be three or four people at the table who will represent Pasifika people, but we all know that across a range of different Pacific cultures there is nuance and there are different kinds of views. If there are two Samoans, a Tongan, and a Niuean, who will represent the Tuvaluan and the Tokelauan communities? The beauty of the Pacific Arts Committee is that by having a broad range of people on that committee from different Pacific ethnic backgrounds, we can ensure that we have the representations required. That is what the Human Rights Commission put to the select committee. It said that the council would have to work very hard to ensure that those communities are adequately provided for.

Then there is the whole question of the way in which advice comes to the Minister and comes to Creative New Zealand about Māori and Pacific communities. I do believe that those people who will now end up on the Arts Council representing Māori and Pacific communities will have huge pressure on them to be able to be representative and to give advice. It is actually very unfair to put that burden on those people, and to say that they are the representatives and the ones who have to carry the weight of their whole communities at that table. I simply do not believe that a justification has been put forward to the Committee by the Government for why it is that dismantling these bodies, as we are doing under clause 21, is justified, when we know that they provide effective advice, they provide advocacy and support for Māori and Pacific artists, and they ensure that funding goes directly to those artists from people who understand those communities. That is now going to be put at risk, in my submission.

So our view on this side of the Committee is that we would ask members to support Supplementary Order Paper 364 in the name of Jacinda Ardern to delete clause 21. We believe that is the only way that we can ensure that Māori and Pacific artists continue to be represented. The transitional provisions that are here continue on with the somewhat odd drafting in parts of this bill, which we discussed in the debate on clause 2, where none of us were any the wiser about what those clauses meant. In this case, the boards are being dissolved but we have a Minister who has told us that he would actually quite like them to continue. Well, if that is the case, National should support Jacinda Ardern’s Supplementary Order Paper and stop dissolving boards that it actually wants to carry on.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to speak at the Committee stage of this bill, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. It is my first contribution on this bill. We are up to Part 3. I was just coming up to speed with the background to this bill, and I was really very surprised at the delay in the passage of this bill. This bill was introduced 3½ years ago, way before I was honoured to be in the House. It was way back in June 2010—3½ years ago—that the bill was introduced. It was reported back in November 2010, and here we are now, in December 2013, and we are still plodding our way through the Committee stage. It has taken a very long time, and I think that a question we definitely need to pose to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage is why there has been this length of delay, because this bill has been around for a long time.

I would like to just refer to the briefing to the incoming Minister dated December 2011. In that briefing, Creative New Zealand says: “Creative New Zealand regards the passage of the Bill”—this bill—“as the top priority for 2012.” It says that this bill is the top priority for 2012. It continues: “The current hiatus in its passage makes it difficult for the current Council and boards to progress significant policy and structural initiatives as the implementation date for the new governance structure remains unconfirmed.” There we have it—a plea from Creative New Zealand to the Minister to get cracking and to make the passage of this bill a top priority for 2012. Here we are, on the verge of passing through 2013 into 2014, and we still have not got this bill through. I think it is an injustice to Creative New Zealand and the arts sector of our country.

Creative New Zealand also goes on to state in the briefing to the Minister: “Creative New Zealand and the arts sector are operating in a period of considerable change and challenge.” There have been considerable challenges for the whole arts sector, particularly post the Christchurch earthquakes and right through to the present time, given the uncertainty of the governance structure of the Arts Council. So against that background we come now to Part 3 of the bill, which, as my colleague Grant Robertson outlined, is really the guts of this piece of legislation, in that it deals with the actual expiry of the membership of what would be the former Arts Council and also the dissolution of the councils—in particular, Te Waka Toi, the Arts Council, and the Pacific Arts Committee. Those are the key provisions in Part 3.

I have had to do a bit of mental gymnastics because here we are, in December 2013, but the commencement date for this piece of legislation, which was amended by the Minister at the Government Administration Committee, will be on 1 October 2011. So we are enacting a piece of legislation that will be enacted back in time, on 1 October 2011. As soon as it comes into force, all of the decisions, all of the board, all of the activities and operations of Creative New Zealand are basically in limbo, I suppose, because, back in time on 1 October 2011, effectively there was no board. Oh no—sorry, it is 1 October 2010. That is the date on which this legislation will actually come into force. It is sort of making my mind go “What’s going on here?”.

Can you imagine what it is like for those poor people in Creative New Zealand and the arts sector across New Zealand who have had to operate under such a twilight zone? It is a twilight zone they have been in for the past 3½ years of waiting for this legislation to go through. I am really surprised that the Minister has taken such a long time. We can contrast that with the rapid-fire Treaty settlement legislation that he has been firing at us left, right, and centre, through to the Māori Affairs Committee. A tremendous amount of legislation has been going through that committee at an incredibly fast pace. Yet this most important piece of legislation for our arts community right across New Zealand has been languishing. I am very concerned at the length of time it has taken and the impact it has had on the operations, which is given effect to in Part 3 of the bill.

There are a couple of other points I would like to point out. I am really lamenting the loss of the beautiful name Te Waka Toi. My colleague Shane Jones, who is the expert linguist, knows that that is a poetic term—the arts waka for Māori. Yet what we are seeing in Part 3, clause 19, is that, basically, those names are off limits and cannot be used by anyone or anything. Not only that but nor can the names Arts Council and Creative New Zealand, which was the trading name for the council, be used. I do lament the loss of Te Waka Toi, because those are iconic names, iconic terms, poetic terms in Māori Te Reo, and now they are effectively off limits, never to be used again unless there is a change to this legislation.

💬 Tracey Martin: Crazy.

I agree with Tracey Martin. It is crazy. Looking at the creation of the committee, I see that Te Waka Toi is now going to be four Māori representatives. No, actually, they do not have to be Māori representatives. They could be any person as long as they have some sort of artistic expertise in the Māori arts and crafts or culture and heritage areas. It could be any person, as long as it gets the stamp of approval or it is run by the Minister of Māori Affairs—and that is pretty easy. You could put anything past him. He will give it the nod or he will not really care.

Te Waka Toi is an iconic committee. It made a huge contribution to the Māori arts. There are Te Waka Toi scholarships and Te Waka Toi awards. Now I lament its dissolution under this legislation. And it applies not only to Te Waka Toi but to the Pacific Arts Committee as well. That representative group has close to 16-plus years of history of working with the arts sector.

But what I am really disappointed about is the complete lack of representation for ethnic New Zealand. There is no voice for ethnic New Zealand on this new arts council body. Today we had a press release from Statistics New Zealand saying that New Zealand has more ethnicities than the world has countries. We are growing in ethnic diversity. Our population is increasing and changing all the way through. Yet that fast-growing demographic of our society has no voice on this arts council body.

Those are some of the key aspects that I would like to draw to the Committee’s attention, and hopefully the Minister will be able to address some of them. The delay in the passage of the bill and the effective dates and what that means in terms of how the whole Creative New Zealand group has been operating for the past 3 years have definitely been a disservice to this great organisation. Thank you.

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 Toi Aotearoa 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 is is 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.

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.

—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 Depot Artspace. 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 Depot Artspace 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 Depot Artspace 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 arts sector. 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 and Rāwene—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?

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 are not 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.

I am happy to take a brief call on Part 3 of this very interesting bill, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. Clause 21 in Part 3 is what I want to address. I certainly do support Supplementary Order Paper 364 from Jacinda Ardern on this one, because the Green Party opposes the dissolution of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee. We thought about this quite deeply because there is an argument to be made that everyone is better off sitting at the table. That is the argument that was made, particularly for Māori—that it is actually high time that Māori art is recognised strongly enough in this country at this time, and that the best representation and the most effective way to be represented is to sit at the table with the other members of the Arts Council, rather than through Te Waka Toi. It was also argued that for Pasifika arts, that was the case as well, and therefore there was logic to dissolving those two committees. But on further investigation I have found that that was not how Māori artists felt. In the end, it is not what the bureaucrats think; it is actually what the artists think. The artists were very concerned, both in terms of Te Waka Toi and the Pacific Arts Committee, about what they would lose.

It is a very interesting idea, because it is based on the assumption that if everybody is at the table, somehow the table will be equitable, and that having a voice at the table is better—in terms of the result and in terms of access to resources and recognition of your culture’s artistic contribution—than having your own group that you can identify with, support specific artists with, and lobby. We were open to the argument but that is not what we heard from the artists whom we discussed this with. They said that they valued Te Waka Toi, and although the assumption is that tangata whenua are widely recognised in every forum and that they were going to be equally recognised on the main Arts Council, that is not what those artists felt was in their best interest. They felt that it was still possible for their issues to be overlooked and their issues to be marginalised. And for the up-and-coming, the emerging, and the less well known, they felt that they would not have this nurturing voice and this clearly identified body that they could actually work with.

So I am thinking about young artists who are now making a success of themselves but who have really benefited from having a strong Māori arts focus in this country. I am very proud of a young man from my area, Hauraki-Coromandel, who just won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, young Jamie McCaskill. Jamie was in my youth group when I was a youth worker and now he has just won the Bruce Mason award. We are all incredibly proud of Jamie. But Jamie writes about things like domestic violence. He writes about things like Māori in prison. It is not easy to be writing about these radical themes in this country unless you have got an Arts Council that has a very strong understanding of a very specific Māori voice that needs to be heard. We are not yet convinced that there will automatically be that nurturing if the Māori representation through Te Waka Toi is dissolved and it all becomes part of the one Arts Council.

It is even more so with Pasifika. I think it was one of the previous speakers from the Labour Party who pointed out that there is no such thing as the Pasifika voice, and that there is, for a start, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, and then, within that, there are a number of nations represented in our country now with large communities or smaller communities who are not prepared to be lumped in as just “the Pacific”, and rightly so. They are still at a different stage of recognition and in all our statistics remain marginalised in many ways, and they rely on and have relied on that Pasifika committee to be their nurturer, their advocate, their voice at the table, and their clearly defined, although never enough, amount of money that comes their way. So these Pasifika artists and the people who have supported them are not at all keen on the dissolution of the committee.

The Green Party came to the conclusion that clause 21 was counter-productive and that we wanted to support the maintenance of those two committees until the people say they do not want it. When the artists say—not when the arts administrators or the arts bureaucrats or the arts experts or the art buyers or the politicians say—“We feel we are best served by sitting at that table without separate committees.”, we, the Greens, will change our mind about this and we will support that approach. But until that time, we will continue to support the idea of these discrete entities. I would just like to continue briefly on the matter and say that these discrete entities have a whakapapa, if you like. They have a tradition. They have nurtured and supported some of the most fantastic artists in our country, and the people want that to continue to happen.

So we are not able to support Part 3. We obviously had a critique of Part 2 when we were talking about community funding and community providers. We have had a critique of the bill on a number of levels. We understand the desire to rationalise and to examine the value of the way in which arts administration takes place. We understand that that was what was driving the bill, and that is fair enough. But we do not believe that what has resulted is going to stimulate the grassroots and flax-roots art and the community art. There are two groups—and possibly there will be more; I would say that there will be more as multicultural demographics develop—that want to have someone who stands for them and them alone so that they can be strong at the main table. That is about power—it is always about power. And if power is going to work, the arts are very much part of the expression of the different power relationships in this country, just like many other laws that we talk about in this House. This is about power, and we need the artists themselves to be able to have and keep their own bodies until they feel they are powerful enough to actually not need that kind of advocacy. Many times on many other bills I have heard people say: “Oh, we don’t need this any more. We don’t need that, because we’ve matured as a country and we’re all one people.” and blah-blah. Actually, when it comes to money and when it comes to unique expressions of culture, we have to be very aware of who still holds the power, who is the dominant group, and who gets marginalised.

We are very clear about that in terms of this bill, and we will support the Supplementary Order Paper to remove clause 21, because we do not think it is in the best interests of those arts communities. We have not heard that from the artists. So we will continue with our opposition to the bill, because we think there is a better way, and that better way is about asking the artists what should be done to restructure the arts community. If there needs to be change, let us see what it is that the arts community thinks needs to be done, because if we do not listen to the voices of those artists, not only will the legislative regime be poorer but the whole country will be poorer. The whole country needs a fantastic, diverse, and unique series of voices, and they need to decide how they are advocated for. Thank you.

I just wanted to pick up a point that Rino Tirikatene initially raised on the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. It is in relation to clause 19, “Protection of names”. As I stated in my earlier call, this is the clause of the bill that means that nobody else is allowed to use any of the names listed in clause 19. It actually is quite clear what a protected name is, and it is all of the names listed. Some of them are going to carry on. The Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa is going to carry on, and it is being protected—clearly, because this is a bill that repeals the previous Act. Presumably, there was a protection of names section.

But where things go awry is where a name is protected but the board is being dissolved, as in the case of Te Waka Toi, because what the Government is effectively saying is: “We own the name Te Waka Toi.” It took me only a couple of minutes of googling to discover that the phrase “te waka toi” has actually been used as a name by a number of people over the years, as my colleague Rino Tirikatene said. It is a poetical name—the arts waka. In fact, it is the name of a couple of works of art. You can go to see one of them by Fred Graham in the Auckland Art Gallery, if you like. It is the name of an exhibition that has been held previously. And yet the Government wants to come to the Chamber tonight and tell us that it controls Te Waka Toi. It controls it by dissolving it, disestablishing it, and saying that no one else can have the name. Well, to me that is absolutely ridiculous, and it is, unfortunately, typical of this bill because of, as we discussed previously—and I will come to this in a moment—the confusing language around community arts councils in Part 2. None of us were actually clear by the end of it exactly what was happening with that. But by taking away the ability of anybody to actually use the name Te Waka Toi in the future, the Government, in my view, has wholly overstepped its mandate, and that is under clause 19(1).

If we carry on down we come to clause 19(3): “No body other than a community arts council within the meaning of this Act may be incorporated or registered, or may operate or carry on activities, under any enactment or in any other manner under a name that includes the words ‘community arts council’ or ‘arts council’.” So the Government, in clause 19(3), is banning the use of the term “arts council” unless it is as defined under this bill, which, as we discovered during Part 2, is completely meaningless and gobbledegook.

But “arts council” is a term that will be applied in a lot of different ways. Once upon a time I was the trustee of something called the New Zealand Students’ Arts Council. Hekia Parata, I think, may once upon a time have been involved in the New Zealand Students’ Arts Council as well. Would we not have been able to call ourselves the New Zealand Students’ Arts Council because the term “arts council” is now apparently owned by the Government? It is protected by the Government. You cannot call yourself an arts council. I have just looked it up online again. We have got the North Taranaki Community Arts Council and the Motueka Arts Council. Are these people allowed to be arts councils any more? Unfortunately, we were very unclear, when we looked at clause 16, that it seemed possible that the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa could establish community arts councils in particular geographical areas.

But it is not just community arts councils that the Government is trying to control here; it is the term “arts council” generally, and that is what is written in clause 19(3). Nobody can, in any other manner, use the name “community arts council” or “arts council”. I am sorry to say that this bill once again, I think, either has created an unintended consequence or is a result of the Government overreaching in what it wants to do in this area. Clause 19 of this bill is now giving rise to significant concerns for me about the way in which the Government intends to control the usage of terms like “te waka toi” and “arts council”.

I simply do not believe that those people who provide arts services in the community, who want to come together in different communities, band together, and create a body that helps develop artists in their area, are now going to want to have to go through this bizarre process, under clause 16 of this bill, to establish themselves as a community arts council. Otherwise, they are up for prosecution, I presume, if they decide to call themselves an arts council. It is a farce.

This bill is the product of a Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage who has not stood up and justified it. He has got a bill he has been sitting on for years, and now he brings it back to the House with a clause like clause 19, which, quite frankly, I think goes miles beyond his mark. [Bell rung]

I will take another call here on one other matter, and that is to return to clause 21 briefly. Just think for a moment about what this Committee is about to do. This Committee is about to vote to dissolve the Pacific Arts Committee and Te Waka Toi. I was at the Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Awards with the Minister a few weeks ago. Jonathan Lemalu received an award and Victor Rodger, the playwright, received an award. We had a stunning performance by a woman named Natalia Mann, who is a harpist. These are artists who have been fostered by the Pacific Arts Committee. They have been fostered by a group of people who understand not only Pacific communities but also the role of the arts. They understand the diversity of those Pacific communities.

On that night the representatives of each of the different Pasifika communities got up and presented awards. We had representatives from Niue to Tuvalu, from Tokelau through to Samoa and Tonga. They all got up there, and that is the strength of that body. That is what is being dissolved tonight under clause 21, in the hope that two people—two people—sitting on the new Arts Council will be able to represent those communities. They will not. It is unfair on them, it will put undue pressure on them, and it will not lead to the kind of Pacific arts vibrancy that we would expect in New Zealand.

Te Waka Toi has been responsible for encouraging all manner of Māori artists—Patricia Grace, Wīremu Kaa, Kiri Te Kanawa. All of these people have been recipients of awards and grants from Te Waka Toi, which recognises the special place of Māori arts in New Zealand. That body is being dissolved tonight, in the hope that four people—who do not have to be Māori—appointed by the Minister of Māori Affairs can come along and somehow represent that rich diversity of Māori arts, as well.

Part 3 of this bill is flawed. It is the part of the bill that dissolves organisations that have done a great deal for the arts in New Zealand, and I believe that this is a very sad day indeed.

I want to follow on from the comments made by my colleague Grant Robertson. He made some very good points. I would like the Minister in the chair, Minister Collins, to respond to some of those comments because I am sure that she would not be able to explain to New Zealanders just why Māori and Pacific people have been expunged from this bill, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. The significant contribution they make to the identity of New Zealand through arts and culture cannot be understated.

But, more important than that, why is it that the name used by Te Waka Toi cannot be used elsewhere? It just does not make sense. The Minister sits in the chair silently. She does not take the opportunity to respond and to explain to those people in New Zealand who are very passionate about the arts sector why the name Te Waka Toi cannot be used again. Te Waka Toi is more than a name. It is more than an institution. It is about a whole evolution of people who have grown up and nurtured the arts, specifically within the Māori community. I am thinking about Elizabeth Ellis in her stewardship of this space. I am thinking of Te Auē Davis, who made a significant contribution in this area. I am thinking of Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku. Again, these are people who are passionate about arts and culture and heritage, and who have contributed significantly to nurturing what that looks like over a period of time in New Zealand, and nurturing young people within the arts space.

When we think about building a national identity, something that all New Zealanders can be proud of, we know that it is Māori and Pacific cultures that contribute significantly in this space. Why oh why is it, Minister—if you can be bothered to take a call and respond—that Māori representation on this council has been reduced to four people and Pacific representation to two people? Do you expect the sector to be happy with that? “That is your lot. You make of it what you can, and you do with it what you will.” I say that it is an insignificant step going forward in terms of how the Government proposes to, I think, infuse what is rich and vibrant about our place and Māori and Pacific contribution in the arts area.

I want to reflect on some of the young artists who have been supported by Te Waka Toi. I think about writers, singers, and artists who have all received sums of funding to enable them to explore the potential of their art, whether it be to contribute to an exhibition that is held overseas or to actually help them learn from other peoples, other indigenous nations, and go and share their talent. These are all spaces where Te Waka Toi has seen great talent. Young Māori artists have certainly been able to infuse their genre of art with other peoples and other cultures. So art is just as much about an internal reflection of who we are as an external connection to who we are and how we connect to the rest of the world.

I think this bill is a step in the wrong direction. I think the fact that the limitation of the way in which Māori and Pacific peoples contribute to the arts sector is not progressive. I do not think it will help grow the amount of talent that we have in New Zealand in a positive direction. I really seek an opportunity for the Minister to just get up and respond to some of these calls.

Part 3—specifically the provisions around protecting the names—just does not make sense. Why is the Government not allowing the utilisation of these names beyond the passage of this bill? There is still silence. The Minister refuses to take a call. Why have Māori been reduced to four members on the Arts Council when prior to that they had a council that was specifically dedicated to growing that talent under Te Waka Toi? No response. Why is it that the Pacific community has been reduced to having two members on the Arts Council instead of a sector that can actually grow the full vibrancy of the talent that it has? There is still no response from the Minister. This is simply not good enough. Can I say that this bill is a step in the wrong direction. I do not think it will grow—

I would like to make just a brief contribution in this debate on the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Bill. Just carrying on from my colleagues the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and Grant Robertson, we have spoken at length about the travesty of the loss of iconic names like Te Waka Toi and Creative New Zealand, and the fact that those names will be off limits. By extension, this piece of legislation will create a single arts council, the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, and it cannot be called Creative New Zealand. This is the body that funds the arts for Aotearoa. Surely the Government can think of a nicer name than “Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa”.

I would like to make a prediction. I actually think that there will be a new name that will be given to the Arts Council. I guess the same will apply to the Māori committee. The four representatives on that board who are there for Māori—they may not necessarily be Māori—will form a committee. I think it is a pretty sure bet that that committee will want to have its own name, as opposed to just being a committee set up under clause 11 of the bill. So what we will see is a further rebranding exercise. There will be a rebranded Arts Council, and they will give it a flash name, I hope, something that is fitting of our arts community of Aotearoa. I am very sure that the four members of the Māori committee will also want to have a beautiful Māori name—

💬 Grant Robertson: Like Te Waka Toi?

Exactly—it could be Te Waka Toi.

It just shows you how redundant the provisions are. We know in practical terms that they will not be able to use these names, but, of course, they will be creating their own trading name so that they can carry out their important mahi for the arts community. So I would just like to draw that point because I think it shows you how absurd this legislation is and how wasteful it is that we cannot use iconic names like Te Waka Toi. It is prevented. No person and no organisation can have any association with that name. As Mr Robertson said, that already causes contravention around quite a large number of arts bodies right across Aotearoa who not only use that name but also use the other term “arts council”.

I would also like to briefly go to the schedule. I actually think that this piece of legislation is very misleading. I alluded to this in my earlier contribution. It is misleading in the fact that the resulting Act will be called the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Act 2010. Here we are at the end of 2013, going into 2014. We are going to be passing a piece of legislation from 2010, and it refers to that in the title clause. This piece of legislation was introduced back in the last Parliament.

So what we are seeing here is that it is misleading. If you are going to go back 3 years, why not 10 years? Why not 20 years? Why not 30 years? You could make up a piece of legislation and put any commencement date on it. I think that the commencement date really needs to be addressed because it is misleading to say that it started back on 1 October 2011 and that it is a 2010 Act. I mean, I understand that that issue was considered by the Government Administration Committee, but it really makes a mockery of the whole legislative process if we can put through legislation and then just say that it gives effect back in time to 2010—it is from 2010—and the bodies and the persons that were in those positions were no longer in those positions back on 1 October 2011.

I think that it should be addressed. If the date is amended, it just needs to be amended to what it is. We need to start the commencement date at an appropriate time, which is when the legislation has passed. Of course, we hope that it does not really get to that point, because we are opposing this bill, and—

I move, That the question be now put.