Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill

There are two subparts to this part. The first establishes Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga as the same body corporate as the soon to be former New Zealand Historic Places Trust. It is a Crown entity, and that was established some years ago. It establishes an eight-person board appointed by the Minister. Importantly, there is a provision that says the Minister can have a special adviser who can advise the board on Government policy, and it establishes the requirements for general policy statements and conservation plans.

Subpart 2—and this is important—continues the eight-member Māori Heritage Council. Supplementary Order Paper 444 is designed to clarify one or two matters, and I refer honourable members to clauses 11(2), 12(1A), and 24(2). It clarifies in each of those clauses that Heritage New Zealand and the Māori Heritage Council must recognise owners’ interests—and this is the important phrase—“as far as those interests are known”. There are a couple of other changes about archaeological investigations.

It gives me great pleasure to rise to support the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Bill. Part 2, which we are debating currently, covers the critical points of the governance of the new body, to be called Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. In establishing that and making that the name, a very significant change is being made. It is the same body corporate, as clause 9(2) says, as the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, and it is a Crown entity for the purposes of the Crown Entities Act. The renaming of it has more than superficial significance. It is time that we acknowledged the need for Māori heritage to be reflected more comprehensively in entities that are Crown entities, and in departments and ministries, for that matter.

We are here dealing with this particular Crown entity, but the governing body of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is the board, which comprises eight persons appointed by the Minister, one of whom is to be appointed as the chairperson of the board. Although we do have some reservations about the board structure, or we did originally, we do support good governance, and any effort to strengthen agency governance will be supported by us. However, we are not convinced that clause 10 actually does that. We, through the select committee process, have ensured that this bill will in fact strengthen governance and the performance and operation of the current processes, and we have tried to make sure that that does not come at the expense of protection of our archaeological heritage and public participation in that process.

The power of the Minister to appoint a special adviser in clause 10A is, I think, an improvement. It is something that this party welcomes. We would like to ensure that the governance arrangements—and even though this whole process has been somewhat controversial for those little Historic Places Trust bodies that we have known and loved for a long time around this country, we trust that this particular governance structure will work in the interests of the aims of all of those former Historic Places Trust branches. That was and remains an issue of some concern to the Labour Party, and although we are supporting this bill and we will, in fact, support the Supplementary Order Paper to which the Minister referred, Supplementary Order Paper 444, we are hopeful that the amendments that have been made to clauses 10A and 10B, for the purpose of this discussion right now, will be, in respect of the appointment of a special adviser with stipulated functions, a strength and an asset to the governance of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. So at this stage in dealing with Part 2, it proceeds to cover most of the significant organisational and structural changes to the Historic Places Trust.

I am pleased with the results of the select committee deliberation, and that the changes we see in the bill before us in the Committee at the moment represent an improvement after the deliberation of the Local Government and Environment committee. As we go through this part, which delineates the functions of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga—the powers, the rights of entry on to land, and the general policy for historic places and archaeological sites—I hope that those who have taken an interest in this from the beginning can have some reassurance, particularly around the protection of archaeological sites and the treasures that may be contained within those archaeological sites, that they are able to accessed under certain conditions and they are able to be protected.

I also hope that the governance structure of this entity will ensure that the concerns that people have expressed around archaeological heritage in particular will be taken into account and it will be protected. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 444 in the name of the Hon Christopher Finlayson to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 Protection of places and areas of historic and cultural value