Axe falls on history

RNZ News

5 days ago

The Te Ara team, February 2007
Photo:
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
A world class website documenting New Zealand's history could be allowed to wither and die with cuts confirmed at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
The government is slashing jobs at the heart of our national identity, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.
The move will save $8 million over four years but critics argue it feels more like cultural vandalism than financial prudence.
Four senior historian jobs have been axed after the ministry's funding was reduced in Budget 2025. In total, 26 roles will go.
Popular history websites, including Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, have had a partial reprieve, but a historian and former general editor of the encyclopedia tells
The Detail
he has serious fears it will eventually disappear.
"What they have said is they [the websites] will sort of go into cold storage, and what that means is that eventually they wither and die because a website that's not kept up is eventually a website that does die," said Jock Phillips, who was the chief historian at Internal Affairs before he became general editor of Te Ara.
He said the changes gut vital expertise and risk eroding years of cultural knowledge. And he worries future events won't be recorded appropriately.
The history websites, he said, are a crucial resource, both nationally and internationally.
"You only have to look at the user figures. Te Ara gets over four million separate users each year, a total of 13 million page views, which is a huge number and far more than, for example, the Te Papa website gets.
"New Zealand History gets over 3 million users each year. And the total number of page views on those two sites is about 20 million, which is an incredible amount of use.
"And an awful lot of people are enriched by that knowledge. About 70 percent of them are from within New Zealand, but one shouldn't forget the importance of the 30 percent outside New Zealand, who relish Te Ara.
"When I go overseas, people are amazed at the quality of it, there's no equivalent anywhere else, in any other country."
This week, seven history and heritage organisations put out a joint statement on the restructure decision, deeply concerned that the cuts will "damage New Zealand's international reputation in the historical and cultural heritage sectors".
"While not mentioned in the decision document explicitly, we are also deeply concerned about any potential for these resources to be transferred to for-profit organisations," reads the statement from the Professional Historians' Association of New Zealand Aotearoa, New Zealand Historical Association, New Zealand History Teachers' Association, National Oral History Association of New Zealand, New Zealand Archaeological Association, Historic Places Aotearoa, and New Zealand Society of Genealogists.
"New Zealand's historical record is not a commodity to be monetised.
"These platforms must remain free and publicly accessible, as they have been for decades. Any privatisation would inevitably lead to paywalls, reduced accessibility, and the commercialisation of our collective memory."
RNZ reporter Phil Pennington, who has been covering the story, said the restructure is all about saving money - but it comes at a cost.
"Historians are really alarmed at these developments ... and at the downgrading and the de-muscling of history in the ministry and at a government level.
"And they are saying it is misguided, [and] this ministry becoming a policy shop is the wrong way to go, and it will be like vandalism to our historical knowledge and our understanding."
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