Exploring diligently throughout Question Time
The two occasions I took a break last year coincided with one of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's two visits to Dunedin, and the other with Health Minister Simeon Brown's trip to town.
So naturally as soon as I headed out the door last week Mr Brown was back in Dunedin again for another hospital announcement — one slightly more palatable than the last one.
I still have some way to go to beat my much-respected former boss Audrey Young: her holidays had such a spooky habit of coinciding with party leaders being rolled that it came to be known as "the curse of Audrey" — but it's still a little frustrating.
So having missed all the fun, let's go back in time to Parliament's last sitting week, and Wednesday's Question Time, which may have set a record.
Of the 12 questions, a quarter were asked by southern MPs ... although maybe only a third of those elicited anything which might have been of any interest to their constituents.
First up was Act New Zealand Southland list MP Todd Stephenson, who got to ask the acting Prime Minister — who, coincidentally, just happened to be his party leader David Seymour — the hardy perennial of whether he stood by all his government's statements and actions?
Spoiler alert: yes, he did ... particularly the NZ Infrastructure Commission's freshly announced National Infrastructure Plan.
Mr Stephenson followed up by asking about access to new medicines — which the man who is also an associate health minister with responsibility for drug-buying agency Pharmac was more than happy to talk about — and then GPs (ditto).
It was going so well, but Mr Stephenson then incurred the Speaker's wrath by asking his leader to comment on comments made once upon a time by the little-remembered Labour MP Charles Chauvel about the Regulatory Standards Bill.
"No, that's not something you [Mr Seymour] can make any comment on whatsoever. So sit down and have another go at the question," the Speaker harumphed.
Fair play to Mr Stephenson; he found a cunning way around the Speaker's edict by asking if the acting PM agreed with any statements that he had recently seen in relation to the Regulatory Standards Bill.
"Well, I do, as a matter of fact," Mr Seymour replied with glee, before embarking on the sort of answer which makes Gerry Brownlee turn puce.
Q10, from National Waitaki MP Miles Anderson, was much more benign, as he asked Agriculture Minister Todd McClay about the government's plan to ban full farm-to-forestry conversions — as covered in last week's Southern Say.
No alarms and no surprises here, as Mr McClay gave a suitably apocalyptic answer to Mr Anderson's question: "What is the impact on rural communities of whole farm-to-forest conversions?"
Q11, from Labour Taieri MP Ingrid Leary to Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka on proposed changes to the Retirement Villages Act, was when things got really interesting. She wanted to know if the draft legislation would include "provisions for repayments but not mandate them".
This is a topic close to Ms Leary's heart (she has a member's Bill in the ballot on just this subject), not to mention thousands of retirement village residents and their families affected by the issue.
Most villages operate under an occupation rights (ORA) agreement system, whereby residents buy the right to live in what might well be their final home, but not ownership of it. That sum is then held until the ORA ends.
An ORA does not come cheap — in the realm of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which is high, true, but which may also be fair enough in some circumstances: villages are expensive to build and costly to run.
But an ORA comes with associated bonds and fees, and gruesome tales abound of residents, or their families, being obliged to pay fees after moving to a higher-care unit or dying.
Also problematic is the process of getting out of an ORA. The village will usually claim a portion of the ORA as an "exit fee" and then resell the ORA.
However, that right may well have accumulated a considerable capital gain in the intervening period — something that the former ORA owner cannot benefit from.
Many, and Ms Leary is one, think this effectively means villages are enjoying an interest-free loan from their residents — albeit that they receive a secure and comfortable lifestyle and residence for their golden years.
Consumer has been running a campaign for years on the issue of what it sees as unfair retirement village contracts; Mosgiel's Brian Peat, president of the Retirement Village Residents' Association, has also been hot on the topic for a number of years.
Mr Potaka has bad news for Ms Leary, saying that the Northern Advocate article on which she has based her question had been incorrect Undeterred, she then asked if Mr Potaka would commit now to mandating fair repayment times and terms.
"There are a number of matters that we are considering as part of a broader reform of this matter, including dispute resolution protections, and a wide range of consumer protections and various matters, including those that the member referred to, will be considered and are still under active consideration," Mr Potaka replied reassuringly ... but not reassuringly enough for Ms Leary, who pointedly followed up with: "What other sectors are there where people have no control over when someone pays them back their own money?"
That was quite a broad and open question, Mr Potaka replied, but he could say that the government was "responsibly reviewing" a wide variety of matters, including consumer protections for elderly folks living in retirement villages.
Would that include, perhaps supporting a law change which would require operators to give residents their money back within three months, Ms Leary wondered, knowing full well that such a Bill existed.
"If the member is asking me to jump in front of Cabinet and make decisions by way of a question and answer session, I will not be doing that," Mr Potaka said.
"What I will be doing is diligently and professionally undertaking my responsibility as associate minister of housing to explore these issues and bring these matters through the policy decisions and, ultimately, to this fine chamber."
But whether that exploration makes anyone happy is a question for another day.
mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz
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The Art Budget blues Given New Zealand's current ideological fixation on cost cutting for its own sake, Creative NZ's retention of funding of $16.6 million in Budget 2025 counts as a relief, even though inflation will erode some of the funding's net value. Direct government funding provides about 25% of Creative NZ's revenue, with the other 75% coming from Lotteries Board money, which has inched up to $52.78 annually for the next four years, from $49.5 million in 2023/24. The current lotteries plus government funding comes to an annual total of $69 million, well down from the $87 million the arts received during the last year of the pandemic recovery period. In a familiar gambit, 're-prioritisation' has also seen funds shifted from one scheme and added to another to create an illusion of extra government support. 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As for the community funding for arts -related community assets such as libraries, community organisations and Minister Nicola Willis once again raised (on RNZ yesterday) the spectre of National imposing a cap on the annual rates increases that local councils are allowed to propose. This pandering to property owners resentful of anything being spent on community facilities and events they don't personally use, is deeply alarming. An arbitrary rates cap poses an obvious threat to council spending on the likes of libraries, community arts events, and public transport.(Yesterday, Willis spoke about the need to reduce council spending 'on fanciful projects.') By driving down rates revenue, a rates cap policed by central government would force communities to make ugly choices about which public facilities councils can continue to support. In the process, the rates cap would also undermine the international credit rating of councils, and increase the costs of their borrowing for essential infrastructure. Instead of an imposed rates cap, Local Government NZ President ( and Selwyn mayor) Sam Broughton wants local and central government to collaborate on solutions: 'From the international analysis it is clear that a rates cap will have unintended consequences on communities; it will restrict the ability of councils to invest in infrastructure and risks their financial instability, and we need to avoid examples show that a rates cap will have the opposite effect to what the Government wants to achieve.' Footnote: BTW, and in the interests of informed collaboration, there is nothing 'fanciful ' about local council or central government spending on the arts. Artists pay taxes and help lift the nation's GDP, as well as enhancing the public's sense of wellbeing and cultural identity. If artists could afford to live downtown e.g. if tax system changes did enable unused commercial properties to be occupied at peppercorn rentals – this could revitalise the inner city, boost retail spending, provide part time labour for cafes and restaurants, and enhance the value of adjacent downtown properties through the added foot traffic (and tourism) being generated. Footnote: In 2019 Victoria University academic Jonathan Barrett analysed how a capital gains tax could make more people feel inclined to invest in art. Don't Rely On The Market Some people, including a few artists, find the very notion of state funding of the arts to be a hard concept to embrace. For one thing, there's a certain lack of romance involved. An artist starving in a garret is a more heroic image (at least, until the gum rot sets in) than an artist pulling a government cheque from the mailbox en route to the potting shed. Charges of elitism over arts funding (why this art form over that one, why them, not me) tend to clang up hard against the sense that this stuff is really important, contributes to our national identity etc etc. All of which is worthy of debate, provided it doesn't lead to policy paralysis, One way to justify spending on the arts is to demand a commercial return, as one would with any other commodity. That argument is self defeating. Why? For one thing, society benefits from what economists call the 'spillover' benefits of arts creation and consumption, just as it does in other non-quantifiable areas. Inevitably, the 'spillover' returns to society from spending on art, public healthcare, state schooling, science and the military are notoriously difficult to quantify, and establish a market value. Defence spending for instance is as costly as its benefits are nebulous. Yet for some reason, successive governments have been willing to write the NZDF – and them only – a blank cheque. Why not science? Why not the arts? There is also a so-called 'option value' argument for arts funding, whereby whilst you or I may not choose to patronise an art gallery or a ballet, many of us would still like to see such things supported, and kept as a viable option for others, or for our grandchildren. To illustrate this notion of option value, economists routinely offer the jokey old anecdote about the King of Naples, who once told the composer Antonio Scarlatti that he felt fine about supporting the Naples Opera, just so long as he was never actually invited to attend the confounded thing. Another key economic driver for regular boosts in arts funding was a point made decades ago by the economist William Baumol – namely, that arts activity is simply not conducive to the technological advances and the productivity gains that have been obtainable elsewhere in the economy. This syndrome – routinely called 'cost disease' or 'Baumol's disease' - applies equally to the funding for public health and education as much as it does to the arts. All such sectors entail services – creating art, educating kids, caring for sick people – that are next to impossible to automate and to mechanise. 'This means that as wages go up in these handicraft services,' Baumol said, 'there is no productivity offset to rising costs.' (Lorde, Taikla Waititi, Shane Cotton etc do not come off a production line.). At this point, the free marketers would probably say – well, why not leave it the market? If people want art, then let them pay for it. Yes, Baumol wrote, but what quality would the prevailing market settle for? Wouldn't such a market be inclined to downsize by cutting out rehearsals and other production costs, and concentrate on the likes of sure-fire Broadway hit musicals, rather than on Shakespeare or on untried new talent? In other words, the centre-right formula of holding the funding at current levels – and looking to the market and/or the community for extra money – is unlikely to result in (a) quality (b) diversity and (c) anything other than the recycling of the known and the safe. All of which would quickly erode the option value and the cultural capital of our art, both here and overseas. It would be self-defeating, in that it would diminish/destroy the value of the product. the very worst, an added investment by the state in art and culture is certain to deliver better social and economic returns than gifting landlords with a $3 billion handout. Footnote : Australia is a wealthier country than New Zealand. Yet its artists hardly have it easy. According to the SMH article linked to above, the average annual income of professional artists in Australia is $A54,500, earned via insecure projects and commissions. A writer's average annual income is just $A18,000, and the median annual income for musicians is $A15,000. Plainly, starving in a garret for your art isn't a lifestyle ' choice' that died out at the end of the 19th century. Needing The Love There's no particular reason for linking to this, beyond it being an all-time favourite video. Oh baby lady girl. Art is its own reward :
