Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou Katoa.

Thank you for the welcome, Anthony [Wright - Chair of Museums Aotearoa] and to all the members of Museums Aotearoa, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. Even more sincerely, thank you for the opportunity to build a relationship with this organisation. I am absolutely delighted that you have invited me here, and I look forward to this relationship going from strength to strength over the coming years.

The Government, as many of you know, takes your sector - our sector - extremely seriously. Because our view is that our culture is who we are and where we stand in the world; our art is how we say that; and our heritage is the wellspring upon which we draw, as people, as communities and as a nation. So your role in making our heritage available is absolutely essential to the wellbeing of us as people and to our operations as a society, and also has a huge economic effect, and none of those things is unimportant.

Our view, as we have said again and again, is that this sector is important for three reasons. One is that our artistic expression is intrinsically good. It's an energy exchange, it's an intellectual exchange, a conversation that we need to have. I shouldn't bring party politics in here, but unlike Act, we don't see a differentiation between heritage and contemporary art.

We think arts and culture and heritage are all important. It is about identity - about personal identity, community identity and national identity. We also think this sector is a profound and formative part of our economic life, and we want to see our distinctive New Zealand culture playing an important part in the development and maintenance of all of those key aspects of our lives.

Over the last 18 months the Labour-Alliance Government have made a number of decisions that have enhanced the government's involvement with culture, apart from the Minister for Arts being in her spare time the Prime Minister - and she sends her greetings to this meeting.

We have put more money into cultural agencies such as NZ On Air, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and Creative New Zealand.

We have given a significant boost to the creative industries through, for example, the establishment of the Music Industry Commission and the Film Production Fund; and the support that will be made available through the Ministry of Economic Development. We're hoping to develop those relationships more deeply.

We are looking at the establishment of an Arts Allowance that will provide greater opportunities for artists to reach their creative - and financial - potential.

We have put in place new arrangements to use cultural diplomacy. The promotion and presentation of New Zealand's culture abroad can play an enhanced role in supporting New Zealand's international relations. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade are convening a group of government and non-government agencies to advance this issue. We have some exciting prospects to consider, including the possibility of overseas exhibitions of the work of Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere.

Working in the area you do, you will no doubt be aware that international cultural promotion has the potential to provide benefits across a range of areas. Cultural diplomacy can facilitate the improvement of New Zealand's political and diplomatic relationships; improve New Zealand's performance and competitiveness in economic areas such as trade and tourism; enable cultural performers and artists to explore new markets for cultural goods and services and provide them with professional development opportunities; and promote New Zealand as a country of diverse cultures with a talented and sophisticated population.

Aside from these - and a range of other projects - the government is also working on a number of cultural policies that have specific implications for the nature of its relationship with museums.

I appreciate that our Regional Museums Funding Policy is a matter of great interest to you.

You will know that this government has been investigating options and 'sizing the issue' of capital project requirements for museums in regional centres. Some of you will, no doubt, have completed the questionnaires sent out by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, where we sought to understand the extent of the demand.

I am yet not in a position to anticipate any forthcoming announcements, but as the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Helen Clark, advised at the unveiling of the Suter refurbishment plans, 'what we are looking at now is a project fund which will enable us to help regional galleries and collections'.

The form that any such fund might take is not an issue unfortunately that I can enter into at this time. I can say though that the government will continue to regard regional institutions as primarily a regional responsibility - we cannot relieve local government of its primary responsibility in this area.

But I can say also that where there are collections of national significance, the government does recognise a role for itself, on behalf of all New Zealanders, and on behalf of those objects that play such an important part in the way we develop and maintain our sense of national identity.

Any future project fund will therefore be based, as is the current scheme, on the importance of the collections themselves, and on the need to ensure that they are appropriately displayed, cared for and stored. It is not envisaged that any new scheme will fundamentally change the way government involves itself in the museological sector; and we do not intend to begin providing funding towards the operational costs of institutions.

I warn you that I practised avoiding further questions on this issue in New Plymouth very recently, and will not be drawn further now! But let me reiterate my government's strong view that our museological sector is one in which there is very clearly a national stake. As such, we have been giving it considerable and sincere attention.

I want to speak briefly about the review of Gaming, because yours is a sector that - no matter how committed the government of the day is to providing a reasonable level of support - will continue to be dependent to a considerable extent on funding from other sources. The Lottery Grants Board makes an important contribution in your area: I know that many museological projects are only made possible by the provision of support from this body.

The current review of gaming being undertaken by the Department of Internal Affairs is addressing issues implicit in supporting cultural (and many other) activities with proceeds from gambling activities. Given the potential implications for your institutions and your sector, I hope you have taken the opportunity - through Museums Aotearoa and as individual institutions - to make a submission. If not, you have, I understand, until the 30th of this month to do so.

We are also reviewing the Local Government Act. While we are on the subject of reviews, I should mention to you the government's intention to issue a discussion paper, later this year, about the review of the Local Government Act 1974. This matter does of course fall within the portfolio of my colleague, Sandra Lee, the Minister of Local Government, but I am the Labour Party's consultative Minister on this area, so I am reasonably involved in this process. Given the fact that local authorities have primary responsibility for nearly all of your institutions, however, this would seem a key document for your sector, and one to which it would be a priority for you to respond - again, both through Museums Aotearoa, and individually. What I'd hope to see is a specific mention of the fact that Local Government, as in many other countries, particularly Scotland, should have a direct responsibility for culture and heritage.

Another matter to which we have been giving careful attention is the review of the Antiquities Act 1975 and the development of new legislation to protect moveable cultural property.

Again, the key driver for this government is the need to protect material of national significance - whether it is newly-found material, of either Maori of non-Maori origin; or whether it is material that is at risk of being exported.

The Ministry is working through the many complex and delicate issues raised by government involvement - and indeed government non-involvement - in these areas.

We must put together an approach that is consistent with our obligations to New Zealanders to do what we can to ensure their access - and that of their descendants - to material that is nationally significant. It must be consistent too with our Treaty obligations, with cultural imperatives in relation to taonga, with the willingness of our communities to support and implement it, and with administrative feasibility.

We are committed to consulting with stakeholders about the new legislation. I look forward to your contribution to the dialogue.

It might be useful if I take a moment to mention a dialogue currently occurring with respect to a special area of activity - the government policy on repatriation of koiwi. Te Puni Kokiri and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage are working jointly to prepare a government policy for the repatriation of koiwi, in collaboration with Te Papa. At some point within the next three months, a paper will be put to Cabinet seeking approval of the policy.

Obviously it would be premature to go into too much detail about this issue prior to its consideration by Cabinet. I can say that this government has a preference for a policy that is institution based, and that operates at an institution to institution level. It seems to us that the national institution is the appropriate body to take primary responsibility for the implementation of the policy, and this has been confirmed for us at two national hui of key Maori stakeholders. Work is proceeding on this basis.

I want to touch on the issue of Historic Places. There are clear points of overlap between the interest the government has in collections of national significance, and the interest it has in places of national significance. Many of the policy issues are the same: How is it that we make the decision about what is nationally significant? Who picks up the responsibilities and costs implicit in such a designation? How do we balance cultural and commercial imperatives in a way that is fair to all parties? How do we balance individual ownership and public access?

In recent times, there has been much thought given to the policy and arrangements that are in place with respect to historic places. This government's priority is to ensure that the New Zealand Historic Places Trust is in an enhanced position to play an effective national role.

We have supported that objective with increased funding for the Trust, and by overturning proposed changes to the Resource Management Act that would have diluted the power of the Trust.

There will, over time, be more that we do to ensure that the Trust is best placed to do its work. But we will not be embarking on yet another full-scale, zero-based, green fields, blue sky review of the kind that the Trust has been repeatedly subject to. It is a time of consolidation for the Trust, and the further changes we will make will be modest, incremental - and positive.

This brings me to Structures and Arrangements. I have said that this government does not have plans to make significant changes to the structures and arrangements it has in place to organise its involvement with museums.

In some areas government could do things differently - some might say better. I acknowledge that there are some gaps in the current system, and some arguments to be made for alternative arrangements.

But there are a couple of points that I want to make with respect to this issue. One is that, in a sector as complex as this one, and which includes large numbers of dedicated and passionate people, we are never going to have a system that pleases everybody. We have an obligation, however, to ensure that sensible arrangements are in place, and that people are enabled to work constructively within these arrangements.

Secondly, our priority is getting resources to where they are most useful, at the coalface, so to speak, rather than expend them in processes of restructuring and reinvention. This was the difficulty the government had with the Heart of the Nation report - its conclusions focussed rather too exclusively on how the Government might rearrange its own interests, rather than examining and articulating the cultural sector's own sense of the best direction for it to take.

I therefore wanted to make a challenge to you. I'm asking you all to think strategically and to advise the Government, with well-thought-out advice on key issues, such as:
- What are nationally important collections?
- How can central support be delivered in a way that best meets the needs of the various sectors, encompassing small community museums, regional museums, metropolitan museums, specialist museums and of course our national museum?
- How Government might be able to help seed or co-ordinate museum projects of national significance.
And many other issues which I'm sure will come out of your deliberations over the next few days.

It may well be that, in the medium future, there are actions that government can take to support the development and implementation of ideas that will be of considerable benefit to your institutions and your stakeholders. But the government, in considering such proposals, needs to be assured that they do have broad support from organisations such as yours.

It's my pleasure to open the Annual General Meeting of Museums Aotearoa. I wish you well in your deliberations. I'm sure they will be robust and energetic. I hope that this is the start of a relationship we will all enjoy and which will be of benefit to all of your institutions and to New Zealand as a whole.