NZ Political Parties' Art PoliciesNZ Arts TV show Frontseat interviewed all the main political party arts spokespeople for the show that screened Sunday last, and have put the full transcripts of those interviews online. Essential reading for those of you in the arts community...

• Labour - Helen Clark
• National - Georgina Te Heuheu
• Progressive - Jim Anderton
• ACT - Deborah Coddington
• Maori - Pita Sharples
• Greens - Sue Kedgely
• United Future - Marc Alexander
• NZ First - Brian Donnelly
  

Some highlights...

Marc Alexander - United Future

With the Venice Biennale I’m not convinced that the public has been fully accounted to by Creative NZ in what goes on. The idea of a public toilet, or whatever it was, sent over there, I’m not sure if the public would be happy to see their tax dollars going on that. [emphasis added]

"Or whatever it was". Informed opinion there, then.

Brian Donnelly - NZ First

Certainly we wouldn’t reduce any funding from the present point in time and we very much support the voluntary quota of NZ Music, we think that’s had a very big impact, a very positive impact.

I find it frightening to think that NZ First would actually make a good choice of coalition partners for Labour based on their arts policy.

Helen Clark - Labour

Certainly expect to see more New Zealand films being made with the Film Commission baseline funding doubled. We've had the very interesting project done on how to create more export potential for kiwi music, and we have the development fund to be rolled out with support through the Music Industry Commission.

Yay for Labour. I love how she calls it 'kiwi music'. But time to review some of those older funding schemes, though.

Georgina Te Heuheu - National

Q. Current arts funding levels – would you cut, increase or maintain?

A. They’ll be maintained at the current level, yes.

Good-o.

Q. How would you make an arts supporter who was going to vote Labour, vote National?

A. Well from my interaction with the sector I know, I've been told that a number of participants in this sector think there's too much looseness in the way funding is dispersed and in some parts of the industry, various industries, they'd like to see just a little bit more business like approaches because they don't think there are. I was visiting with a group of people yesterday in the music industry that basically said if we want to grow our local industry then we've got to get serious about it and make sure there are proper, we're efficient, we're effective in the way we spend money and so I mean, the policy we've put out reflects a lot of what we've heard in the sector.

Also good, in theory.

And maybe just be a little bit smarter about funding success, rewarding success, I don’t know if that necessarily goes on at the sector at the moment.

Sounds vaguely related to the 'commercial viability' rule-of-thumb that NZ On Air use for their music funding decisions to me, which has caused much nashing of teeth and pulling of hair amongst the NZ music community over the years.

Deborah Coddington - ACT

Primarily tax relief so people can choose which arts to support rather than have the government choose for them. If National privatised TVNZ, have some or all of that money go into contestable fund for independent producers and drama makers to use. Maori Television, encourage that to become an independent, standalone entity like MAI FM. Revamp the funding of NZ films so that it’s not politicised and get the bureaucrats out so more money goes to the actual films. And overall funding we would maintain as it is.

Sue Kedgely - Green

We think that the amount of money that the government has invested in the arts sector over the last 5 or 6 years is fantastic and it's made a huge contribution not just to the arts sector but to the whole economy, to our culture, to our identity, so we're wildly enthusiastic about that and would support more funding perhaps in certain sectors.

ie. "We're with Helen on this one."

Pita Sharples - Maori Party

Actually I think the state should keep right out of the arts and just supply the putea, keep the money coming in and fix the act up a little.

Um, right.

Jim Anderton - Progressive

I think taking the arts and the cultural traditions seriously and funding them at a level that they haven’t been funded for a very long time. The challenge now is to keep that going and make it a continuum so we don't get this up and down funding of arts and culture. That we have a steady line up and then we can be quite proud of ourselves in due course.

In due course? How about now? He also manages to name-drop Shakespeare, Van Gogh, and his own opera-singing daughter through the course of the interview.

A replay of the show will be on air this coming Sunday (11 Sept) at 6.30am, on TV1. (Yes, 6.30 AM - in the morning. I recommend swotting up on the VCR's scehduled recording options).
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