Flight of the Conchords had to go to the US to get their series funded – the state broadcaster wouldn’t fund it.

I’m not sure why you sight these examples in the opening of your article?

Is this because most of the output of the better-resourced Recurrently Funded Organisations (RFOs) – who benefited most from the $86, funding boost – has involved doing ‘covers’ of plays / operas / ballets created elsewhere? So nothing springs to mind as a great achievement over the time of Helen Clark’s reign.

There is something wrong with that picture, is there not? Perhaps, having announced the Peter Jackson-led review of the NZ Film Commission, Chris Finlayson will turn his attention to Creative New Zealand. But please, in both cases, let it not mean that work at the creative coalface comes to a grinding halt as the reviews proceed.

A fundamental objective must surely be that much more of ‘vote arts’ must find its way to the actual artists, rather than be soaked up by the arts bureaucracy. Lovely people though they are (and I mean that), they hold down relatively well-paid and secure jobs while routinely telling their funding applicants it is simply impossible to resource them to pay proper professional fees to the creative artists and production teams – even though they would not have those jobs without the very existence and persistence of those creative artists.

Another small correction.

You include “Arts Laureate” in your list of Labour Government achievements. The Arts Foundation of New Zealand, an independent charitable trust, produces the Laureate Awards. These awards are funded by a private fund that was initially established with a Lottery donation.

However, Helen Clark’s government instituted the Prime Minster’s Literary Awards for writers and I think the Government took a role in the Poet Laureate under her leadership.

Just a clarification re. your statement that “the creation of the Film Archive” was one of the ideas Labour “instituted” after 2000. I am not sure what the article is referring to here.

The New Zealand Film Archive was established in 1981 and is independent charitable trust that is not directly funded from government. The only other ‘film archives’ around are also long-established: National Archives has always been responsible for the NZ Film Unit productions, like the old ‘Weekly Review’ newsreels; and the Television Archive (TVNZ) has its own in-house footage library.

Thus I don’t think the last Labour government can be given any special credit in this regard.

To refer to ‘classical’ music is both a misnomer and misleading – other monikers such as ‘Western Art Music’ are equally limiting – perhaps the best description was a winner in Radio NZ Concert’s competition for a better name a few years back: ‘the music formerly known as ‘classical’.’

In these genre’s of music New Zealand has, over the last two decades, achieved remarkable international success and attention. National and international success of composers such as John Psathas, (whose music for the Athens Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies was heard by audiences in the millions), through to intermedia pioneers such as Phil Dadson, multimedia and inter-ethnic composers such as Jack Body, and composers such as Gillian Whitehead amd a legion of others are redefining music in New Zealand integrating old and new, taonga puoro and western instruments, Asian influences and true internationalism in their aural expression of art…. The performers taking this ‘New Zealand’ music overseas range from individuals to ensembles (NZ String Quartet, NZTrio) to full orchestras (notably our NZSO) and choirs (Tower Voices New Zealand being acclaimed as Choir of the World is no bagatelle!) Recordings of this music from Atoll and Rattle, and Trust Records as well as the SOUNZfine and Waiteata promotional series have seen (heard) broadcasts of New Zealand music all over the world with review comments frequently pointing out what a fresh, dynamic and unique ‘sound’ New Zealand music has.

There is little doubt that the ambient environment for the arts promoted by Helen Clark’s lead, have been an important factor in encouraging, inspiring and sustaining a resurgence in ‘serious’ art forms through a time when they could easily have fallen by the wayside.

These successes cannot be measured in political tenures, but on the lasting influence they have on the direction of New Zealand culture over decades. To worry about radio play, record sales or tv programmes for items which are unabashedly ‘fashionable’ is like assuming that a film’s box-office on release is the sole determinant of its worth. There are expressions of art which are not dependent on the vagaries of fashion but which rather evolve at their own pace and are considered, profound, multi-layered expressions of individual creativity.

What needs to be sustained, nurtured and provided for is the mechanism whereby these musicians/composers and their works are promoted, made findable and accessible over the long term. And in terms of music, this means SOUNZ (as well as MENZA in the education sector).