OPINION: Jaenine Parkinson, chief executive of Museums Aotearoa Te Tari o Ngā Whare Taonga | The Press

In his recent opinion piece, Mike Yardley asks whether Canterbury Museum needs “fresh blood at the controls” (September 22). That line of questioning risks overlooking a deeper structural question about how New Zealand funds, values and plans for cultural infrastructure.

Canterbury Museum is one of our country’s most significant cultural institutions. It houses collections that tell the stories of Canterbury, Antarctica, Māori, natural history and New Zealand itself. These collections have been assembled over generations because previous New Zealanders understood that cultural assets are held in trust, cared for by one generation and passed to the next.

Central government has previously recognised that wider value. In 2022, it contributed $25 million to the project through Christchurch regeneration funding. The following year, Canterbury Museum received a further $10m through the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund, an exceptional grant within the programme. Together, those contributions amounted to approximately 17% of the redevelopment budget.

Those investments reflected a longstanding principle: cultural infrastructure is a shared national responsibility. The museum cares for approximately a quarter of New Zealand's distributed national collection and safeguards heritage assets that form part of our shared national story.

Yardley questions why additional government support was not pursued earlier. Yet criticism of the board overlooks a significant shift in the funding landscape. The challenge facing the project is not a lack of engagement with central government, but the absence of a funding partnership that central government itself helped establish.

The closure of the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund in 2024 exemplifies that shift. For almost a decade, the fund distributed an average of around $8.5m annually to museums, galleries and heritage projects while providing an important partnership mechanism between central government, local government and communities.

Its closure fundamentally changed expectations on councils. Local authorities are increasingly expected to shoulder responsibility for cultural infrastructure while simultaneously responding to escalating costs across water, transport, climate resilience and community facilities. In Canterbury Museum’s case, uncertainty created by the absence of the anticipated government contribution risks delaying completion by a further year and adding another $7.2m to the project’s cost.

The debate over international visitor revenue illustrates the same tension. Yardley criticises the museum’s apparent reluctance to rely on visitor charges for loan repayment. Yet revenue from international tourism fluctuates with economic conditions, exchange rates and visitor behaviour, making it an uncertain foundation for long-term debt servicing. Such volatility sits uneasily alongside the growing costs of caring for collections and heritage assets.

That revenue was also intended to help offset the increased operating costs of a substantially larger and more sophisticated facility. If it is instead diverted to servicing a capital loan, those costs do not disappear. Costs that might have been met through visitor revenue are instead pushed back onto local government through higher operating subsidies. In effect, ratepayers risk funding both the capital and operational consequences of a project that central government has already recognised as nationally significant.

The broader lesson from Canterbury Museum concerns the consequences of fragmented funding arrangements and short planning horizons. Major infrastructure projects perform best when responsibilities are shared, funding pathways are clear, and investment decisions are made with a long-term perspective. Uncertainty narrows options, increases costs and reduces value for money. Yet it is becoming a defining feature of how New Zealand approaches cultural infrastructure.

The closure of the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund has weakened a key mechanism through which central and local government shared responsibility for cultural infrastructure, increasing reliance on councils and making investment more vulnerable to short-term political decision-making.

What is needed now is a bipartisan commitment to cultural infrastructure as part of New Zealand's long-term development. We should seek the same certainty for the institutions that preserve our memory, knowledge, collections and identity as we do for other forms of essential infrastructure. Museums, galleries and heritage collections operate on timelines measured in generations, not electoral cycles.

Previous generations invested in collections and assets they knew would outlast them. New Zealand must renew that commitment by recognising that cultural stewardship is a shared responsibility, that investment in cultural infrastructure is inherently intergenerational, and that institutions safeguarding our collective heritage warrant sustained national support.

-The Press

Image: A photo from earlier in the museum rebuild, showing bracing on its historic Rolleston Ave facade. Photo: ALDEN WILLIAMS / The Press