Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Helen Clark Years: Cultural Policy in New Zealand 1999−2008

2010; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10632921.2010.485101

1930-7799

Michael Volkerling,

Regional Development and Policy

Abstract This article introduces and contextualizes the essays contained in this edition of the journal. It offers an analysis of the political, economic, and social context of New Zealand prior to Helen Clark's election as Prime Minister in 1999. It then provides some account of her initial actions as Minister of Arts, Culture, and Heritage, focusing on the "cultural recovery package" that featured prominently on her initial policy agenda. While this package established her reputation as an enterprising Cultural Minister, it is suggested that the true legacy of her decade in the portfolio may lie elsewhere. Among the particular achievements to be considered are her promotion and preservation of New Zealand's military heritage; her successful adaptation for New Zealand of Britain's Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS); "creative industries" policy framework; her extension of IP protection with the onset of the digital age; and her increased investment in the New Zealand film industry as it sought to strike some balance between achieving global market success and articulating a distinctive cultural vision. KEYWORDS: creative industriescultural policyfilm industryintellectual propertymilitary heritage Notes 1. The Fourth Labour government was in power from July 1984 to November 1990, initially under the leadership of David Lange. His Finance Minister, Roger Douglas, led the economic reform process, following a New Right agenda strongly supported by Treasury advisors. These same policies were also pursued by Ruth Richardson, who held the Finance portfolio from 1990 to 1993, in the National government headed by Jim Bolger. 2. The G7 finance ministers have met every three or four months since 1986 to review the state of their economies and decide on common action […] At the level of macroeconomic policy, they call for all countries to adopt sound monetary and fiscal policies, where "sound" is code for "tight enough to keep both inflation and fiscal deficits at very low levels." At the level of microeconomic policy, they call for market liberalization […] Their solution to high unemployment is to deregulate labor markets so as to make labor markets more flexible in terms of hiring and firing, wages, working time, and work organization. Their solution to financial fragility and instability is more transparency, stricter IMF surveillance, tighter prudential regulation of borrowing banks, higher capital adequacy standards, contingent lines of credit, and the like. Since the G7 are the most powerful members of the IMF their views are taken up as the IMF's views and projected into the IMF's client countries, reinforcing the consensus about the way ahead. (Wade 2002, 5) 3. Bolger's contribution […] to New Zealand's independence […] encompassed six significant direction-setting policies; the building of "Our Place," Te Papa; his reform of the honours system; his expressing confidence in our judiciary by advocating that our final court of appeal should be a New Zealand one, not the Privy Council, a reform later enacted by the Clark government; his government's significant advancement of the Crown's responsibility to right past injustices against Māori; his preparatory leadership in relation to MMP; and his sign-posting of the inevitability of New Zealand becoming a republic. A seventh element that underpins these considerable achievements, Jim Bolger's character, reinforces the crucial interaction between ideas, people and leadership that characterises any independence journey and its important milestones. (CitationJohanson, 2008)