More cuts proposed at Ministry for Culture and Heritage

RNZ News

20 hours ago

Photo:
RNZ / Quin Tauetau
The axe is hovering over historians and staff at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage who create digital content used by schools and the public.
Manatū Taonga, which lost $2m in the Budget, told staff on Thursday it proposed to shed 24 roles, about 15 percent of its staff.
"Our current level of resourcing is not sufficient to keep the content we have up to date, and our context has shifted significantly, meaning the ministry's core focus no longer supports the creation of content," said the change proposal obtained by RNZ.
Three of its seven historian jobs and most of its digital production roles would go, unless consultation now underway changed the plan.
A former chief historian for 14 years, Professor Jock Phillips, said the proposal put websites "absolutely central" to the education of New Zealanders at risk.
Laulu Mac Leauanae.
Photo:
Ministry for Culture and Heritage / supplied
"If you look at the usage, it's phenomenal - particularly in schools but also internationally," Phillips said.
"You need people to keep those up to date, keep up with what's happening, keep up with new knowledge. And it would be an absolute tragedy to see those not properly maintained."
A ministry staffer who RNZ agreed not to name said the downgrade had been a long time coming.
"Our senior management have talked about wanting to be a 'policy shop' for some time, which means they've always wanted to get rid of the awkward community-engaged parts of the ministry," they said by email on Friday.
"The cuts required by government are just an excuse to do what senior management have wanted to do for a while - get rid of community engagement with actual humans."
They said this included school groups doing lessons at Pukeahu National War Memorial, helping with Te Tai Whakaea Treaty Settlement Stories led by iwi, and with Pacific Histories in response to
the Dawn Raids apology
.
"We do a shitload on the smell of an oily rag because we are committed to sharing the stories of all New Zealanders and we feel this work matters," they said.
The change proposal showed the ministry's 'heritage content and production' unit faced among the biggest shake-ups, its 11-person team reduced to just four, including three historians going.
A lot of the ministry's digital publishing capacity would be decommissioned, merged or farmed out.
The options were "migrating to static sites, decommissioning and archiving sites, merging with other sites or finding another organisation to operate sites".
Also, the highly specialist job of carillonist would be cut, to be replaced by contractors "as and when required".
"We are not able to hold highly specialist roles that are not directly aligned to legislation, regulation or other mandated work," the proposal said.
The ministry just spent another $6m strengthening Wellington's carillon bell tower.
Chief executive Laulu Mac Leauanae told RNZ the ministry would carefully consider staff feedback on the proposal, and "out of respect for those affected" would not comment further.
He wrote in the change document: "This proposed reduction reflects our fiscally constrained environment and the need to reduce roles across the ministry."
The proposal comes just one year after Manatū Taonga's last restructure finished; this cost $700,000 in redundancy payments.
It had about 190 staff three ago, and 151 now. That would drop further under what was proposed, with business groups cut from five to three, and two senior manager jobs going.
Seven roles would be disestablished in a kaupapa Māori group set up just two years ago, and its remaining jobs would be merged into another group.
"The ministry's context has evolved," Leauanae said in the document. "While I am proposing these changes, as a ministry we remain fully committed to our responsibilities under Te Tiriti o Waitangi."
Jock Phillips.
Photo:
Victoria University of WellingtonNew Zealand.
RNZ asked if having fewer people left to do this indicated a deprioritisation, but the ministry did not address that.
The operational business group, Te Hua, would absorb about eight of the jobs not cut in the Māori unit.
Te Hua itself, where the historian jobs would go, would shift away from creating and maintaining "a vast repository of historical information", the proposal said.
"Ten years ago, a team of more than 30 people worked on creating and maintaining this content" but resources were more limited now.
The staffer listed a dozen types of project that Te Hua worked on, such as helping create over 2000 oral histories of West Coast rugby fans in the 1940s and East Coast whariki mat weavers, among others, and helping
uncover waka in the Chatham Islands
.
Phillips warned stripping away expertise would inevitably be damaging.
"The thing that concerns me most is the websites that the historians have produced over the years - Te Ara Encyclopaedia of NZ, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, NZHistory, Te Akomanga digital history curriculum support - they are absolutely central to the education of New Zealanders. If we don't understand ourselves, we are a very diminished society."
Te Hua would shift towards monitoring and legislation, with a whole new unit under that name set up.
Among other things, the new unit would consider the impacts on heritage of the government's fast-track legislation, it appeared.
"Due to the requirement to reduce our baseline, the work programme in Te Hua must be focused on activities that are required due to legislation, regulation or other mandate," Leauanae wrote.
The proposal is to cut 35 roles and create 11. Staff have till June 23 to express interest in voluntary redundancy.
The ministry had a staff headcount of 140 in 2019-20, 192 soon after Covid-19, and 151 at the latest count.
While it hired 23 contractors and consultants in 2023-24 at a cost of $1.4m, that dropped sharply to just $400,000 in the nine months to March 2025.
The Public Service Association lamented proposed cuts to roles that supported websites honouring the 28th Māori Battalion and recording the history of New Zealand's participation in the Vietnam war.
"This is yet another decision that exposes the short-sighted thinking behind the Government's funding cuts," it said.
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