6 minute read
A way of life
WORDS: JACQUI GIBSON • IMAGERY: ALAN DOVE
Marian Hobbs was walking the Scottish Highlands one day when she was struck by the need to go home. It was something about the familiarity of the barren landscape, while at the same time feeling alien within it, she explains over the phone from her century-old Dunedin cottage.
Marian Hobbs, former Labour MP, was appointed Chair of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga in July 2019, taking over from former National MP Wyatt Creech.
She returned to New Zealand from the UK in 2013 after one gap year of teaching morphed into five.
Marian’s place is undoubtedly Aotearoa New Zealand. A long-time learner of te reo Māori, with a career that spans more than 35 years as a secondary school teacher, department head and principal and 12 years in parliament, Marian grew up in a state house in the Christchurch suburb of Papanui.
Her father was Parliamentary Press Gallery reporter and author Leslie Hobbs.
Championing New Zealand’s heritage has been an enduring theme in Marian’s life.
It was the country’s literary heritage she passed on to high school students as an English literature teacher – the canon of writers such as Albert Wendt and Witi Ihimaera in particular.
Years later, as Minister of Broadcasting, she successfully pushed to get more New Zealand music played on commercial radio.
By 2005, New Zealand content averaged around 20 percent, up from lows of around 1 percent in the mid-1990s.
As a university activist, Marian helped to shape New Zealand’s radical political heritage.
A member of HART (Halt All Racist Tours), a protest group against the 1981 Springbok Tour,
Marian was also a member of the Communist Party for six years, became a Quaker in the late 1980s and joined the Labour Party in the early 1990s.
In 1993 she was one of 500 women and men who received the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal, recognising her contribution to women’s issues in New Zealand.
Last year Marian was elected Chair of Otago Regional Council and now hopes to play a role in protecting the region’s environmental heritage during her three-year tenure.
So what are her plans for her new role at Heritage New Zealand?
“Things are going well,” she says. “I think our direction is pretty well on track. Don’t expect to see any stick-shaking from me.
That said, she’d still like to see the recognition and protection of more wāhi tapu and wāhi tupuna sites and other sites of significance to Māori.
She’s keen on more proactive engagement with New Zealand’s Chinese, Indian and working-class communities to work out the sites and stories that matter most to them.
And she’s interested in improving pay and conditions for Heritage New Zealand’s staff.
“We’ve got some of the lowest rates of public sector pay in the country. If we value our heritage and our past as a nation, then we have to properly pay the professionals who look after it. It’s as simple as that.” What’s not so straightforward are the solutions needed to change such things. “Look, I know the pressure on the government purse and the need to
wāhi tapu: a site of sacred significance wāhi tūpuna: a site of ancestral significance run a tight financial ship. I was part of [former finance minister] Dr Michael Cullen’s team, don’t forget. But I’m definitely keen to talk to our prime minister [Jacinda Ardern] to see what’s possible and where we might fit into her priorities.
“I’d also like to see us increase the overall pool of funding available to conserve our heritage. There’s plenty of room for innovation. I can’t see the need to preserve buildings in aspic – not when we have so much tourism potential. And not when we know people want to experience our heritage properties as places to stay, get married and eat and drink some of New Zealand’s excellent food and wine.”
Totara Estate, an historic farm in North Otago, bought by Heritage New Zealand in 1980, is a case in point, says Marian. Every year, people tour its collection of Oamaru stone buildings. Some hire it as a wedding venue.
More could be done, she says. “Wellington’s gorgeous wooden cathedral, Old St Paul’s, is another example of an historic building increasing its appeal in an innovative way.”
Currently closed for seismic strengthening, the historic church built in 1866 has its own Facebook page and fundraising hashtag (#FOREVEROSP). It hosts tours and unconventional fundraising events such as special film screenings and organ, jazz and acoustic pop concerts, alongside conventional Christian services.
For years, as an MP, I’d look at Wellington’s Old Government Buildings from my office in Bowen House. It quickly became a firm favourite.
It’s New Zealand’s largest wooden building and possibly one of the world’s biggest wooden buildings – so I like its scale and the way its classical design conveys a sense of strength and stability. Its interior use of timber, mostly kauri, is impressive, as is the fact that it was one of the country’s first smoke-free buildings [to combat the constant fire threat].
On a personal level, it’s a building that feels relevant to me as a former government minister. I suppose that’s what I enjoy about New Zealand’s built heritage: buildings from another era give you a window into the people, places and norms of that era. They offer us a chance to reflect on our identity as a nation and achieve a sense of place. Ask me to choose between New Zealand’s wonderful stone buildings and our wooden heritage buildings and I’ll pick the latter every time.
Both are architecturally special. But memories of my time spent at Dunedin’s Dominican Priory give me a shiver when I think back. I was a boarder there from the age of 10 – and it was a cold, damp place. While I admire its origins and the goal of the priory’s Irish nuns to educate the young women of New Zealand, I can’t get past the warmer and more inclusive feel of our historic wooden buildings.
