There's a battle of the ideologies on display as ACT looks to cut art spending on roading projects.
It's very ACT, i.e. fiscally disciplined. Every $1 million on roading needs to be $1 million on roading, not 99% on roads and 1% on art.
The art is an issue for several reasons, mainly for me because most of it is unimpressive.
I'm not actually against art per se. I like art. I prefer private operators to pay for it, but I wouldn't die in the ditch trying to cut it.
It makes sense. We have no money, we need more roads, and so it's fairly obvious you make every dollar go as far as it can.
And I suspect broadly most people feel the same way, so it's an easy headline and a political point to make in a campaign.
But public art can be amazing. The trouble is a lot of ours isn't.
On the highway out of Christchurch heading towards Kaiapoi there is some good work. At what they call Spaghetti Junction in Auckland there is what loosely looks like red light stalks. They're awful.
On our way home on the new highway north of Auckland there are a bunch of Māori soldiers or chiefs, sort of metal cutouts that are rusted.
It’s a look. I don’t like it, which is the other bit about art. It's fraught.
There is also obviously an overt Māori fixation around it. There's not a lot of Siddell's or Sydney's about the place. There are more conceptual, race-based interpretations that you might argue may not get a lot of commissions if it wasn’t for the NZTA.
So you have the battle between to do it, or not, and also if you do do it, is it any good?
But to the ideology, ACT are about efficiency and that’s good, given our parlous state fiscally.
The defence came from the transport wonks who said, "look, its only 1.4% of the overall budget", the inference being that we shouldn't worry about it because it's nothing. And yet, do the math.
For every 72-odd roads, that's another free road if you don’t spend your 1.4%. Would you rather have another road or a bunch of eclectic sculptures?
I think the inescapable conclusion is art is for better days, more affluent times, in countries that have productivity levels way better than ours and that have handled their finances better than ours.
Art is a reward, not a must have.
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