Canterbury Museum

Someone gave me a hard time last hour about being negative.

Have you had a guts for the Canterbury Museum?

In my head, it's caused me a few issues.

Of course, we gave, granted, $15 million out of our surplus from last year and said, we will lend you $28.5 million as a loan.

His interests ranged from rocks to living creatures.

Later he would teach at Otago, help develop its museum and become curator of Canterbury Museum.

A curious object did not have to be commercially valuable to deserve his attention.

The Collingwood Stone offered a particularly striking example.

In 1906? This is Leonard Cochrane carrying a vegetable sheep down the mountain range to be exhibited.

This specimen ended up in Canterbury Museum.

We don't have it here.

And there's other obscure extinct plant varieties.

But I do think, to the average person, it seems quite bizarre that able to be resolved quicker I'm not and no one is privy to all of the information but the report is pretty damning and it's an awful situation and the most important thing is that gosh you know we need to learn lessons from this and make sure that those those different agencies are working in a much more consistent and collaborative kind of way in the future because I certainly wouldn't want to see this happen again.

All right, let's talk about Canterbury Museum.

They have gone to the City Council.

Earlier this year, the council agreed to put another $15 million into the redevelopment project and also made a loan available, $28 million worth, on the proviso that the museum get some money from the government.

I know that certainly they've had pretty much every politician in Christchurch go through the redevelopment and talk to them about the issues.

Canterbury is really important.

I mean, Canterbury Museum is really important to the history and heritage of Canterbury.

When it comes to how that if or what should be contributed, I think it really has to be weighed up against other priorities.

You're listening to the Canterbury Mornings podcast with John McDonald from Newstalk ZB.

And I've got to say that I'm getting very close to losing all confidence in the Canterbury Museum redevelopment project because increasingly the people behind it seem to be trying to hold the city to ransom.

Saying now...

What are they saying now? They're saying now that if they can't get their hands on more city council money ASAP, uh, ASAP, there'll be delays and way more expense, about seven million dollars more.

Just give them the whole 4.1.

He says the money could come from ratepayers paying a targeted rate, similar to what we already pay to support Canterbury Museum.

Let me quote Aaron for you.

He says, quote, you could literally close every library for one day a week and you'd have that much money to spare.

We used to have a regional cultural heritage fund that was cancelled by the current government in 2024.

One of the last contributions they made was not to a regional organisation, which shows you the scale of this problem, It was to the Canterbury Museum, which is currently under development.

So a $10 million contribution came through Crown investment there.

And the leaders there told me that those contributions were absolutely critical to the redevelopment proceeding.

And then last year, in July 2025, there was an announcement around plans to de-extinct the moa.

So this is when director Peter Jackson and Ben Lamb, who's the CEO of Colossal Biosciences, were in this video that came out and that the project would be led by the Naitahu Research Centre and in collaboration with Canterbury Museum.

And for Our Changing World, the wonderful Sharon Brett Kelly dug into, as you say, this massive topic.

And so this is a two part episode.

And there are also questions around whether there was proper consultation with Mana Whenua.

So I highly recommend, I mean, this is just a taster, right? And I recommend that if people are interested, they go and listen to both full episodes.

But amidst all of these questions, Colossal Biosciences teamed up with the Naitahu Research Centre and Canterbury Museum to have gone and run with those initial first steps.

And for Professor Amanda Black, she would have just liked a bit more discussion first.