Bob Edlin: It’s a monumental clanger....

It’s a monumental clanger – you repair the bells (for $10 million), but keep them mute by firing the carillonist

The PoO team was astonished to read the headline on an NZR report that signalled news of a governmental clanger:

Govt spends $10m to fix national war memorial bells, fires only person who can play

Good grief!

Does this happen to result from Finance Minister Nicola Willis telling us before Budget Day this year that the Government plans to reduce spending by “billions” of dollars, cutting programmes started under previous Governments and reducing planned spending?

All of that was to free up cash for what she was promoting as one of the tightest Budgets in a decade.

What part of tight budgeting allows the spending of $10 million on a set of bells that won’t be played because no-one can play them?

Correction: one bloke can play them – the RNZ report says – but his services will no longer be required once the repair work has been completed and the bells are ready to be played again:

This is a bit like spending all millions of dollars on new defence equipment, then sacking the soldiers, sailors and pilots.

Check it out for yourself:

The government spent over $10 million to do up the country’s bell tower that plays for fallen soldiers, but is now getting rid of the only person who plays it.

The country’s sole carillonist, Timothy Hurd, has been playing the bells – 74 of them, totalling 70 tonnes, spanning six octaves – for about 40 years in a bell tower that is now the centrepiece of Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington.

Hurd used to play them three times a week.

But once the tower reopened after seismic-strengthening early next year, that would be cut right back.

And:

The tower is scheduled to reopen by Anzac 2026, and Hurd’s job is set to be disestablished that same week.

This followed months of him working to refurbish the complicated instrument and advising builders how to strengthen the bell frame.

Historian Stephen Clarke has described the decision as “totally perverse”.

He has helped RNZ treat us to some history:

A century ago, people flocked to sponsor a bell for the new tower, in a 1920s form of crowdfunding.

The initiative was so popular that the families of fallen soldiers were put first in line.

“The bells were to commemorate particular campaigns and units and they’re named for those, and they were donated by families in loving memory,” said Clarke.

“Including [writer] Katherine Mansfield’s parents, who donated the bell ‘Flanders Fields’ in memory of their only son killed in Belgium in 1915.”

The bell tower opened in 1932 in front of thousands of people.

It became the centrepiece of the $120m Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in 2015.

The Wellington tower is part of the global Network of War Memorial and Peace Carillons.

A network website said, “The carillon is played for regular concerts and commemorative events, continuing its role as musical centrepiece of the newly-created Pukeahu National War Memorial Park” with about “220 formal concerts per year”.

And just last week, Pukeahu become the second place in the country to receive National Historic Landmark status.

RNZ then reported:

In its announcement today, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage said the title recognised the significance of the memorial and its outstanding national heritage value.

Secretary for culture and heritage Leauanae Laulu Mac Leauanae said the National War Memorial was central to Pukeahu and the story of Aotearoa New Zealand.

“It speaks to the service and sacrifice made by New Zealanders in efforts to create peace for the future,” he said.

But – a bit like the bells, which have been silent for seven of the past 10 years during the earthquake strengthening – the ministry has gone mute about Hurd’s future and (RNZ said) refused to discuss individual jobs “while we are still going through a change process“.

RNZ nevertheless can tell us:

“The decision has been made to disestablish the carillonist (deferred until the end of April 2026),” said an internal ministry report in July.

And – guess what? – the need to tighten budgets in line with Nicola Willis’ spending strictures explains why the carillonist is being given the heave-ho.

The ministry, its funding cut in Budget 2025, could not afford such a specialist role, secretary Leauanae Laulu Mac Leauanae wrote.

He had opted to cut about two dozen jobs to save money and to focus on core policy work, not public-facing tasks. Some historians’ jobs were going, too.

The deferral until April 2026 allowed time for Hurd to finish refurbishing the metres-high instrument.

The RNZ report then raises the possibility – or is it a hope? – that Hurd might not be the only carillonist in the country:

The ministry’s internal report said it might hire a contractor to play it. Its website said the carillon would be “fully usable” once restored.

“We are still working through the details of how that will happen, as part of our change process,” it told RNZ.

However, Clarke said he did not know of any carillon-playing contractors.

Hurd declined to comment.

The OIA emails are reported to show the ministry until now had leaned heavily on Hurd’s expertise, for advice and to check pages of plans for new steel frames to replace the old ones, which were so rusty in places you could stick your finger through them.

He was also essential from 2016 to 2018 when all the bells were taken down, to start renewing the frame, and then the carillon reassembled.

“I mean, here’s a gentleman that has dedicated his whole working life to New Zealand’s national carillion,” Clarke said.

“You’re asking him to, you know, put it all back together – the only person who could do that in New Zealand.

“And then … disestablish his position. I mean, what sort of employer is the Ministry of Culture and Heritage?”

An employer cravenly keen to comply with Nicola Willis’ budgetary demands, we suggest.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.