Judith Tizard
Associate Minister for Arts, Culture & Heritage
Member of Parliament for Auckland Central

The story that is at the centre of my life has always been New Zealand's promise; that in this small, beautiful country, we can build a society where there is enough for everyone to live well, and where every citizen is able to use the energy of all our ancestors to be the people who make the present and the future possible.

Art for me is about maps and bridges, about knowledge and transformations, about exploration, inventions, explosions and new ways of saying who we are, where we need to go, and how we can get there.

Having always had too much energy and too much natural euphoria about New Zealand, the world and all the people in it, art has constantly seemed to me to be the closest thing we have to real magic. The sheer thrill of a new composition, a new dance or play ... or familiar ones done brilliantly. The heart-stopping, mind-filling joy of a painting; the glowing satisfaction of a poem or a book; that says something that I have been struggling to know, to understand, or to arrange in my head or in my life or about my stories, my dreams or my country.

It lets me take the risks and find the courage to be me, to do my work, to say what I believe and what I hope.