Arts and Culture Minister Chris Finlayson seemed particularly nervous about sharing the stage with retiring Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra chairwoman Rosanne Meo at last week's season opening concert. The reason for his discomfort became obvious yesterday with the release of the long-awaited review into the funding of professional orchestras.
In her eight years as chair, the indefatigable Dame Rosanne had made Minister Finlayson's life, and that of his Labour predecessor, Helen Clark, hell as she fought for fairer state funding for the APO.
The review totally fails to address this issue, and as Mr Finlayson stood on the platform praising Dame Rosanne's efforts on behalf of the orchestra, his guilty secret must have been top of his mind - with a trepidation that details might have already reached her well-connected ears and she was about to share them with the audience.
The only crumb Mr Finlayson has tossed to the APO is that it will rise in the bureaucratic hierarchy of orchestras. No longer will it be a "city orchestra" alongside those of Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. It's to be elevated to solitary splendour as a "metropolitan orchestra" - the only one in the country. But there's no description of what a metropolitan orchestra does compared with a city orchestra. Nor is there another penny on offer to match its new status.
In fact, the lack of extra money and the lack of meaningful change are the defining feature of this "do nothing" document. Even the Wellington-based crown jewel, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, faces lean times . Its current annual government handout of $13.4 million is to be frozen at that level until the end of 2017, and may even fall if it fails to sell more tickets and attract additional sponsorship income.