Many submissions from the public, including from two former chief archivists, opposed proposals in the Government's State Sector Management Bill to disestablish the former Archives New Zealand as a stand-alone government department and to merge the archives' administration back into the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).
Nevertheless, the legislation was recently enacted, with few changes, despite considerable opposition, including from professional bodies representing historians and archivists.
One submission to the education and science select committee stated DIA's previous running of archives had been marked by "arrested development, lack of resourcing, poor understanding, litigation, rancour and distrust".
Previously known as National Archives, the archives were operated as part of the DIA until Archives New Zealand was established in 2000, as a stand-alone department with its own chief executive.
Archives New Zealand has been responsible not only for protecting and maintaining historical archives but also ensuring current and future records of the activities of central and local government are properly maintained in the national interest.
Government officials say the merger will generate administrative savings of up to $9 million, and improve handling of records digitisation, but critics say savings could be minimal.
The merger was opposed by the Labour and Green parties.
Labour state sector spokesman Grant Robertson said Archives New Zealand had played the "ultimate accountability role for government" over archives matters, and this independence was being compromised.
Prof Stenhouse emphasised he was not being "alarmist" about the changes, but he remained critical of reducing the status of the chief archivist from chief executive to that of a third-tier manager within the DIA.
"I don't think that weakening this kind of independent body is beneficial."
Maintaining proper checks and balances and protecting "the nation's memory" were "important for a healthy democracy".
He noted that a former communist government in China had intervened and retrospectively obscured inconvenient facts from the past.
In one case, a subsequently unpopular political leader's image had been "airbrushed" out of an earlier photograph showing him with Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
Totalitarian regimes were "intensely interested in seizing control of the nation's memory".
Prof Stenhouse emphasised he was not suggesting the same situation applied in Zealand, but such manipulations highlighted the need to protect the "national memory" and showed "how important memory and history are as forms of power in the modern world".
It had been a "real pity" many of the public submissions had been "basically ignored" in the latest archives legislation, he said.
