South Australian Museum

In reply to Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (25 November 2020). (Estimates Committee A)

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier): I have been advised:

The 2020-21 external revenue targets for the South Australian Museum have been revised as the Museum's financial advisers predict that philanthropy in Australia will fall by 7.1 per cent in 2020 and a further 11.9 per cent in 2021.

As a result, the Museum expects that while corporations and individuals have reduced discretionary funds and are making fewer donations, maintaining or increasing the recent levels of external revenue is unsustainable and the target for 2020-21 has been set accordingly.

The Art Gallery receives annual allocations through bequests and this and other external revenue streams are forecast to be maintained at a similar percent of total revenue in 2020-21, when compared to 2019-20 actuals.

The South Australian Museum's projected visitor numbers for 2020-21 were based on data collected from previous years. In 2018-19, the Museum recorded 759,316 visitors to the North Terrace site, of these 61 per cent were from South Australia, 21 per cent were from interstate and 18 per cent were from overseas.

The Museum has predicted that the number of visitors in 2020-21 will be greatly impacted by COVID-19 restrictions, particularly in relation to:

negligible overseas visitors

reduced interstate visitors due to border closures and/or restrictions

reluctance in local communities to travel intrastate and on public transport

With COVID-19 restrictions directly affecting about 40 per cent of historic visitor numbers in 2019-20, it has been predicted that visitation will drop significantly from 2018-19 actuals, but only modestly (by 43,000) from 2019-20 actuals in 2020-21.

The Art Gallery of South Australia is predicting a drop in visitation in 2020-21 from 2019-20 actuals of 88,082.