Grievance Debate

Arts and Culture

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:17): Arts institutions across South Australia have become very familiar with the nature of this government over the last two years, that it is a government that is uninterested in arts and culture as a general rule, and one in which many of its members and ministers in particular seem to take almost as a competitive sport the opportunity to deride or actively show a lack of interest in arts and culture.

So it should come as no surprise that following significant cuts to the institutions' budgets, including the South Australian Museum, in the 2022 state budget, the first state budget handed down under the Malinauskas Labor government, the response of the Museum through dealing with the budget cuts and, indeed, through the appointment of a new director under the board and new direction and new strategic plan for the Museum, came as something of a surprise for the Premier.

But it should not have because, of course, the board has been working on its response to these cuts since 2022. A minister and a government and a cabinet that are awake to their duties and their responsibilities should have been alive to it then. We asked questions in this chamber about the impact of budget on the Museum over the last two years. Last year, there was a series of meetings of the board dealing with how to progress their review of research and collections.

At one point, they waited until the new director was on the ground so that he could have a say in how that went forward. It culminated in September, when the Museum director came up with the restructure plan. This is all available in the board minutes and the transcript of the Budget and Finance Committee a couple of weeks ago.

In that September meeting, the board decided, at the direction of the leadership of the board, that they would seek to brief the minister, DPC and DTF. The briefing would also outline the support required by the Museum, including dedicated and experienced change management resources from DPC to run the project—this being the restructure—funding to cover direct costs of the restructure, and interim funding to cover the operating deficit of the Museum until such time as the new structure was in operation. This was in September.

Board minutes demonstrate that in November and December there were meetings with DPC, and evidence provided to the Budget and Finance Committee of the parliament earlier in April (on 3 April from memory) showed that DPC, the Premier's department, provided a dedicated change management resource to the Museum to operate through this change management. Then, in February the Museum announced the restructure which saw 27 positions—research scientists, critical to the world-class reputation and scientific research capability within the Museum—removed from that structure going forward, to be replaced with 23 more junior curatorial positions. The benefit financially to the Museum and the government was half a million dollars a year.

The idea that this government's budget cuts in 2022 in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time of cost escalation is remarkable. The fact that the Premier today seemed to think that the only budget cuts ever applied to the Museum were those in 2018 or 2019 is beyond remarkable given that it is his department managing this process. It was his government that cut those funds at a time of cost escalation, and we have been asking the minister for answers about this—not just in February and March this year but last year as well. The Premier's lack of interest is at peace, is at one, with his lack of interest in arts and cultural institutions in South Australia. That is understood, but it is now having real-world impacts.

The Premier seems to think that it is an invention of the opposition that the Egypt room, that the mammals' gallery, that the Polar expedition galleries, that the minerals resources at the Museum are under threat. That is not my invention. We asked the Museum director directly about it in the Budget and Finance Committee just a month ago. He said:

The answer is that we are undertaking a reimagining of the Museum of the future, of a contemporary, compelling museum experience for the 21^st century.

He described these galleries as cabinets of curiosity. This is the understanding that has been broadly put through the Museum, and it is very clear that the board's strategic direction is to have these galleries removed, as it is to remove these scientific research positions.

Now, the Premier has announced a review. That review is being conducted by the head of DPC, the Chief Scientist and the head of museums in Queensland, who is obviously very familiar to the head of DPC. We look forward to that review, but we hope that the Legislative Council will also refer this to the Statutory Authorities Review Committee because if that committee is not there to review statutory authorities, then I wonder what it is there for at all.

This clearly needs to go further, because the government has put a pause on these plans but not a cancellation, and it is clear from the board minutes that without substantial new funding—at the very least a re-provision of the funding cut in 2022—the board is caught between a rock and a hard place, and we need to keep this pressure on this government to ensure that the Museum and the things that are valued about it are not cast away like so much driftwood.