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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-21 Daily Xml
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South Australian Museum

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:03): My question is to the Minister for Arts. Will the government provide increased funding to the South Australian Museum to enable it to undertake its new strategic plan without cutting its existing work? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: This morning on ABC radio with Sonya and Jules, Museum CEO Dr David Gaimster said:

Our focus has got to be, like many, many organisations, on recovering our costs. Our costs are going up all the time and our funding is flatlining and we need to make sure that we can sustain ourselves as a museum for all South Australians. We are being fair to everyone and we are covering our costs; we are not making a profit on anything, we are recovering our costs so that we can maintain our 365-day-a-year business with free access to all South Australians.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (15:04): Absolutely; free access to the Museum for all South Australians will continue. That's not even in question. In terms of the budget, the Museum Board allocates its budget as it sees fit. It will now be looking at this strategic review to look at what is the best position for the Museum. Dr Gaimster's last position was at the War Memorial Museum in Auckland, where he did an incredible reinvigoration of that museum. I think attendance has increased something like 40 per cent at that museum through his work.

What I am really excited about is being able to have a museum that engages a lot more closely with the community, to be able to have our kids go into the Museum and learn about South Australian stories, our First Nations stories, and be able to have that engagement much more broadly in the community and have a museum that our visitors to this state want to engage with much more closely than perhaps is happening at the moment.

So I actually think it's a really exciting time for the Museum, and I am really looking forward to what that strategic change is. But to have a museum that is really engaging with the community, telling our stories in a way that people want to engage with the Museum, I think is fantastic. Dr Gaimster and the board and Kim Cheater, Chair of the Museum, are doing an incredible job reimagining the Museum.

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