Campaign
to Save the Powerhouse
Responsibility for facts stated is taken by Tom Lockley, PO Box 301,
Pyrmont
0403 615 134 tomlockley@gmail.com
Bulletin 57: six years on.
(You might like to mark the
anniversary of the announcement of the Powerhouse ‘move’ by letting the
authorities know you still care. An anniversary wish
to the Premier
https://www.nsw.gov.au/premier-of-nsw/contact-premier might be useful).
Other useful email addresses include
mail@create.nsw.gov.au, (the arts
minister)
mail@insw.com,
Project <project@maas.museum>,
Kate.Foy1@dpc.nsw.gov.au,
Simon Pagett <simon.pagett@infrastructure.nsw.gov.au>,
Lisa Havilah lisa.havilah@maas.museum and
your local member might also be a good target.)
On 26 November 2014 the then Premier Mr Baird announced that
the Powerhouse Museum would be ‘moved’ from Ultimo to Parramatta. The entire
move would be financed by the sale of the Ultimo site for ‘urban renewal’ (ie supertowers), and the money left over would be used for
other purposes. Stakeholders, including event he Parramatta Council and the
Trustees of the museum were not informed of the idea before it was announced, much less consulted. The entire museum /
heritage / arts community were horrified and a huge program of resistance to
this disastrous idea has been mounted. And the money raised by the sale of the
Ultimo land would barely pay for the removal and storage of exhibits.
But the few, almost nameless, people
who have taken it upon themselves to perform this act of cultural vandalism are
unswerving in their desire to downgrade thief world cultural treasure that is
the Powerhouse Museum and to inflict on Parramatta an institution that does not
have local relevance on a site that has wonderful heritage buildings and is not
the preferred site of the elected council. Despite the announcement of July 4
this year, all that has been promised is the retention of an inferior museum at
Ultimo and retention of a few iconic exhibits.
The latest
‘fact sheet’ is attached.
This is the fourth fact sheet that has, since mid-2017, been formally submitted
to the Government and its agencies for checking, and as usual we undertake to
publicise any responses. So far there has been no contradiction of any facts listed:
there has been no consultation and no research into alternatives, no use of
museum experts, etc and this project wastes huge amounts of money and trashes
magnificent heritage.
Two more matters are added to the
latest sheet: the Government in September 2018
explained that they had found a way around examining the project against the
‘base case’ – what is the situation before the ‘move’ – by declaring that the
‘base case’ is the Government’s decision to make the ‘move’ – incredible that
this might seem. No explanation has ever been given about the rationale, process and legality of this decision.
Also, the first legislative Council
Inquiry made a Finding that the proper process for creating a Business Case had
not been followed; the Government responded to the massive document proving
this assertion by a very brief statement to the effect that the whole process
had been checked by peer review groups and six review panels involving over 30
experts, and the Government completely rejected the Finding. It has been
comprehensively demonstrated that the single peer review exercise was – to put
it as gently as possible – a sham, and despite even a GIPA application the only
information we have about the review panels is a list of dates and titles of
the reviews. We have absolutely no information even about the terms of
reference, the procedures followed, the matters canvassed, and the
qualifications and independence of the assessors, much less any indication of
the outcome of any review.
We have just completed another
investigation, and this concerns the documents released to the public in June
in response to a call for information by Robert Borsak MLC, supported by all
parties. First impressions were that they were just about useless in providing
basic information about the ‘move’ so a
detailed analysis was made.
The analysis showed that the initial
impression was, if anything an understatement.
A covering letter from the Government
(five pages of legalese) basically claimed that it was more important that the
Government should have privately available
information that it was for the public to have assurance that the planning
process was soundly based. There is ‘a conclusive presumption of an overriding
public interest against disclosure’ in much of the information not provided.
But the Government was required to
respond to the order for documents, and 17 document boxes with around 20.000
sheets of (often poorly photocopied) material was made available, by
appointment, for examination by a single person at a time. Under Covid
restrictions, the person examining the material had to be escorted to and from
the relevant office by a staffer from an MPs office. Almost all such people
work from home when parliament is not sitting and are very
busy when parliament is sitting. Formal and informal requests for this
material to be made available in digital form have been comprehensively
ignored.
Of the pages supplied at least 20%
were material that was already online (eg PR reports
from the firm Aurecon) illegible (over 1000 sheets in one document) or utterly
irrelevant (eg drafts of the 2017-8 MAAS annual report, also long since
online).
About 4,000 documents were listed on
over 400 pages of cataloguing, and a feature of these was the provision of
multiple copies of identical documents. Of the 4,000 listed documents at least
2213 were multiple copies, leaving about 1,800 discrete documents. 22 copes
were provided of an email Re:
Power House Museum - Power Distribution Options, 16-Mar-2020. Further,
email chains were often supplied as separate documents, under different file
names, so we received several stages of an email chain under separate catalogue
numbers, when jus the last email would suffice.
Of the documents supplied the
overwhelming majority were administrivia – dates of meetings etc – or minor
technical matters. There are effectively no overarching documents that give any
indication, for example, of the developing business plans. To get information
we have had to look at the supplied material to find facts wherever they could
be found. A few examples:
· Discussion of job specifications for
a Brief Writer (who would also be the Implementation
Verifier) for the Parramatta construction job revealed the manner in which responsibilities for various sections of the
Parramatta planning have been apportioned. Also it is
interesting that this important role would be outsourced from INSW: a possible
explanation could be that such an appointment at ‘arms length’ could enable the
Government to set the parameters for the design brief etc and then allow the
outside contractor to seem to be responsible for any consequent shortcomings in
the brief.
· Discussions of the display areas that
would be used for non-museum activities, including dancing, indicate to our
experts that the exhibits are regarded almost as decorations for
a theme park. No discussion was found about the design philosophy of the
museum displays.
· Previously unavailable drawings
present less flattering aspects of the design: the view from Lennox Bridge showing the way the proposed museum is dominated by
the adjoining supertower; and a view of the museum as culmination of the
Parramatta Civic Link. Instead of the original concept of the link ending with a very attractive riverside park, the rear view of the
museum is not at all imposing. See the
separate attachment.
But the main interest is what
is not presented. For example our
examination indicated that:
· There is no information on the
current business cases, including budgeting and financing.
· There is no discussion of
exhibition concepts.
· Visitor studies projections are limited
to flow studies at Parramatta and our expert had the impression that the
projected capacity did not accommodate the heroic assumptions for visitor
numbers proposed in the previously released business case, but time and the
limited available data did not permit a proper study of this.
· There was no information about the
Ultimo Creative Industries Precinct or the Lyric Theatre.
· There was no acknowledgement of the
heritage values of the total Ultimo building complex, only reference to the restricted
heritage assessment of the ‘Ultimo Tramways Power House’,
the structure that was the original Powerhouse itself.
· And, of course, no indication that
any person with significant qualifications and / or experience in museum matter
was seriously involved in planning.
Thus this document release joins the many
other examples of Government secrecy and apparent lack of democratic process
that has been a continual feature of the ‘move’. This contempt for democratic
process is disgraceful.
For the tragics, the full report on
the released documents is attached and is also on the website. Gradually,
relevant material is being placed on the website, accessible from http://maasbusinesscase.com/0000/0SO52/default.html . You might like to read only
the summary on the first few pages.
Campaign to save the Powerhouse
Australia’s
major museum of arts and sciences in Sydney’s most evocative heritage building.
For more information
https://powerhousemuseumalliance.com/ See also: http://maasbusinesscase.com/ http://lockoweb.com/phm/
Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/savethepowerhouse/ https://www.facebook.com/savethepowerhouse/
Tom
Lockley
0403
615 134....