"There's no such thing as society"
What’s the point of “public consultation”? After an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the NSW government’s proposed “revitalisation” of the Powerhouse Museum, the powers-that-be were forced into a second round of submissions. One might imagine this would allow the government to marshall its troops, organising a few positive submissions to back up their costly plans. There you’d be wrong. Holding all the aces in a poker game rigged in favour of the house, they made not the slightest attempt to justify the way they intend to spend upwards of $2 billion of taxpayers’ hard-earned.
The second round of submissions has just been tallied. It resulted in a further 138 submissions – 131 objections, 3 “comments”, and only 4 in support. This means 95% of respondents opposed the plans and only 3% stood behind them. I’m reliably informed the “comments” could just as easily have been classified as “objections.”
By any fair assessment the “revitalisation” plans are massively unpopular. There is no conceivable margin of error involved in such a landslide result. As it is hugely inconvenient for members of the public to write these submissions – let alone write successive submissions – and the online filing process was (deliberately?) made as difficult as possible, there’s no denying the anger and concern in the community. Were this a referendum on the fate of the plans they would be thrown in the bin immediately.
It would, however, be surprising if the government pays the slightest attention to this outcome. They have already allowed the processes to reach the point where museum collections have been hoovered out of the Ultimo site and dumped at Castle Hill, or elsewhere - not without a sheaf of damage reports. They have allowed director, Lisa Havilah, to dispense with numerous curatorial positions and spend millions on pet projects that have little or nothing to do with the museum’s historical mission as a repository and forum for the applied arts and sciences. Today we have three venues, none of them open to the public, while the PHM continues to look for ways to fritter away its considerable government stipend.
The public consultation has been timed in such a manner that the government can argue it’s too late to make any changes. Earlier consultations have been ignored, and this one will suffer the same fate. The only point of this exercise was as a piece of theatre, allowing the ”consultation” box to be ticked. It’s the most transparent of smokescreens for a process that is autocratic, not democratic. The museum actually belongs to the people of NSW, not Members of Parliament or a handful of people with vested interests, but the public’s voice will not unsettle these unscrupulous operators.
As Labor was elected on a promise to fix the mess at the PHM, this is an abject example of breaking faith with voters. Instead we’ve had nothing but spin – one duplicitous press release after another, claiming that the PHM is “saved.” Had the media been at all effective, these claims would have been demolished as soon as they were made. The failure of the press and electronic media has emboldened the government to believe it can get away with anything.
I’m reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s war on Britain’s public health system, which saw entire hospital wards closed down to save funds. The money taken from real doctors was spent on spin doctors who were tasked with making everything sound rosy.
In 1987, Thatcher famously pronounced: “There is no such thing as society.” These words have been much debated and interpreted, with Thatcher herself claiming she was merely saying that “society” is an abstraction, and her concern was with “a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.” But this is sheer sophistry, because almost any term could be analysed in this way. Is “family” any less of an abstraction than “society”?
It's hard to escape the feeling that Thatcher was speaking as someone uniquely privileged to decide how everyone else was supposed to live. Government, in her view, was akin to a stern parent making rules a child may find onerous, administering nasty medicine and punishments when required. “Society”, being merely an abstraction, was in no position to disagree with anything an elected political party might choose to do in the nation’s best interests. “Shut up and take your castor oil. It’s for your own good!”
This is very much the attitude of the Minns government, which has decided to dismiss the ‘abstract’ objections of the public in favour of a tightly-knit group of conspirators who have a stake in the game. It’s a paternalistic approach that will never admit that the planners could be wrong, even if the opposition consists of highly skilled experts with hands-on experience of running museums.
The danger with this tightrope walking between democracy and authoritarianism, is that one person’s bureaucratic “strategy” looks awfully like another person’s idea of “corruption”. One person’s program that rewards people of talent, is perceived by another as mere nepotism. Incorrect or evasive answers to direct questions may come across as lies. One group’s bold projections may appear to another as wishful nonsense.
There are many specific questions that deserve answers. For instance, why did we need a second Conservation Management Plan for the PHM, when the highly credentialled architect, Alan Croker, had already presented a draft assessment? His successors had none of his experience in this field yet they were willing to overturn his findings that the existing PHM was of outstanding significance.
Annette Pitman, who was instrumental in sacking Croker, subsequently denied under oath in Budget Estimates that there had ever been two Conservation Management Plans. Ms. Pitman has now been put in charge of Museums of History NSW, this umbrella organisation being another poorly-conceived legacy of the previous government that Labor has chosen to preserve. The appointment is presumably a reward for overseeing the cost of the Walsh Bay “arts precinct”, which she allowed to blow out from $139 million to $379 million. (Thank-you, Kylie Winkworth for these useful figures!)
It continues the Minns government’s standard practice of rewarding failure – PHM CEO, Lisa Havilah, responsible for the lowest PHM attendances since the early 1960s, being the most prominent recipient of such largesse.
“I am excited about the next chapter of this important organisation under Annette’s leadership,” gushed Arts Minister, John Graham, “leveraging the successes and partnerships she has built across the NSW creative sector to further the mission of Museums of History.” These lines provided a triumphant conclusion for a typically anodyne story in the Sydney Morning Herald.
In the same article we find Mr. Graham crediting Ms. Pitman “for the revitalisation of Sydney’s Walsh Bay Arts Precinct.” It seems that “revitalisation” is the all-purpose buzz word for anything dodgy that costs the taxpayer a huge amount of money. There may be a few unkind linguists who would define “revitalisation” as a euphemism for “mismanagement.” It must be reassuring to John Graham that the mainstream media is always willing to repeat the term uncritically. Why look for new words when a perefctly decent one has already been provided? Such a handy time-saver for journos when a deadline is pressing.
The art column this week looks at Isaac Julien’s Once Again… (Statues Never Die) at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This slick, multilayered audiovisual installation is a cut above most contemporary art devoted to race and gender issues. It’s possible to discuss Julian’s film in these terms but it’s the least interesting approach. What distinguishes this British artist from so many of his peers is his keen sense of history – of its great moments, its ambiguities and omissions. His visual sense is acute enough that one could watch the entire presentation with pleasure, without understanding any of the references.
Speaking of history, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice brings us the history of the man who would be dictator of the United States, at least for the first day. No-one will go along expecting a sympathetic portrait of Donald Trump, but the rather cold, flat nature of this movie echoes the coldness of its subject. By contrast, Trump’s mentor, lawyer, Roy Cohn - once dubbed “pure evil” by an acquaintance - feels more like a character of flesh and blood. I doubt that any Trump acolyte will change their vote after watching this film, but it should drop a few grains of sand into the dumb mechanism of their adulation. Society may be an abstraction for certain politicians, but for society the impact of politicians can be horribly real.
PS. The Yayoi Kusama story is now free to read on the substack site.