I’m writing this from Newhaven, on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, a property owned and administered by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. But more of that next week. It’s ironic that one of the last emails I received before plunging into Internet limbo, was from Lindsay Sharp, former director of the Powerhouse Museum, passing on a small story from the Guardian, in which Penny Sharpe, the NSW Environment Minister, is shown holding up a photograph of a broad-toothed rat. Penny is telling us about biodiversity, announcing that the Minns government will accept 49 out of 58 recommendations from Ken Henry’s 2023 Review of the field.
“We cannot ignore the truth: biodiversity in NSW is in crisis,” she solemnly intones.
For Lindsay, this struck a slightly discordant note. In the case of the Powerhouse, the Minns government has shown itself to be not only willing to ignore the truth, but to mislead the public, break election promises, and hold bogus ‘consulations’ that merely paper over unpopular, destructive policies. They have promulgated a big lie that they are “revitalising” a major cultural institution which is being systematically dismantled and buried, its only monument being a pile of fatuous press releases claiming everything is just dandy.
We know what the Coalition is capable of when it comes to looking after their mates and snowjobbing the public. Why is that Labor has to try and beat them at their own game? There’s something especially noxious when the Labor mob does it, having pretended they were on the side of public sentiment, expert opinion, and common sense. Instead, the party has completely swallowed the line put forward by NSW bureaucrats, a few opportunistic business types, and the current PHM (mis)management, that the process is too far advanced to be halted so we may as well push on to the finish line.
Not only has the Minns government embraced this logic it has actively advanced it by allowing the clean-out of the collection to continue while it supposedly worked out how it would fix the problem. It may seem obvious that if the current plans are pursued to the bitter end, we’ll wind up with three massive venues that will have cost the taxpayer about $2 billion, require many millions to run, and have zero appeal for the public. What it costs to stop this catastrophe would be much cheaper – and more successful – than what is in the pipeline.
Upon assuming office, Minister John Graham did not feel moved to call a halt to the planning process or the removal of objects from Ultimo to Castle Hill, not even when confronted with a sheaf of damage reports resulting from the hasty way the operation was conducted. PHM director, Lisa Havilah bluntly denied there had been any damage, and this was accepted without demur. Some believe this denial should have been a sacking offence. Ah yes, with this government the truth cannot be ignored!
The Guardian reporter, Lisa Cox, was smart enough (don’t take it for granted) to ask Ken Henry what he thought of the government’s big announcement on biodiversity. He replied, diplomatically, that it was “a serious attempt” to tackle the problems raised, then admitted: “…many of the government’s proposed actions would take a long time to deliver and they stopped short of putting [in] laws that protected and enhanced nature ahead of other land management concerns.”
So although the Minns government “cannot ignore the truth”, this doesn’t mean it is willing to accept that truth and act accordingly. Instead, I predict we’ll get a compromise solution which will take so long to deliver that its impact will be blunted. And that’s a best-case scenario. If they choose to follow the Powerhouse blueprint they will send out press releases claiming one thing while actually doing the opposite. Having achieved marvels when it comes to destroying one of Australia’s major cultural assets, think what they can do to a few tribes of small furry animals! If the broad tooth rat hears that its ranks are to be “revitalised”, it would be well advised to retain a lawyer.
The art column this week comes from Bundanon, for a show called Wilder Times: Arthur Boyd and the mid-1980s landscape. The core of the exhibition is a suite of 14 Shoalhaven landscapes Boyd painted in 1983-84 as part of a commission from Arts Centre Melbourne. This is the first time these works have been hung together in a dedicated museum space. The result is a more accomplished brand of Shoalhaven landscape than one usually sees, this being a subject that has launched far too many Boyd potboilers.
As a complement, curator, Sophie O’Brien, has put together a somewhat eccentric collection of works by other artists of the mid-1980s, including many from her home state, Western Australia. In truth, it’s refreshing to see such works rather than the predictable fare that satisfies most curators. Good on yer, Sophie!
This week’s film review looks at Fly Me to the Moon, a romcom that revolves around the Apollo 11 launch in 1969. Scarlett Johansson is in sparkling form as a sassy marketeer given the task of selling the space program to a sceptical public. Tatum Channing looks far too dopey to be cast as head of the launch mission, or as Scarlett’s preferred inamorato. It’s lightweight stuff, with the major plot device being the attempt to film a phoney moon landing in case the real thing flops. I’m confident the NSW government is already onto this trick, experimenting with CGI versions of broad tooth rats and Potemkin museums.