Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is urban legend that Neville Wran said to his wife, Jill, after a visit to the Pompidou centre in Paris, 'I want one of those'. He got one—it is called the Powerhouse Museum. The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, originally the Technological Museum, was created after Sydney's first International Exhibition, in 1879. It was housed in Harris Street, Ultimo, from 1893.

In 1979, Neville Wran's Labor Government announced that the museum would move to the iconic old Ultimo power station site. The design of the new Powerhouse Museum preserved and complimented the urban heritage of the site, and the museum opened to the public in March 1988.

In 2013-14 there were nearly 400,000 visitors to the Powerhouse Museum. More than half of them were from Sydney, about 55 per cent; 14 percent came from the rest of NSW; 20 per cent came from interstate; and 11 per cent came from overseas. In that same year, eight offsite exhibitions were held at 15 locations, and those exhibitions attracted almost half a million visitors. The locations included Wagga Wagga, Parkes, Albury, Wollongong and Liverpool.

There has been some debate at the state level recently about the closure of the Powerhouse Museum, near central Sydney—a cultural icon, a tourist attraction, a great resource for the community of Sydney and, indeed, for visitors who come by train from all over Sydney, the greater Sydney metropolitan area, and from around the state. They come to Central Station, which is only a few minutes walk away from the Powerhouse Museum.

The proposal has been made by the state government that the Powerhouse might be moved to Western Sydney. I support very strongly a new cultural institution for Western Sydney. I think that it is absolutely vital that the fastest growing part of Sydney has better access to a cultural institution like the Powerhouse Museum, but the simple truth is that many of our existing institutions—the Powerhouse Museum among them—have very large collections, only a fraction of which are displayed at any one time. The museum in College Street has a large collection, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, at Circular Quay—all of these terrific institutions, and many smaller ones, including the Museum of Sydney, and the Justice and Police Museum, have excess collections, and are able to periodically pull together fantastic temporary collections that could be displayed in a new cultural institution if one were built, for example, in Parramatta. We have the member for Parramatta here, who I know would welcome greater investment in cultural institutions in her electorate, a beautiful part of Sydney with so many fine historic buildings.

I would prefer the collections that I am talking about to be available to the people of New South Wales and to the people of Australia, and on display in Western Sydney, but that should not be at the expense of the existing Powerhouse Museum—a museum that has contributed a great deal to the cultural life of Sydney, and to many, many kids who really love going there and seeing the planes, spaceships and trains and so on. It is in a great central location, which means that people from all other parts of Sydney and New South Wales can get there very easily.

I have to say that I am very disappointed to see the Baird government playing off one part of Sydney against another in this way. I am very supportive of the notion that permanent and temporary collections could be displayed in another cultural institution in Western Sydney, but it should not be at the expense of a fantastic existing museum with strong community support and enthusiasm. This site would be sold. It would be sold by developers to the highest bidder. I spoke about the Pompidou centre a little earlier—I cannot imagine anyone in Paris proposing that they would close the Louvre to build the Pompidou.