The question below I addressed to the “Mayor and Councillors” and it as has become an ongoing pattern of managerial intervention in that it has yet again been responded to by ‘management’ without any apparent reference to the Councillors. Given that the question was to do with a strategic and policy determination matter I believe that management has yet again exceeded its authority unless of course management has been delegated ‘governance authority’ by the Councillors. If so, the Councillors misrepresented themselves when they stood for election and continue to do so in their unseemly deference to management.
The GM/CEO has asserted that Councillors are neither the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) governing body nor the institution’s ‘Trustees’ entrusted with the security of the institution’s collections. Nonetheless the institution reports to the Councillors somewhat decoratively and with the report buried as it is on the 414th Page of the agenda there is unhealthy signalling. Quite possibly this is because ‘management’ oversights the city’s budget and thus, somewhat haplessly, the Councillors underwrite the lion’s share of the QVMAG’s recurrent budget – thus the lip service.
By extension, this means that the city’s ratepayers are underwriting the QVMAG’s recurrent budget along with the funding of the institution’s capital expenditure and largely without any semblance of effective accountability.
Against this background it also needs to be said that by bureaucratically, and inappropriately, bending the roles of governance and management, Launceston Town Hall has distorted and seriously warped the 'strategic purpose of the QVMAG'. Strategically, currently the institution operates virtually in a ‘rudderless’ way without a functional strategic plan and apparently without a ‘functional governing body’ to oversight the institution and its purposefulness.
'In allowing this to happen, Councillors have clearly abdicated their governance role and the QVMAG is yet another exemplar of their abdication. Arguably, and concerningly, the QVMAG is the fraction that represents the whole.
In a nutshell, the QVMAG, as an institution, was what it was, a purposeful, research oriented ‘musingplace’ that reflected the social dynamics and shifting cultural realities, and the times, it existed within – albeit that the critical discourse and its colonial leanings were contestable. Currently, Launceston Town Hall’s management’s mind set has ‘blended and blanded’ its strategic positing ‘managerially’ well away from the mindsets that typically define purposeful cultural institutions’ reason for being.
It turns out that calling all this out for being Machiavellian manoeuvring, it might not be too short of the mark. Here again, and sadly, it is a circumstance where the fraction represents the distortions evident in the whole.
By way of an example, when Town Hall’s ‘management’ says that the QVMAG’s “economic, environmental and social impact” and that its “activities and programs are intended to attract new audiences to the museum and to the region, particularly those communities who have previously been under-represented” this represents more the ‘purposefulness’ of a theme park with ‘entertainment’ as its brief.
A ‘musingplsace’ with a pursuit of knowledge and better understandings that underpins its ‘purposefulness’ would not characterise itself in this way. Why does the QVMAG and Town Hall say this now? Upon what ‘expert advice’ is the GM/CEO relying upon?
Poignantly, when we quote the Roman satirist, Juvenal, and the translation of his remarks to do with ‘bread and circuses’ what he was talking about was how Roman Empire builders depended upon limiting the desires of the Roman populace. Politically they were fed bread freely and given circuses to quell their intellect’s search for meaning. That it is talked about again, and right now in Tasmania, it should tell us something.
Town Hall’s ‘management’, and accordingly the QVMAG’s too, claimed in response to previous questioning that it is a legitimate institution sanctioned by some obscure and as yet unidentified Federal Govt legislation/regulation. What Federal institution might that be?
Given that the city’s ratepayers underwrite the institution’s recurrent budget along with the State Government and the State’s taxpayers, the institution’s apparent disregard for demonstrating its accountability, and fulsomely is quite unacceptable not to mention inappropriate – delinquent, recalcitrant and self-serving even.
The QVMAG’s current staff only hold their positions as an outcome of well over a century of ‘generous community investment’ reflected in the institution’s iconic collections. By extension investments via the ‘public purse’ over that time has provided the formidable infrastructure they now have access to. For the most part that investment has been made for the purpose of generating new knowledge and better understandings – albeit an institution operating as a Council cost centre with relatively generous recurrent budgets.
Essentially the institution’s brief once was to engage in the facilitation of research and the publishing of research outcomes – via exhibitions and other means. This is something that it was doing in a 20th C context but since the turn of the 21st C this has given way to displaying curiosities in an entertaining manner – and sadly so.
Serially and somewhat surreally over the past two decades the ‘cost centre mindset’ has incrementally turned the QVMAG, as an institution, into a hollow representation of what it once was, and what it could be yet, in pursuit of some bizarre economically rational outcome. Typically, when this happens, the outcome is neither economic or rational – and it is written.
By way of example and to put it bluntly, there is not a single standout theory that can explain say Singapore's economic success. Singapore is an exemplar of an economy that combines extreme features of capitalism and socialism. All theories are partial and the economic realities that we actually exist within are complex. Albeit that the city of Launceston is not in the same ‘economic frame’ as Singapore, its economic realities are complex and largely beyond the comprehension of upwardly mobile bureaucrats with an even bigger salary package front of mind.
Back to the QVMAG, the institution’s apparent inability to report to Council in a timely way, and fulsomely, demonstrates an apparent disregard for the institution’s embedded histories, its Community of Ownership and Interest(COI), its donors and benefactors, the city’s ratepayers and Tasmania’s taxpayers without whose support the institution could not function and pay its staff, build upon its collections and facilitate research. Some mindful respect given to this would be welcomed.
About a year ago now it was determined that all this, perceived then as the status quo, was unsustainable. A year on and the status quo persists and arguably in a diminishing way. With other priorities winning community attention the QVMAG disconnectedness is at serious risk of losing its credibility and support and all the investment in the institution – past and present– may dissipate like so much smoke in a windstorm. If it were to happen it would be more than saddening – a tragedy in fact.
Last year, Launceston was promised that it could soon see major changes at the country's biggest regional museum and art gallery, which calls the city home. A Company Limited by Guarantee (CLG) was muted but such an outcome would come with obligations that are not being met currently. Quite possibly QVMAG staff and Town Hall managerialism’s feet have gone cold as the consequences kick in.
It is inexplicable as to why nominations and expressions of interest for QVMAG CLG company membership were not advertised months ago. In fact it is very concerning given all that it might well imply.
Remembering Winston Churchill, he said that “ to improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.” It is a significant quote that bureaucracy tends to lend a deaf ear to albeit that a CLG would be a significant step away from the unsustainable status quo.
Whatever, a CLG would be a good outcome in that it would mean that the QVMAG, as an institution would/could become a credible musingplace again if ‘the company’ had an appropriate membership – say 100 COI people – who:
• ... In turn appointed a ‘governing body’; and that
• ...In turn appointed a qualified executive management team; and that
• ...In turn appointed qualifies staff; and
• ...As a matter of course, and in an ongoing way, its ‘governance’ determines and defines the institution’s ‘purposefulness’ in a transparent and accountable way – albeit mindful of funding agencies, sponsors, and other networked supporters’ aspirations.
Creating a CLG is not rocket science, but change can be worrisome. If the consequences of change ‘frightens the horses’ and that this may explain why no discernible progress has been made towards realising it already this too is worrisome. The disinclination to move forward is palpable and by now unacceptable.
If the State Government and other agencies were to turn away from the QVMAG given the position Town Hall and inattentive Councillors have placed the institution in, it should not surprise anyone. Some years ago, the Minister for the Arts set some Key Performance Indicators that apparently future funding relied upon. All the indicators suggest that the KPIs have not been met and the QVMAG’s COI wonders how this can be and just how long is that euphemistic ‘piece of string’.
So, the agenda item 8.1.4 where it is stated yet again that “the city of Launceston is committed to undertaking the recommendation and the requisite actions to effect the transition are ongoing” upon reflection on previous, and ongoing, and as yet unrealised commitments, taken together, are nothing short of the class of disingenuous BIGbrotherish bureaucratic doublespeak George Orwell warned the world of in his book “1984” – published June 8 1949.
Ray Norman
Artist, Metalsmith, Networker, Independent Researcher, Launcestonian,
Cultural Theorist, Cultural Geographer and a hunter of Deep Histories.
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