1. Tasmania’s Auditor General’s concerns, in regard to the TMAG’s governance alerts us to serious concerns relevant to the governance and management of entirety of Tasmania’s ‘cultural estate’
2. The TMAG’s legal and management framework has been found to be unclear.
3. There is a need for the roles and responsibilities between TMAG and the Department of State Growth to be reviewed and made clearer.
4. The TMAG had encountered some major budgetary problems during the past four years with the museum overspending its annual budget, with funds having to be reallocated from other areas of government to meet the shortfall.
5. The Auditor General’s audit identified an urgent need for TMAG to develop high-level planning and policy documents.
6. The “TMAG complied with the national standards, but some improvements are needed,” and by extension all the State’s musingplaces and heritage properties in general are likely to share this situation.
7. Speculatively, Tasmania’s ‘cultural estate’ is exposed to a range of risks implied by the Auditor General’s findings relative to the TMAG.
BACKlink TO: FOREWORD
A WAY FORWARD
1. In regard to the State Government’s reinvigoration of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's Board of Trustees and management there appears to be a segue to effecting some restructuring relevant to the governance and management of public cultural assets throughout Tasmania.
2. Reimagining TGMAG governance and management could play a very important part in invigorating cultural development, and cultural tourism, in Tasmania.
3. If Tasmania's cultural assets are reimagined they may well figure amongst Tasmania’s most important in both a cultural and economic context.
4. Tasmania geographically, socially and culturally is ideal research site.
5. There is a strong case to be put that now is the time to renew the Tasmanian Museum’s Act and related heritage legislation and regulations.
BACKlink TO: A WAY FORWARD
WHAT CHANGES ARE NEEDED?
There is a case to be put that the following proposals need serious and careful consideration:
1. That the governance structure and management structure evolving at the TMAG be the governance and operational model for like institutions throughout Tasmania.
2. The Trusteeship of the TMAG be extended in both membership and scope.
3. The roles of the TMAG Chairperson and members be given a high profile as the governors and managers of Tasmania’s ‘cultural estate’.
4. The TMAG and kindred musingplaces in Tasmania be reimagined as an income generating ‘cultural enterprises’.
5. The TMAG and kindred musingplaces embrace the concept of entrepreneurship and the proactive marketing.
6. All public historic buildings monuments etc. should be under the aegis of the TMAG directorship – ‘Tasmanian Trusteeship’ – supported by local advisory panels and tasked committees.
7. Initiate a cultural forum as a kind of ‘cultural think-tank’ that draws upon the broad spectrum of cultural thinkers, academics, educators researchers, et al.
8. Understand musingplaces as having a role to play in Tasmanian society as engine houses of discovery and in multifarious ways.
BACKlink TO: WHAT CHANGES ARE NEEDED?
THE PARADIGM OF RENEWAL AND CHANGE
1. Healthy societies need the push of free enquiry and speculative research. Likewise, societies also need the pull of free enterprise to drive the successes needed to survive and thrive.
2. Musingplaces are the places where new knowledge can be won along with the new understandings of the world that carry us forward.
3. Musingplaces are important cultural resources and the TMAG has a role to play inenhancing ‘the cultural experience’ in Tasmania for Tasmanians and visitors alike.
4. Tasmanians visitors' engagement with the ‘Tasmanian cultural estate’ will be creating new income streams for many aspects of the states cultural operations beyond the TMAG and kindred musingplaces.
5. There is a strong case to be put that it would be appropriate now for the Tasmanian the government to make new appointments to the TMAG’s governing Board of Trustees and extend the board’s membership.
6. Extended the leadership role of the Board of Trustees enabling it to proactively work towards establishing a physical network and virtual network of museums, art galleries, heritage sites, cultural events to better serve Tasmanians and visitors to the state.
7. Tasmanian cultural tourism, cultural institutions plus the histories and heritage of the ‘island’ are closely interrelated. However, currently there are somewhat haphazard interfaces and interrelationships relative to the operational components of these organisations, destinations, etc.
8. Taking cultural tourism by itself, it can be understood as having five primary components.
9. In the widest and most inclusive interpretation, the arts collections that have been created since the European settlement of Tasmania are amongst Australia’s most significant. Importantly, there is an increasing need to be able to access these collections both physically and virtually
10. Tasmanian social histories and industrial heritage are both unique to the island and a microcosm of a kind relative to those found elsewhere in Australia and other ‘colonised places’.
11. In many ways Tasmania’s cultural estate is an exemplar in regard to demonstrating the interfaces evident in ‘settler societies’ in the Western world.
12. There is a need for a plan that takes a proactive and productive role in the overall governance and management of Tasmania’s the cultural ‘estate’– A plan that invests musingplaces and heritage sites with enhanced relevance and values.
PUBLIC MUSINGPLACES AND EMERGING ‘NEW DEMOCRACY’ INITIATIVES
1. Drawing on initiatives like the work of the NEW DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION the accountability of governance is taking on a new dimension.
2. Accountability gets s a relatively a poor level of commitment in many governance structures relevant to musingplaces.
3. Arguably, it is time to seriously consider the prospect of change and specifically change that challenges the comfortable albeit diminishing values invested in the status quo.
3. Oftentimes, it seems that incumbent ‘governors’ just do not want to consider lifting their game when the comfortable defence of the status quo is close at hand.
4. The status quo is just no longer a viable option in the unavoidable ‘change paradigm’ musingplaces currently live and operate within.
5. By way of example, the City of Melbourne’s willingness to include rather than exclude its constituency via ‘the new democracy paradigm’ there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
6. It’s just the case that there is no real reason to think that musingplace governance is beyond the reach of criticism and critique.
7. If change is not embraced, it’ll be Tasmania’s citizenry, its taxpayers and ratepayers, who’ll pay ever so dearly – and it all be so needlessly.
8. When will accountability be given any substance and importance in musingplaces governance? • When one offends it is usual to be punished. However, in the case of public musingplaces it’s not the executive who’ll bear the punishment.
8. By-and-large criticism and critique goes unacknowledged and/or uncontested. So one can see well enough the level of resistance encountered when ‘mere constituents’ try to open a productive dialogue that is an exchange of views.
10. People wish to be participants in their musingplaces government. The evidence in support of all this is compelling if we look at the 'Melbourne Experience' .
11. As is discernible in Melbourne, trusted outcomes are achieved when leadership allows constituents to participate in governance.
Albert Einstein reminded us that “In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.”
THE SPEED OF CHANGE
1. The changes flagged here would not be easy to implement given that they challenge entrenched perceptions, practices and understandings in Tasmania. Typically, when the need for change is articulated it is not uncommon for the rebuttal "if it isn't broken don't fix it" to be trotted out in defence of the status quo.
2. Arguably, there is a need for change in order to better sell Tasmania as cultural destination in a 21st C context.
3. Change needs to be embraced in order that current musingplace governance models and contemporaneous management imperatives can deliver higher levels of productivity and accountability
4. There are very good arguments that say change is an imperative!
5. Machiavelli tells us that "there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things ... and ... Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times".... speed is subjective.
6. Through change Tasmanians should be enabled to learn and appreciate more about the collections they have invested in via government, Local and State, on their behalf.
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek" – Barack Obama.
Shakespeare puts timeliness in perspective well enough ... "Make use of time, let not advantage slip."
BACKlink TO: THE SPEED OF CHANGE
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