SPEECH BY PETER GEORGE, MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
29.10.26
Honourable Speaker, the proposed restructure of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is ill-conceived, inept and shows blatant disregard for the people who make TMAG what it is.
With no evidence of meaningful consultation, it’s more like the Hunger Games. Some face competing with each other for their jobs.
Some were asked to submit 500-word justifications of their roles via an online portal. Imagine: decades of internationally recognised research, public exhibitions, awards, conference papers, books and community engagement, reduced to a text box of 500 words or less.
Honourable speaker, when you walk through TMAG’s main door … or into the Herbarium … or the zoological collection … or any TMAG repository, you are walking through the front door of Tasmania, into an island history stretching back millions of years. The front door of what Tasmania is today, how we got here and where we’re going.
Now imagine that front door slammed in your face.
Honourable Speaker, Minister Jaensch’s response to my constituency question on behalf of Friends of TMAG reveals either wilful ignorance of what’s at stake … or that he’s a fantasist.
“Regardless of staff changes,” he says, “the State Collection will continue to be managed and conserved in line with the institution’s statutory obligation.”
Minister, I’ve heard first-hand from the very staff who manage and conserve these collections. The truth? TMAG may have to close its doors. Its priceless collections totalling nearly a million objects may rot in un-opened drawers.
TMAG is already grossly understaffed and chronically underfunded. Its zoology and palaeontology collections are served by one vertebrate and one invertebrate curator, each caring for around 300,000 animal specimens, both fossil and living. Incredibly, the Government plans to merge these two positions into a single curator of all non-human animals – a role Sir David Attenborough himself could not fulfil.
The Herbarium holds roughly 300,000 plant specimens collected from Tasmania and Antarctica. Last year its leader, Dr Gintaras Kantvilas, won the Premier’s STEM Researcher of the Year Award. Now, the same Premier is giving him the sack, along with half of his over-stretched team. Storied academics and institutions globally from Gdansk to Boise, Idaho to Trieste who have written to express their horror.
TMAG, Honourable Speaker, is the reference library of our island’s living world.
When the CSIRO needs to know whether a species was here a century ago — TMAG is there. When a land manager needs to know what grows in a gully before a road goes through — TMAG is there. When a biosecurity officer needs to identify an unfamiliar species — TMAG is there. When we want to understand ourselves as Tasmanians — TMAG is there.
TMAG holds 250,000 cultural objects and a library of 15,000 rare books.
Aboriginal communities see their own culture held with respect.
The curator finds the story. The photographer makes it visible. The designer makes it understandable to a ten-year-old. The librarian is a fount of knowledge.
Cut the people, break the chain of knowledge — and lose the institution.
Honourable Speaker, it beggars belief that the Government’s answer to the budget nightmare of its own making is to destroy a precious institution that is beyond value.
Honourable Speaker, this Government promised no front-line jobs were at risk because of its own financial mismanagement. TMAG is not just a front-line entity — it’s the advance guard.
It is a statutory authority that must care for collections in the public trust.
Half a million annual visitors annually make it a cultural icon and economic powerhouse.
Above all, TMAG carries something we cannot replace: our memory. We simply cannot afford to lose the guardians of that memory.
Honourable Speaker, if the Premier understands the inherent value of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, as he assures me he does, and as so many Tasmanians do, he will stop this today.
Premier, stop this today.
And then fund TMAG for what it is: the keeper of our memory, the guardian of our heritage, the front door to Tasmania and, indeed, one of the reasons the world wants to come here.
