Powerhouse Museum should not be relocated to Parramatta: parliamentary report

Premier Gladys Berejiklian will not budge from plans to move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta despite a parliamentary report recommending the facility remain in Ultimo.

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Premier Gladys Berejiklian will not budge from plans to move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta despite a scathing parliamentary report recommending the facility remain in Ultimo.

The report, released on Thursday, slammed the move as an “expensive and unnecessary project built on poor foundations” and recommended the government inject funds into restoring the museum at Ultimo.

It also claimed the government’s business case was “fundamentally flawed”.

“Given the significance of this project, the lack of detail, analysis and evidence regarding costs and logistics associated with the relocation has been staggering,” committee chair Robert Borsak wrote.

Powerhouse Museum will go to Parramatta

The Coalition have budgeted $650 million to move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta but that will increase to $1.1 billion with additional costs including operating the new museum and land purchase.

Ms Berejiklian said she had “absolutely no plans to change what we’ve already announced”.

“Why shouldn’t Western Sydney have that iconic institution there and shame on the Labor Party for thinking Western Sydney deserves a second class cultural institution,” she said.

“I’m not surprised that Labor, teaming up with the Greens and teaming up with others, would have that response.”

The report also recommended the government consider establishing a “Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences satellite site, and/or establishing a world class cultural institution in Parramatta”.

NPremier Gladys Berejiklian will not budge from plans to move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta Picture: Joel Carrett

Labor leader Michael Daley has promised Labor will build a $500 million “world-class cultural institution” at Parramatta if his party wins in March and spend $45 million over four years to repair the Powerhouse.

Opposition arts spokesman Walt Secord said the government's Powerhouse Museum project had “lurched from crisis to crisis”.

“The Berejiklian Government’s handling of the Powerhouse Museum has been a colossal economic disaster for the community, and the only winners in this whole exercise will be property developers,” he said.

Greens MP and deputy chair of the committee David Shoebridge said Parramatta deserved “more than a dumbed down Powerhouse”.

“It deserves a unique, world class cultural institution that reflects its own Aboriginal, colonial and multicultural heritage,” he said.