Former Premier Mike Baird summonsed to museum inquiry over Powerhouse decision
FORMER Premier Mike Baird has finally faced the upper house committee inquiry into museums and galleries over his decision to move the Powerhouse Museum to Parramatta.
Parramatta
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FORMER Premier Mike Baird has finally faced the upper house committee inquiry into museums and galleries.
When in power back in 2015, Mr Baird announced the Powerhouse Museum move to Parramatta.
He was summonsed to the Jubilee Room, Parliament House, Sydney to attend the Portfolio Committee Number 4 — Legal Affairs.
Those unable to attend the Parliament House tuned in to the webcast. Even before the screen had switched on, there were 60 viewers watching and waiting. At its peak, there were 128.
On the committee, Walt Secord claimed Mr Baird made a “captain’s call and was going backwards from there” by announcing the museum’s move without having a business case.
While David Shoebridge queried Mr Baird’s decision to ignore Parramatta’s history.
He said the area had extraordinary Aboriginal, colonial and migrant history.
“Why did you choose to reject a museum responding to that extraordinary diversity and history,” Mr Shoebridge said.
Mr Baird responded. “Recognising the rich history would be a great thing to do. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do that,” he said.
The committee posed questions about where the decision to relocate the museum to Parramatta originated.
“The first person to propose it (the museum move) was David Borger back in 2010. “Ultimately, Infrastructure NSW made a recommendation,” he said.
In that recommendation it said to “urgently consider the relocation of the Powerhouse Museum” given the growing deficit of space at the existing Ultimo site and its capacity to not show all of its exhibits.
He said the site’s ability to comply with current and updated security exhibitions was lagging too.
From there he said the museum’s move had to be approved by the expenditure review committee and endorsed by cabinet and confirmed by budget before he made it public.
“Many words have been uttered but very little was delivered on the ground in western Sydney. For too long it was ignored,” Mr Baird said.
Laughter erupted in the gallery behind Mr Baird when asked about the length the museum’s business case took.
“It’s taken a longer period than you might expect. We had to get appropriate experts and understand their analysis. The site had potential water issues,” he said.
That’s when the gallery burst into laughter. Existing flood mapping of Parramatta reveals the site is at risk of water to more than four metres. It’s prone to one-in-20-year flooding.
Mr Baird wasn’t alone in being questioned. Parramatta Council former chief executive Greg Dyer and its former chief financial officer Craig Beecroft faced the upper house committee earlier in the day.
Mr Dyer said the first time he’d heard about the museum’s move was in the Daily Telegraph. He blamed his inability to recall specific dates or a timeline on the busy role and large organisation.
“We were engaged in the growth of the central city. We had a lot of aspects of that going on,” he said.
Of which, the Powerhouse Museum was the centrepiece.
“We were very keen to see a world class museum … in a new format which was the next iteration of Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences,” he said.