Talking Point: Cultural value worth treasuring

HENRY REYNOLDS: Hobart’s Treasury Buildings are of immense importance, perhaps even more than Parliament House

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Treasury Buildings, Murray St entrance. The site could showcase convict history or house UTAS facilities. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

THE large number of Hobart people who took the opportunity to visit the Treasury buildings last month was a clear indication of community interest in their future. There is no doubt that many of them are opposed to the government’s plan to consider their sale.

Treasurer Peter Gutwein’s subsequent decision to sell the Elizabeth Street Pier accentuates that concern.

There is much more than nostalgia at play.

The eight buildings in question occupy a whole block in the middle of the city. And their location is only the start. The earliest building dates back to 1824 when Van Diemens Land was detached from New South Wales to begin its independent administrative and legal career.

Since then the buildings have been at the centre of Tasmania’s political and judicial life. They are, by any measure, of immense historical importance, perhaps even more consequential than Parliament House.

The unavoidable question is why would any government want to sell them? Consider what a sale would mean. There would be the transfer from public to private ownership which would almost certainly pass into the hands of mainland or overseas investors.

And how would the cultural value of the buildings be assessed? Would any price determined by the market compensate us for action which would inevitably diminish our heritage. The government seems not to appreciate that buildings of such cultural importance are much more than the sum of their physical attributes.

And it’s not as if Tasmania needs the money. Treasurer Gutwein assures us again and again that his stewardship has delivered us from penury. Why then choose this moment to sell the family silver?

Community discussion has already provided a variety of suggestions which must surely be given serious consideration. One theme has prevailed. People want the buildings to enhance the city’s intellectual and cultural life.

And here the university could be a major player. The migration from Sandy Bay to the city is already under way. The ambitious STEM project will greatly hasten the change. But surely other faculties would fit more seamlessly into the centre of the city. Humanities, social sciences, law, economics and commerce would all benefit by relocation.

A start might be with the Law school opening a city annex in the old Court House Building on the Franklin Square corner of Macquarie St. The old Supreme Court Chambers are ready made for meetings, lectures and moots.

But more emphasis has been given to an expansion of Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the development of new galleries for the many treasures normally kept in storage.

We should remember that some of the world’s greatest boutique galleries are housed in buildings with small rooms. One immediately thinks of the Frick collection in New York and the Wallace collection in London. But there would be even greater synergy between the Treasury Buildings and much needed space for the display and celebration of our history.

Two large themes stand out. One is the serious gaps in the way we illustrate our convict story. There is almost no available explanation of Hobart’s convict legacy. Visitors to the state learn about penal institutions at Port Arthur and increasingly about assigned servants on the large rural estates.

But Hobart was central to the whole system far more so than was Port Arthur. Most convicts arrived in Hobart and many more lived in the town than on Tasman’s Peninsula.

Convict labour was used to build most of the public buildings and the essential infrastructure. Assigned servants worked everywhere — in the shops and small businesses and in the homes of the well-to-do townspeople. There is also little available explanation anywhere of the role of the convict bureaucracy in making the system work. All that detailed administration was carried out in the older of the Treasury Buildings.

What an opportunity there is to explain ourselves and our distinctive history? And the whole story of the assignment system is of far greater general, and even of expert interest, than the saga of the prisons at Port Arthur and elsewhere which only ever housed about 10 per cent of convicts.

But beyond all these considerations is the need we have to pay tribute to our convict ancestors and the indispensable contribution they made to the founding and development of the island.

These thoughts lead to a second theme needing both illustration and commemoration and in particular the development of Tasmanian democracy. It is a story we should be proud of and one which is of wide relevance.

There was the struggle to end transportation, the agitation to weaken the grasp of authoritarian governors and then the long journey to achieve full democratic rights well before most countries in the world.

Central to the story is the career of Tasmania’s greatest political figure Andrew Inglis Clark who, as attorney-general and then supreme court judge, worked for many years in the buildings between 1885 and 1907. He was the single most important contributor to the writing of the Australian Constitution. He also introduced proportional representation in Hobart in 1896. It was an achievement of global significance.

Henry Reynolds is an Honorary Research Professor at the University of Tasmania and author of many books including A History of Tasmania (2012).