Senator Humphries and his Liberal mates have embarked upon a scare campaign claiming 40-50 job losses from the National Portrait Gallery and Old Parliament House.
This is totally untrue.
There are to be no funding cuts to the National Portrait Gallery. There will be no staff cuts from the National Portrait Gallery.
Funds will be reallocated from OPH to the National Museum Commission (NMC) totalling $300,000 per annum out of a total OPH budget of approximately $13 million per annum. These funding reallocations from Old Parliament House will only affect 2-3 management positions. In the event that these positions cannot be reallocated to the National Museum of Australia or the National Museum Commission, then other redeployment opportunities will be sought.
As stated in Labor’s policy – Creative Opportunity: Strengthening our Cultural Institutions – a National Museum Commission will be established at a cost of $2.5 million per annum be a mutual resource that will support all of the National Cultural Institutions and all Institutions will be represented on the Board of the Commission.
The NMC will be funded by:
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Reallocating funding for the Chair of the NMA Council (the Chair of the NMC will also be Chair of the NMA Council). |
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Reallocating funding currently used to service the National Collection Advisory Forum. |
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Abolishing the position of Special Advisor, Sport and Art within DCITA. |
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Reallocating $300,000 from Old Parliament House. |
Funding for the NMC’s access and participation programs will continue to be provided by Visions of Australia and a reallocation of the current Collections Sector Support budget.
This will provide $2.5 million a year for the NMC to commence a range of regional support services, including coordinating travelling exhibitions and addressing pressing issues of access, training and collection support.
Labor commitment is to ensure greater collaboration and coordination between cultural institutions combined with our commitment to de-politicise these intuitions councils, will strengthen and secure their long term future.
Labor believes that the collection at the NPG will be greatly enhanced through links with the very highly regarded National Gallery of Australia. Likewise, OPH will benefit from the resources available to the National Museum of Australia.
Contact: Adina Cirson – 0418 488 295 or 02 6277 3334
