‘Very difficult’: Museum leaders tell of restructure pain
SA Museum leadership has told a parliamentary inquiry about the impact on the whole workforce from controversial restructure plans.
“I think it would be absolutely fair to say it has been a very difficult period of time for all of the staff from the senior leadership team down to all of those people now, whether you were part of the proposed restructure or not,” said SA Museum chair Kim Cheater.
He gave evidence at the first hearing yesterday of the Statutory Authorities Review Committee’s Inquiry into the South Australian Museum and Art Gallery of South Australia.
Cheater and Museum CEO David Gaimster fronted the committee in Old Parliament House alongside the Museum’s engagement director Justine van Mourik and manager Brenen Dew.
The inquiry was set up in May in response to staff and community opposition to the planned reforms, including the proposed axing of all 27 positions in the Museum’s research and collections division, to be replaced by 22 new roles focusing on curatorial research.
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The backlash and a rally against the plans prompted Premier Peter Malinauskas to order a halt to the process pending the outcome of a Premier’s Review into the restructure.
During the hearing, Cheater claimed there was widespread misunderstanding about the proposed plans.
“There was a lot of feedback. It demonstrated an enormous amount of passion that exists out there for the Museum, but I would note that, and I think this has been said, in amongst that there was also a lot of misinformation that was then being circulated,” he said
“There is a lot of misinformation with people drawing wrong conclusions at times, people making it quite personal – and it should never have been personal – you get to a situation where that makes it hard from a work point of view.
“But then to add to that, we are now in a period of time where we have a process to go through and are awaiting the Premier’s review as to what does that look like in terms of the future. So that is a challenging situation, there is no question.”
