PUBLIC FORUM ON THE MUSEUM SITE
Exhibition Building

Miles Lewis
26 May 1996

Ladies and Gentlemen

I have lived through a period when the Victoria Market has been proposed as
the site of new Museum ; then the Queen Victoria Hospital site; then the
existing Museum and Library site in Swanston Street (on the basis that the
Library would now move out); then the south bank of the Yarra; and now the
Carlton Gardens.

These changes have been absolutely dispiriting for those involved in the
Museum.  The last was probably the worst.  Construction was actually under way
on a site on the south side of the Yarra which the Museum itself had chosen,
which had a water connection to Scienceworks, and which was close to Southgate
and the Arts Centre.  The Kennett Government simply stepped in, halted the
work, and converted the part-built structure into the Exhibition Centre.

Nobody can help sympathising with the Museum authorities.  Anybody can
understand their desperate desire to find a permanent home, and their
desperate need, in consequence, to justify the present scheme.

But the fact is that nobody in the Museum world honestly believes that this is
a good site.  Nobody believes that it is central enough.  Nobody believes that
it is close enough to other arts and tourist facilities.  Nobody believes that
it is accessible enough to public transport; nobody believes that it will have
enough carparking.  Nobody believes that it can work well in relation to the
Exhibition building.  Nobody believes that it provides the room for expansion
which is a requirement of the brief itself.

The official brief states (p 64): "It is also inevitable that at some time in
the future additions to the complex will be required.  The building needs to
cater for expansion in both its internal planning and its external
appearance."

Two put it bluntly, two wrongs don't make a right, and five wrongs still don't
make a
right.

The other four wrongs are as follows.  It is wrong for the Exhibition
Buildings.  It is wrong for the cultural precinct of Melbourne.  It is wrong
for the City of Melbourne as a whole.  And it is absolutely and terribly wrong
to treat parkland as development sites.

It is wrong for the Exhibition Building because this is one of Australia's
most important and symbolic pieces of architecture, epitomising the peak of
nineteenth century Victorian success and prosperity, representing a high point
of intercolonial cooperation; and the first meeting place of the Parliament of
Australia.  It is, along with the Eiffel Tower in Paris, one of the only
substantial structures remaining from the great nineteenth century
exhibitions.



And it is, because of this, the only building in Victoria with any prospect of
achieving world heritage listing.  That listing represents the ultimate in
international recognition, and means a great deal in terms both of tourism and
prestige.  But it also requires a commitment by the authorities to the
building's proper preservation and management, including its
surroundings.

Such a commitment is not demonstrated by building a totally incompatible
structure next to it, with a featuristic blade whose sole purpose is to
compete with the great dome.

And don't get the idea that this is will be a new structure nestling in the
shadow of the Exhibition Building.  The Exhibition Building is huge, but the
Museum is to be three times the size, and to add to that there will be an
additional three thousand square metres of outdoor exhibition space, plus
delivery bays, plus carparking access.

The north part of the Carlton Gardens will be no more than a skirt about the
foot of this
megastructure.

Cars will enter the site through what was the major public forecourt of the
Exhibition Building facing Nicholson Street.  A boom gate and attendant's
booth have already been put there, overshadowing the newly restored Westgarth
Fountain and turning a major public space into a tacky parking lot.  Does this
suggest that future decisions about the Exhibition Buiilding can safely be
left in the hands of Mr Morris?

That is why the proposal is wrong for the Exhibition Building.  Why is it
wrong for the
cultural precinct?

There is a cultural spine along Swanston Street.  At the north end is a
so-called knowledge precinct extending from Melbourne University through RMIT
to the State Library and the present Museum.  At the south end is the Arts
Centre, the soon to be reopened Regent Theatre, and the Town Hall in its role
as a prime musical and entertainment venue.

These landmark institutions are mutually reinforcing.  People move from one to
another.  They cooperate for festivals and other special events.  They
collectively comprise Melbourne'sculturalidentity.
TotaketheMuseumoutofthegroupisnotjusttodamage the Museum itself, but to damage
the others as well.  It is to hack off a major limb from a body which is not
robust enough to spare it.

That is why this proposal is wrong from the point of view of Melbourne's
cultural precinct.

If the museum is essential to the cultural spine, it is even more essential to
the Central Business District.  Central Melbourne, make no mistake, is very
sick and is getting sicker by the minute.  The residential market is
collapsing, and it's losing office accommodation, retailing and entertainment.

Swanston Walk already looks like a wasteland, and this is only the beginning.

City flats in recycled buildings are now re-selling at about 20% less than the
purchase
price.  That is a situation which simply cannot continue, and the rot has set
in already.


City office space is in a state of glut, partly concealed by the incentives,
discounts and rentfree periods used to attract tenants into the new buildings.
 But the fact is that the demand is not there.  City rentals are lower than
those in St Kilda Road, and in turn the rents in St Kilda Road are below those
in some suburban centres.

City retailing is sick enough as it is.  Soon a massive new shopping complex
is going to
open at the Casino, and the whole focus of the city will move to the south of
the Yarra.

The same is true of entertainment.  The Casino complex is to contain no less
than twenty new cinemas.  What will that do to the existing city venues?

Every viable function is being leached out of the city.  There is not much
that governments can do to arrest a decline Re this.  However, every few
decades, perhaps only two or three times in a century, there is some major
project which can be used to kick start a revival, and the construction of a
new Museum is potentially one such project.

But it is not being used in that way.  It is not merely that the Museum is to
be built elsewhere.  This also involves taking away the existing Museum and
its existing flow of visitors.  This could be the coup-de-grace for at least
the northern part of town.

My fifth, and my last, and my most serious point is what this implies for
Melbourne's parklands.  There have always been greedy eyes on Melbourne's
parks, and there have always been battles to preserve one park or another.
But there has never been a sustained and simultaneous attack upon almost every
piece of open space in the city as there is today, under the Kennett
government .

The destruction of parklands is a one-way process,, which works like a
ratchet.  For there is no going back.  Every time you put a development on
parkland you create the expectation that the same can be done with the next
development.  Every time you put a public institution on parkland you create a
demand for carparking and access roads which can never be finally satisfied.
Every use you put in parkland has to expand, in due course, onto the only
space available, which is more parkland.

The Children's Hospital was moved onto Royal Park in the 1950s.  Now this is
the excuse
for the Women's Hospital to move there as well.

The Carlton Football ground - or so-called 'Optus Oval' - has long been in
Princes Park, but is expanding, at the expense of parkland; creating
carparking, at the expense of parkland; and installing night lighting, also at
the expense of parkland.

In this age of economic rationalism the Royal Botanic Gardens has to earn
money on a commercial basis, and therefore to provide spaces that can be let
out for functions.  Therefore it is to expand into the Domain, once again at
the expense of Parkland.

In the Carlton Gardens there has been a carpark north of this building.  That
is the excuse for saying that this area is no longer park, and therefore a
giant project can be built there.  But that carpark is a part of the original
Carlton Gardens, and until now no permanent building has been allowed upon it.
 Make no mistake - the Museum proposal is an assault on parklands on a massive
scale.


The Melbourne Zoo has had temporary parking on the surrounding grassed areas
during peak seasons.  Now that is being translated into permanent parking with
kerbing, and earthworks, and the removal of trees.  Once this has been done
the next government can say there, as has been said here in the Carlton
Gardens, that this is only car park, so it can now be built over.  What price
parklands now?

We have always understood that parks were permanent, and were for all people,
and that they could be used for sporting purposes.  We have complacently
accepted the idea that this might mean a few extra structures by way of
toilets and changing rooms.  But it has now gone way beyond that.  They are
now used to build giant complexes with the permanent offices of sporting
bodies, with private clubrooms, commercial restaurants and with
corporate boxes.

Albert Park has been completely raped for the Grand Prix, and now looks as
synthetic as
Noddy's Toy Town, with a giant building in the middle.  But you've seen
nothing yet.

There is now to be an even bigger structure put up at the north-west comer as
an indoor sports and aquatic centre.  It will be seven times the size of the
Pit Building, or approximately the same size as the giant Melbourne Exhibition
Centre on the south side of the Yarra.

If so much parkland can be destroyed by a single government, why should the
next government not do the same again?  And the one after?  And how long
before there is nothing left?

This is symptomatic of the planning process in modem Victoria.  There are no
overall policies.  Decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent.  There is no
public input, no professional review, and no avenue for public protest or
appeal.  Assumptions that we all took for granted - like the idea that
parkland is permanent open space - are repudiated and ridiculed.

And it is dog eat dog.  The sort of people who support the planning process,
who love the parkland, and who have a vision of an urbane and civilised city,
are the very people who would naturally support institutions like the Museum
of Victoria.  Yet now a wedge is driven between us, and we are forced into
opposite camps.

Let us recognise that the supporters of the parks and the supporters of the
Museum are not enemies but allies.  We have a common enemy, and that is the
Philistines - those people in politics, administration and public life, who
would foist upon us an irrational and destructive proposal.

It is a proposal which will oust the Museum from its rightful place at the
heart of Melbourne and sever it from its public, which will devalue one of our
greatest public monuments, which will sap the cultural life of Melbourne,
which will help in bringing the CBD to its knees, and which will unleash the
hounds of hell upon the tattered remains of Melbourne's parks and gardens.