Good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming to support TMAG. TMAG is Tasmania’s most significant publicly owned cultural institution and the anchor for cultural tourism in the State. In his State of the State address in March Premier Rockcliff stated that his government was ‘proud of its support for TMAG’ and that investment in arts and culture is good for the visitor economy, for the regions, for the wellbeing and health of Tasmanians and to create a more inclusive economy. So we should have nothing to fear should we?

So what underpins TMAG?

It’s the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Act of 2017 which replaced the previous Act of 1950. Under the Act TMAG has certain statutory obligations which are expressed as ‘Institutional objectives’. I have paraphrased these here to make them more comprehensible:

1. To care for and develop the TMAG collections by acquiring works, objects and specimens;

2. To create exhibitions using TMAG collections and material loaned to the museum

3. To promote the work of the museum

4. To promote and support the educational use of the collections

5. To conduct, support and promote research into the collections, both by TMAG staff and external parties.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. With regard to the positions at the Herbarium and in Vertebrate and Invertebrate Zoology which are threatened by these job cut proposals, the scientists in these positions have essential roles not just in TMAG but across the government and indeed the Tasmanian economy. The knowledge they hold and the advice they give are called upon to assist other government agencies and private citizens to manage a broad range of other legislation. These include:

Threatened Species Protection Act

Nature Conservation Act

Weed Management Act

Biosecurity Act

Agricultural and Veterinary Chemicals Act

Poisons Act

Forest Practices Act

Nature Conservation Regulations

Plant Quarantine Act

We have already heard from Sally Bryant about the critical significance of these collections. Another position on the chopping block includes the librarian, a very important role in a research institution. Librarians are information specialists with skills well beyond google searches, Wikipedia or AI.

Just what are the proposed funding cuts and what do they mean? Tony Bonney of Inkhorn Projects has done a deep dive into the 2026 Tasmanian budget papers to see what they indicate about arts funding in general and TMAG in particular.

He found that the funds provided by government to TMAG will fall from $13.5 million in 2026-27 to $9.8 million, in 2027-28, that is a reduction of 27% in a single year. At the same time TMAG has been set performance targets of raising visitor numbers by 6.4% over the same period. Why do visitors come to the museum? Many come for research; most come to view exhibitions. But the proposed job cuts include a designer, photographer and senior exhibition officer — these positions are required to mount exhibitions. They are held by staff with years, even decades of experience in museum practice — you can’t just hire people on contract to fulfil these roles. It does not work. We are already seeing the results: old exhibitions are getting tired, they are changed much less frequently than previously, galleries are closed some days because there just is not the staff or budget to cover illnesses and the like.

The TMAG funding dilemma is mirrored across the Arts and Culture sector. The budget papers estimate that arts and culture contribute nearly $1.1 billion to the Tasmanian economy. In 2026-27 the government will spend $33.4 million across the sector — that means it expects a return of $32 for every dollar it spends. By comparison, sport and recreation, which is a very important part of government expenditure will get $196.7 million — that is almost six times the arts and culture funding allocation. The Australian Sports Commission has found that $7 is returned for every dollar spent in that sector.

I think that discrepancy says it all — the arts and culture dollar has to work nearly five times harder than the sport and recreation dollar. We need the government to take arts and culture seriously, to fund it and TMAG as the State’s leading cultural institution adequately so the sector and TMAG can fulfil what is expected of them.

This is the transcript of a speech given by Ian Terry, former TMAG History and Cultural Heritage Curator, at the public meeting organised by the Friends of TMAG in Hobart on Thursday 8 October 2026