Turning icon into a tacky billboard

The Sydney Opera House is Australia’s most beautiful building. It is one of the very few examples of Australian culture that is recognisable around the world. Whatever we have spent on it has been returned to the people of NSW and Australia in spades. So it is crazy to tarnish that unique image by turning it into a tacky billboard. And that is exactly what is now at risk of occurring, after Gladys Berejiklian’s Government largely accepted Racing NSW’s proposal to disfigure the graceful structure Jorn Utzon conceived as sails over water with advertising for a thoroughbred horse race.

To be sure, this is not a first. The Government has in the past directed the Opera House to break its general policy, which is not to allow projection of branded images. Rugby Australia was allowed to project its logo and the message ‘‘Go Wallabies’’ before the Rugby World Cup in 2015 and Cricket Australia projected an image of the cup that holds the Ashes after Australia’s wins this year. Those decisions were questionable enough but the logo of a wallaby is at least suggestive of a broad Australian theme of sport and Australian fauna. The Ashes are part of the nation’s history that goes well beyond the specific sport of cricket.

What Racing NSW asked for was in an entirely different league of chutzpah. It jars with everything about the Opera House, a world heritage-listed institution.