Ownership and consultation – a double fail?

Times like this it seems like Invercargill is being run like a Monopoly game where some of the property cards have been misplaced.

The Southland Museum and Art Gallery (Smag) board pronounces itself shocked – shocked! – to learn it doesn’t own the famous pyramid building. Which it rather thought it did.

After all, it was the board that made the sorrowful decision in 2018 to close it, albeit in swift reaction to the decision of Invercargill City Council city manager Clare Hadley, whose job made her the employer of the museum staff, that she was not prepared to have them continue to work in the pyramid given its earthquake-risk status.

Hadley’s latest report to the council suggests a long-held view that the council owns the land and the trust board owns the building is wrong – the council owns the building.

If so, then wow. Granted, in practical terms the board has long had what might only hazily be called governance of the museum. The big calls, especially regarding longpromised redevelopment, have been hugely reliant on local government’s prioritisations, since crucial funding came from that direction and the board had heavy council representation.

Even so, when things as fundamental as ownership have become this indistinct to the key parties involved it’s a chastening, if not humiliating, case of institutional forgetfulness.

Nothing in this revelation seems to get in the way of the proposal to transfer governance of the museum activity – though not the collection – to the council, amid moves to create a more regionally coherent arts, heritage and culture strategy.

Hadley proposes public consultation on that, which is appropriate. But here’s the thing: The council’s consultation record regarding the Smag lately has been poor.

Quite rightly, board member Roger Eagles earlier this week called out the Invercargill and Southland councils for the continued refusal to release the report on future museum options commissioned and received from strategic planner Tim Walker, in draft form a year ago and in final state fully eight months ago.

The idea, at the time, was that this would prove a basis for really good, informed public debate. Instead, zip. The councils – ahem – asked the board not to release the Walker report. As Eagles tells it, the board was given the message the councils wanted time to read it. (And, presumably, marshall considered thoughts on the matter.)

Eagles’ complaint of intolerable delay was met with an aggrieved response from council members on the board. City councillor Darren Ludlow said a workshop of councillors needed to be held but the council decision-maker had been ‘‘distracted and preoccupied’’, with elections, new councillors, annual plans and Christmas. And Southland District Mayor Gary Tong endorsed the delay explanations, sorry to say.

None of it justifies keeping the public in the dark in the meantime. That is simple arrogance. The board has decided to give the councils a couple of months to have their workshop, but it’s about time the public stepped forward on its own behalf. The suspicion naturally arises that the councils’ intention has been to sit on the Walker report, smother it, pursue their own agenda and then pronounce the report overtaken by events. Call that consultation?

When things as fundamental as ownership have become this indistinct . . . it’s a chastening, if not humiliating, case of institutional forgetfulness.