Tim put the central question to the museum chairman, who went on to say that it was the first question that MPs asked at a recent visit.

Should we fund the next $21m, on top of the $9m we already pay each year?

My answer is simply no unless the museum commit to a charge and what they’re going to charge.

The $9 million dollars a year on rate payers has to be gone, 100%.

If the museum wants that money then they need to be on an even footing with everyone else and compete for our eyeballs by delivering a worthwhile experience. At $20 per visitor, that’s 225,000 international visitors and the same in local.

$9m of operational costs a year is roughly 1.5% on rates currently. The museum is expecting 1.2 million visitors when it reopens, if it reopens.

That’s $24m, or a roughly 10% gross rate of return on the ~$250m investment the community, we, have made. Personally I don’t see how they have arrived at those visitor numbers. The central library only pulls ~910,000, the art gallery is reported at a quarter of the library. The arts center is reported as having a million visitors, so perhaps a target of 1.2m is realistic, but then I would ask why the art gallery is performing so poorly. $21m more is roughly 0.5% on rates (because capital expenditure is roughly $50m per 1% vs $6m for operational).

So this is ~2% of our rates bill as I read it. My concern is the economic argument. The argument is that these investments draw customers into the city so we can then run cafés, hotels and bars to collect money to pay for the attractions.

However do we have to many “free rides” that are taking all the time we need to capture the tourist spend? Are these free rides driving the paid attractions out of business? Even a coffee cart is a paid attraction. My observation is that rate payers are actually paying twice right now. Let me explain….The burden of rates had moved out of the CBD and on to the residential suburbs because the value of the CBD didn’t track with the value of residential property across most of the city. Our rates rose, mine by 80% in 3 years. The idea of the CBD is that it’s a machine that grows in value, creates jobs and picks up a big chunk of the rate burden, because it can afford to. But how can it afford to if we keep filling it up with “free rides” that we pay for, that take customers off the commercial opportunities that pay rents that keep our rates lower and provide us jobs?

The economic argument is broken and Tim hits the nail hard in his questions that didn’t feel like they really hit home as hard as they should.

The whole briefing is here: https://youtu.be/psO6DomYpuE?si=wzWHwX-B3L3krhRR