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‘Find someone to hug’: Museums Victoria to cut 55 jobs, raise ticket prices after funding slashed
By Clay Lucas
Museums Victoria will axe one in eight of its workers, push up entry prices and shelve an upgrade of its “failing” tech infrastructure, to cut costs across its entire operation.
The cuts were detailed in a confidential all-staff announcement sent to workers this month and seen by The Age, along with a recording of a tense “town hall”-style meeting hosted by chief executive Lynley Crosswell.
Museums Victoria chief executive Lynley Crosswell pictured in 2021.Credit: Penny Stephens
In the memo, Crosswell confirmed the cuts would “reduce our staffing levels by approximately 55 full-time equivalent roles” as the organisation tried to hit savings targets.
Crosswell said the cuts would come on top of other reductions in the number of visitor officers announced earlier this year.
She said the response, immediately slammed by the state opposition and public sector union, was the direct result of May’s state budget, which would force the museum to save $56 million over the next four years, and to defer $40 million in planned IT upgrades over the same period.
The four-year funding package given to the museum by the Allan government would no longer specifically fund new display spaces, Crosswell said.
“There is no longer a specific allocation for exhibition gallery renewal.
“Every department across the organisation will be working to a reduced operating budget. And in wrestling this down, we’ve explored every single avenue for raising revenue and reducing costs,” she told staff. “Subject to government approval, from the 1st of September we will increase admission fees for adults, concession card-holders and seniors. Entry for children and First Peoples will remain free.”
Crosswell told staff that prices at the Melbourne Museum would rise from $15 to $18 in September, and would rise again in July 2027 to $20 for an adult. Children under 16 will remain free.
Crosswell said the price increases would not occur at the loss-making Immigration Museum or at Scienceworks, which was breaking even.
Museums Victoria declined to answer questions about price increases, including whether concession card-holders and students aged over 16 would for the first time be charged entry at Melbourne Museum.
During the recording, Crosswell was asked whether the organisation was stepping into years of austerity.
“We will not stop advocating for this organisation,” she said. “If [Museums Victoria president] Mary Stuart was sitting here, she would be jumping up and saying the same thing. There’s been some very angry women out there working on behalf of this organisation, I can tell you. I said to Mary, ‘We just tap into the rage.’”
Later, asked about staff reductions, Crosswell told employees to support each other.
“Find someone to hug. We will get through this, but it’s going to be very difficult – [I’m] not going to pretend [otherwise].”
Museums Victoria’s plan flags increased revenue from a revised membership model, the details of which were not described in Crosswell’s email, as well as unspecified increased revenue from “new commercial streams”.
Crosswell said in the staff briefing that the organisation had cut “the [information and communications technology] department budget by over 50 per cent, and please take a moment to understand the challenge for [the IT team] as they work to maintain failing infrastructure and systems”.
She said Museums Victoria would be “working to reduce the cost of operating the Immigration Museum, along with other significant areas of operational expense”.
Admission prices won’t increase at the loss-making Immigration Museum.Credit: Gary Medlicott
Creative Industries Minister Colin Brooks’ office was contacted for comment.
Opposition arts spokesman Evan Mulholland said Premier Jacinta Allan had overseen the abandoned Commonwealth Games, which had cost Victoria hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as multi-billion dollar blowouts on infrastructure projects.
“But there’s no money during a cost-of-living crisis to keep prices down for families who want a day out at ... the Melbourne Museum,” Mulholland said.
He said Victoria’s position as the cultural capital was being “bludgeoned by a culture of cuts” because of Labor’s failure to prevent overruns on its big projects. “The museum’s plan to increase admission prices, cut staff, and defer ICT upgrades and exhibitions, are a direct consequence of this government’s fiscal mismanagement.”
Jiselle Hanna, the newly elected Victorian branch secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, said the job cuts were “a slap in the face to the staff, who do an incredible job connecting Victorians to unique and memorable experiences”.
She said the cuts came “after continued mismanagement at Melbourne Museum and savage cuts to the visitor engagement officers’ team”.
“The Allan Labor government’s continued cutting spree will steal these collections from Victorians by reducing access, and push our creative industry workers to the wall,” she said.
A Victorian government spokesperson said the government had increased funding to the state’s “creative agencies” which included Museums Victoria.
“In the budget we provided an additional investment of $475.3 million to increase the base funding of our creative agencies, including Museums Victoria, over the next four years,” the spokesperson said.
The job cuts come ahead of up to 3000 lay-offs in the public sector as part of an Allan government review led by Helen Silver – a former top bureaucrat in Labor and Coalition governments – which Treasurer Jaclyn Symes will release in coming months. It will outline from which areas the government will cut.
The latest job losses also come just months after the institution was embroiled in a hiring scandal and faced fierce backlash over a separate plan to restructure its visitor engagement officer workforce.
The Age revealed in June that Museums Victoria was investigated by the state’s anti-corruption commission and the Ombudsman over its hiring practices during the Titanic exhibition.
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