The Opera House debacle [View all]

"NSW Premier)Gladys Berejiklian’s intervention forcing the Sydney Opera House to promote horse racing illustrates more than the extraordinary power wielded by shock jocks like Alan Jones. It also exemplifies the degradation of “the public” as a concept in Australian life.

"In her initial opposition to Racing NSW’s promotional schemes, the Opera House chief executive, Louise Herron, referred to the site’s world heritage status, a classification explicitly predicated on a humanistic universalism.

“World heritage sites belong,” says Unesco on its homepage, “to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/08/the-opera-house-debacle-is-neoliberal-hostility-to-the-public-at-work


Gladys's crawling to Alan Jones (think Rush Limbaugh), and the Murdoch media, has outraged many. Not just the left, not just art-lovers, but anybody who values the fact that we do have an architectural icon in our midst that we can be very proud of. But it also reminds us of the ever-increasing fawning of politicians to corporate interests. "The people" simply don't matter.

Imagine putting ads on the Empire State Building. Or the Tower of London. Or the Brandenburg Gate. This is how we feel about our Opera House.

A petition is circulating on change.org - it was started less than 24 hours ago, and is already approaching 150,000 signatures; a helluva lot in Australia. And if anyone overseas would like to add their name, I'm sure we'd all be thrilled to have you on board in the fight.

https://chn.ge/2y4on7o