The PSA Cultural Institutions Advisory Group (CIAG) met with Arts Minister John Graham to discuss the sector’s progress under a Labor Government.

The CIAG was formed in 2023 as a forum to share knowledge, ideas, workplace issues, and industrial relations concerns in cultural institutions.

Leading up to the meeting held at the Australian Museum in April 2025, the group had worked on a set of questions to discuss with the Minister.

The PSA had sent Mr Graham a letter detailing the group’s concerns. This is the second formal meeting the group has had with Minister Graham, the first taking place at PSA House in April 2024. Delegates from the cultural institutions had also met with Mr Graham when he was Shadow Arts Minister.

The CIAG representatives raised concerns about the shared services recently rolled out to the NSW cultural institutions, particularly the use of MyWorkZone.

The change, apart from a loss of roles in some agencies, is alleged to have led to problems for front-of-house staff, casuals, and those who work shifts or across multiple departments. The PSA has received many reports of underpayments, errors in leave requests, and poor relations with vendors due to ongoing invoicing errors across all the institutions.

The CIAG also raised concerns about the number of temporary contracts across the cultural institutions.

“Too many members are remaining on temporary employment contracts for too long,” said PSA CPSU NSW Assistant General Secretary Troy Wright. “The CIAG brought this to the Minister’s attention, highlighting that the conversion of temporary contracts to ongoing employment in the education sector thanks to the PSA’s agitation has been a great success – benefiting both members and the Department.”

Concerns about the budget for all agencies were also raised. The CIAG members said they felt building physical structures for cultural institutions has been a priority of both Liberal National and Labor parties, yet the operational budgets remain low “This means programming and collection care is stretched and very under resourced,” said Mr Wright. “Although the Powerhouse Museum appears to have unprecedented capital budgets, and operational budgets that are far more generous than those of the other state institutions.”

The Powerhouse Museum has remained a contentious institution in the community as well as with the PSA since Liberal Premier Mike Baird announced in 2015 it would be shuttered and moved to Parramatta, and the land at Ultimo sold to private developers.

Although the Coalition government walked back some of their destructive plan, the Ultimo site is still in question.

Minister Graham agreed to meet with the PSA separately to work through the Powerhouse issues. He also discussed with the group talks he is having with federal Labor about funding models for cultural events, and invited the group to think about how the NSW cultural institutions could work with these funding models.

Museums of History of NSW delegate and First Nations curator Tess Allas also reported that the recent exhibition at the Museum of Sydney Coomaditchie: The Art of Place – an exhibition on the founding of the Coomaditchie United Aboriginal Corporation, located in Wollongong – had done so well in terms of visitation, it almost matched the previous year’s blockbuster exhibition.