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DON’T BE SO RECKLESS: Tourism bureaucrats ignore Minister over using graffiti to promote Melbourne
In a breathtakingly arrogant move, the Victorian tourism bureaucracy has ignored community concerns and their Tourism Minister’s instruction that displays of lane-way graffiti be excluded from a promotion of Melbourne at Disney World.
The Minister Tim Holding said “I explicitly rejected them because graffiti is not the way we want Melbourne to be promoted to a global audience, I’m disappointed that my explicit instructions were not followed.”
The CEO of Tourism Victoria Greg “Sir Humphrey” Hywood said changes were made that “inadequately reflected the minister’s instruction.”
The Age’s Dan Ziffer was getting stuck into the free wine and food in the “mini-Melbourne as his excellent adventure of the United States continues. He enjoyed delights like “pepperberry-coated prawns, chilled barramundi, grilled lamb chops and wattleseed mousse” as a “guest of Tourism Victoria”
The government is spending considerable sums promoting Victorian tourism at the EPCOT centre. One estimate of the budget was that it was the best part of a million dollars. Tim Holding authorised $300K of it.
The promotion runs for just over a month starting this week and running through to early November.
Over a million visitors are expected to attend.
Discussion
6 comments for “DON’T BE SO RECKLESS: Tourism bureaucrats ignore Minister over using graffiti to promote Melbourne”
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A good career limiting move.
Nothing like a public execution to sharpen up the performance of the cardigans
I think the point here is no one really cares what Tim Holding thinks. Victoria’s next Premier? I don’t think so. Three portfolios, three disasters.
Tim is such a dud, in a government of duds. Premier Johno today was bemoaning the fact that PPPs are now a thing of the past. The only reason the Labor duds haven’t been trashed yet is that the Liberals are too busy cutting each other’s throats.
They should all resign!
A job well done. Too many bureaucrats sadly believe they know best, while being unelected and generally unaccountable. May this be the beginning of many more public floggings of the faceless sad-arses! Top stuff Holding!
Holding is a dickhead. People need to differentiate between vandalism and art. The fact is, “street art” is a drawcard for Melbourne for certain segments of the tourist market.
I don’t understand your stance on the graffiti (vandalism Vs art) issue Andy. Sure, taggers should be executed, but some of the murals around town are brilliant. I’d rather look at something like the “Wizard of Oz” mural (off Ascot Vale Road in Flemington), than innumerable billboards featuring things like photos of boofheaded FoxFM hosts or worse.
Squeaky … you do have a point as some of the stuff is brilliant, but tags are terrible. The problem though is that the ones that do the brilliant stuff started out as taggers, and progress. Without tagging, there wouldn’t be the good ones. We can’t pick from a policy perspective, so it has to be a blanket approach … I spose we could have coppers doing fine arts degrees and debating the merits Jonah style ‘dicktation’ tag versus Banksy’s stuff, or not.