Museum—Woodside Petroleum sponsorship
590. Hon Tim Clifford to the minister representing the Minister for Creative Industries:
I refer to the recent news stories indicating that Woodside Petroleum will be sponsoring the Western Australian Museum for five years and the effect of fossil fuel emissions on marine ecosystems that the Museum investigates and educates us about.
(1) How much money is Woodside contributing to the Museum and how much is the government contributing for the same time period by way of comparison?
(2) Is the sponsorship earmarked for particular fields of inquiry; and, if so, what are those fields specifically?
(3) If the main field is marine science, what projects are to be sponsored specifically?
(4) If this sponsorship is earmarked, how much money is earmarked for each project?
Hon Jackie Jarvis replied:
I thank the honourable member for some notice of the question. The following response has been provided by the Minister for Creative Industries.
(1) Woodside is contributing $5 million over a five-year period through the Foundation for the WA Museum. Government appropriation to the Museum, including all its operations across six public sites, education outreach, regulation, collections, care and research, will be $200 million or circa $40 million per year.
(2) Yes. Sponsorship is earmarked predominantly for marine biological research. The fields are marine biological research, palaeontological research into past marine environments, consultation and engagement with traditional owner groups and education and outreach programs to promote knowledge and conservation of marine environments.
(3)–(4) The program will evolve over the life of the program. However, the anticipated fields of inquiry are aquatic zoology, describing the marine biodiversity of Exmouth Gulf, with an emphasis on new species discovery, and palaeontology, describing fossil sharks, marine reptiles, ancient marine food webs of ancient marine sea beds along the Gascoyne coast. The exact scope and cost of each research project may be augmented with funding from other sources such as research grants.
