It’s been a big day for… Listening to...

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It’s been a big day for… Listening to...

Alan Jones

Going By The Unprecedented Change.org Petition, Politicians And Alan Jones Are The Only People In Australia Keen On Using The Opera House As A Billboard

With state and federal elections just around the corner you'd think maybe a few politicians would be less keen to show the public how much they're about appeasing Alan Jones.

One of the most popular bandwagons upon which politicians love to jump is the notion of Australian Identity And Culture and how very, very, very, very important it is to respect Australia Day or the legacy of (not-actually-a-) Captain Cook.

And this mysteriously doesn’t apply to actual cultural institutions which Australians genuinely hold dear, like the ABC or, as it turns out, the Sydney Opera House.

Although maybe the fact that an online petition has broken every record for Australian online activism will change such people’s minds.

To swiftly recap: last week Australia’s most popular sentient cloud of outrage Alan Jones railed against the decision by the Opera House’s chief executive Louise Herron to forbid advertising for the Everest Cup horse race on the sails, since it’s a commercial operation and not a cultural event. Indeed, until this who debacle began no-one even knew what the Everest was.

Jones, a big fan of horses and horse racing with more than a little investment in the sport, was apoplectic and demanded that Herron be overruled. And NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian obediently did so.

A Change.org petition emerged courtesy of resident Mike Woodcock, calling for people to support Herron in rejecting this plan to commercialise the iconic site with an ad for a horse race..

And it went big…

…and then bigger…

…and bigger still!

And has now been signed by over 150,000 people, and only speeding up.

And it’s worth noting, as Jeff Sparrow did in the Guardian, that the Sydney Opera House is a world heritage site and that “World heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located.”

So not necessarily places upon which to advertise commercial horse races, in other words.

Still, as our Prime Minister Scott Morrison himself said, what is the Opera House if not “the biggest billboard Sydney has“? We have an answer: um, an Opera House? A place of public entertainment? Not actually a billboard?

Still, what a conversation it’s begun!