Why are Australians running some of the UK’s biggest arts institutions? “Little in their sunkissed insularity has equipped them for the ethnic and economic diversity of British arts and their focus is so short-term that only the most desperate of boards would, it seems to me, choose a second-string Aussie above a locally experienced, lifelong committed Brit. It makes no sense at all. More alarming still is the effect of their mass defection on the morale and infrastructure of Australian culture.”