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Imagine if your family’s documents and records, placed carefully away for generations, were suddenly lost. This is the prospect facing the whole country if the National Archives of Australia is not given more money to preserve its artefacts. And as eminent historian Judith Brett writes, it is not just professional historians who use the archives: so do family historians, for example, as the archives hold the personal records of many thousands of Australians.
So why then, despite all the calls for the situation to be urgently addressed, has the government not given the archives the money it needs to preserve its collections? It’s only $67 million over seven years, a paltry amount in the context of federal budgets.
While some commentators have seen this as another shot in the culture wars, Brett doesn’t agree. She sees it rather as an oversight, a case of “careless philistinism in a budget designed for a forthcoming election”.
With their eyes fixed on election cycles, it can be hard for politicians to think about the future. But Australians of the future will want, and need, the archives intact, to understand where they have come from and figure out where they are going. Brett, and many others, hope the government rectifies the situation soon.
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Amanda Dunn
Section Editor: Politics + Society
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Wes Mountain/The Conversation
Judith Brett, La Trobe University
The archives' neglect may not be, as some as argued, another shot in the culture wars, but it is a sign of the government's truncated temporal imagination.
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Arts + Culture
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Health + Medicine
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Politics + Society
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Michelle Grattan discusses politics with politics + society editor, Amanda Dunn
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Environment + Energy
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Science + Technology
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Katharine Kemp, UNSW
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Jorgo Ristevski, The University of Queensland; Steven W. Salisbury, The University of Queensland
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Education
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