National archives must not be left to rot away

Anzac Day each year reminds us of the vital role that history plays in our national identity but the federal government is failing to protect the national archives, which are the raw material of that history.

As the Herald reports today, the National Archives of Australia have been starved of funds because of government cost-cutting. Annual funding has been cut by $7 million, or 10 per cent, and staff numbers have been slashed by 14 per cent since 2014-15.

Precious paper and celluloid records that note extraordinary and controversial moments in our nation’s history will literally rot away unless something is done.

They include wartime speeches by prime minister John Curtin, video films of early Antarctic expeditions and video of the 1998 Constitutional Convention to debate becoming a republic.

The federal government in March released a review by senior public servant David Tune, which recommends spending $67.7 million to help digitise these documents before they turn to dust or jelly.

Loading

But it also called for significant investments to help store and effectively manage all the other documents that are created by government departments.

This is not just about family historians and school projects, or even about commemorations and our education as citizens.

Many of the documents that are kept in the archives are needed to decide practical policies. As American novelist William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

To take one example, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which struggled to reconstruct horrific crimes from decades ago, in its final report called for better archives.