Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Archives Amendment Bill 2008 makes changes to the Archives Act 1983. Given the importance of national government archives, the complexity of record keeping in the modern world and the perishability of recent formats, these changes have been a long time coming.

The bill implements some of the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report No. 85, Australia’s federal record: a review of Archives Act 1983. The report was commenced in 1996 and presented to the parliament in August 1998, over 10 years ago. Many of the recommendations have been implemented administratively, but it has taken over 10 years for the legislative changes to be forthcoming.

The National Archives of Australia is an incredibly important organisation. It holds the history of the government of the nation. I suspect that few Australians actually know or appreciate the role of the Archives. We all see from time to time that important papers from 30 years ago have been released, and we show some interest, but I doubt that many people understand how those documents got to be kept where they were kept and how they were made available. The answer to those questions is: via the National Archives of Australia.

In its own words, the National Archives:

… documents the full range of Australian Government activities since Federation in 1901, and includes significant 19th-century records dealing with activities that were transferred from the colonies to the Commonwealth.

‘Archives’ is defined in the Australian Records Management Standard as ‘those records that are appraised as having continuing value’. In traditional use, it is used to describe records no longer required for current use which have been selected for permanent preservation. Again in the Archives’ own words:

Our collection comprises records of

• the Australian Government—over 100 years’ of records created by government agencies as they document debates, decisions, actions and interactions
• Commonwealth persons—papers and other records of prominent people such as governors-general, prime ministers, ministers, secretaries and High Court judges
• the High Court—judges’ notebooks, correspondence between High Court members, records of court judgements

The functions of the National Archives of Australia include helping Australian government agencies create and manage their records; selecting the most valuable records created by Australian government agencies to become part of the national archival collection; storing, describing and preserving the national archival collection; and making records in the national archival collection that are over 30 years old publicly available.

The National Archives of Australia has an extraordinary responsibility and an essential role in keeping government accountable, yet the keeping of the Australian archives has quite a patchy history. It took quite some time to find valuable records of the Australian federal government a home. They were kept in various places with various organisations, but it was only in 1942 that Australia’s participation in the Second World War prompted steps towards the creation of a more general system, with the setting up of the War Archives Committee to deal with records of the war. Following the war, the task was expanded to include the preservation of all Commonwealth archives, and a fledgling archives organisation was established. Since that time it has had several changes of name and status. The Archives Act 1983 finally provided legislative authority.

About 13 years after its establishment in April 1996, the National Archives of Australia implemented a review in response to changing community views on privacy and access to information and the proliferation of electronic record keeping. The report found that record keeping in many Commonwealth agencies was in a parlous state and could only be overcome if the National Archive of Australia were allowed to adopt a proactive policy stance, and that there was a strong need for mandatory record keeping standards. It was also found in that report that there was a need to recognise the predominance of electronic records and a need for the National Archives to be involved in the design of electronic record keeping systems if there was to be any realistic hope of continuing access to records contained in those systems.

The report also recommended that the NAA be an independent statutory authority, which was implemented in 2001, that there be more effective supervision by the National Archives of Australia of disposal of non-archival records, and that there be legislative direction that records more than 30 years old be made available to the public unless there are compelling reasons to withhold them.

There were also recommendations that the National Archives should issue guidelines to encourage and facilitate the early release of records and that the availability of records should be expanded particularly through new technologies and public promotion of the availability of records. Again, many of those recommendations were administrative but 10 years later the legislation essentially implementing the legislative elements of that 1998 report were introduced into the Senate. The Archives Amendment Bill 2006 was introduced but lapsed when parliament was prorogued in October 2007. The current bill is similar, but not identical. The bill has the support of the stakeholders. The National Archives of Australia welcomed the introduction of the 2006 bill as the culmination of 10 years effort. The Australia Society of Archivists also appears to be broadly supportive of the bill.

So let us look at what the bill does. It essentially deals with the weaknesses identified in the methods for the collection and preservation of records of archival significance as outlined in the 1998 report. Its purpose is to improve record keeping across the Commonwealth and acknowledge both the advisory role that the archive plays in Commonwealth record keeping and the responsibility for preserving, promoting and making publicly available the archival resources of the Commonwealth.

The proposed amendments also provide for records that would be otherwise in the custody of the Archives to be kept in the custody of other persons under certain conditions. The bill describes the objects of the Archives Act as functions including identifying and preserving the archival resources of the Commonwealth and providing the public with appropriate access. It also provides for a role for the National Archives in overseeing Commonwealth record keeping by determining standards and imposing record keeping obligations in respect of Commonwealth records.

The bill also recognises that sometimes it is not always appropriate for records to be stored by the archive; that perhaps they should be retained elsewhere, perhaps by their agency of origin or in some other place. It may be, as previous speakers have outlined, that records require specialist technology to enable access or specialist skills to interpret or manage the material. So the bill makes a simple but quite profound change in that it recognises that records might be in the care of the archive without actually being in the custody of the archive. So it amends the definition of ‘material of the archives’ to mean records in the care of the archive regardless of their place of storage.

As the National Archives retains responsibility for the care of archives that are held by others, the bill also deals with the nature of the arrangements for the care of those archives. Importantly, it provides that for such records there be appropriate public access. There must also be provision for protection and maintenance of records, for inspection by the National Archives, for access by institutions as required, and for the transfer of the archives if so directed by the Director-General of the Archives.

The bill also recognises that the nature of records—the physical forms—have changed over time. The early act of 1983 was quite specific about formats for electronic ‘documents’. It was drafted in the 1970s and passed in 1983 and it refers, for example, to storage on magnetic tape. Words such as ‘email’ and ‘compact disk’ do not exist in the act of 1983.

The new definition of a record is very open, and it should withstand changes in technology. The bill substitutes a new definition of a record as ‘a document or an object, in any form, that has been kept for the information it contains or its connection with any event, person, circumstance or thing’. So it is the purpose for which the object is kept that is important, not the nature of the object itself. Because of the perishability of items, the bill also requires Commonwealth institutions to transfer their archived records to the care of the Archives as soon as they are no longer current and, in any event, within 25 years of their creation. The earliest possible transfer is particularly important for electronic records, which often require that Archives determine conservation requirements before records begin to deteriorate or before changes in software and data formats render documents inaccessible. These are important changes to the Archives Act 1983.

Open government requires proper record-keeping and the management of public assets in a timely manner. The growth of the Archive’s activity has been extraordinary—and we should acknowledge here that there are many extraordinary staff working for the National Archives of Australia who are passionate about keeping records. In 1984, shortly after the act was implemented, the Australian Archives had a staff of 400, stored 367,521 shelf metres of permanent and temporary material and received 3,446 inquiries from the public. In 2007 their staffing level was relatively unchanged—it had moved from 400 to 402—and permanent and temporary storage was down by about 10,000 shelf metres to 356,149 shelf metres. But the number of inquiries they received from the public increased from 3,446 to 123,734. That is an extraordinary increase in the amount of public interaction, considering that the staff number is almost the same and the added complexity of the range of government records which are being kept.

It is surprising that it has taken 10 years since the review to implement these largely technical, but important, changes. The Archives Amendment Bill 2008 will enhance the ability of the National Archives of Australia to manage the important records under their care. I commend the bill to the House.

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