Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I should perhaps have extended the motion to include the Hobart, Tasmania office. They too are finding themselves with the sword across their neck as we stand here today. It is a purely bureaucratic decision made by bean counters without a genuine appreciation for the important cultural heritage value that the archives has in states like South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. I note that the member for Lyne is speaking on this motion, and I am sure he too will express great disappointment with the decision to shut the Hobart office of the National Archives.

I would like to quote a leading authority on the importance of cultural history in Australia. This is from 5 April 2001 when there was some talk at the time amongst finance bureaucrats under the former government, as I am sure you would remember, Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis, who were looking for savings across the public service. The member for Griffith stood up on this issue and made speeches to both this place and the House of Representatives on the shutting down of the National Archives office in Brisbane. In fact, I think it was something as simple as moving the archives office from a part of his electorate to another electorate in the Brisbane CBD—which I think is probably the deputy speaker’s electorate. He spoke very well, saying that he was deeply concerned that closing this repository would:

… become a pretext for a rapid culling and rationalisation—

of the NAA’s records. He went on to say:

…who knows what documents may be destroyed as a consequence?

I agree fully with the now Prime Minister but then member for Griffith’s view about that—that it is very important that we maintain these offices in Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart. These are very important offices for local communities. As we all understand, archives offices today represent important opportunities not only for research academics but also for the general public. They are of particular interest to those researching family histories and the cultural history of their state, particularly in relation to migrant information. Of course, they have had great importance to the stolen generations and I noted with interest some significant comments by those who represent the stolen generations about these bureaucratic penny-pinching decisions to shut down the offices in Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart.

The one city that does not get mentioned in that is, of course, Brisbane. It appears that Brisbane has survived any culling of its office at this point for reasons best known, I guess, to the bureaucrats involved. But they do play a very important role in the cultural fabric of our society. The Adelaide office is destined to close, unless the government changes its mind on this decision, on 31 March 2011. The decision was taken in November as part of the mid-year economic review and clearly it was a decision made by penny-pinching bureaucrats who were looking for ways to save money due to the excessive spending of the Rudd government.

They have all had to cut down their spending. They have all been told they have to find savings. The National Archives is no exception to that. We know that is the case with the Australian War Memorial as well—they have had to sell advertising for the last post as part of the budget-saving measures, the efficiency dividends, that have been put across the Public Service. This is another one of those penny-pinching episodes of a government desperate to find money in any hollow log they possibly can. Unfortunately, this hollow log means that the Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin offices of the National Archives will be shut, which I think is a very unfortunate decision, which is why I think that those on both sides of the House will support this motion. 

The Archives have been open for over one hundred years and they have played a very large role in the way our cultural history has developed. They store vital information. Interestingly, on one side of my family there is a fellow member of parliament, a state parliamentarian, the Hon. Bob Such. He is related to me through a strange mixing of cousins. He is a third cousin, I think.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sounds like Tasmania.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is Adelaide. It turns out that the Hon. Bob Such has a link to the Hoods—my nanna was a Hood by birth. He compiled a family history in conjunction with my uncle, Barry Sharman from Mildura, a few years ago. It is a comprehensive history; it goes back to the 1860s, when the Hoods arrived from the UK. They settled in Gumeracha in South Australia, which is now in my electorate. They were the first pioneers who went up to Mildura—with the Chaffey brothers.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They’re all Labor, aren’t they?

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I don’t think Gumeracha has ever been Labor. Gumeracha, of course, was Tom Playford’s seat, Member for Lyons. He was the longest serving Premier in the country’s history.

This information was obtained through things like the archives. Both Barry Sharman and Bob Such were able to get information and research they could not possibly get if these archives were shut and moved to a central location in Canberra, Sydney or Melbourne. It is very eastern-states focused, but that is typical when you have Canberra based bureaucrats who are just penny-pinching, looking for any hollow log to make up for the shortfalls that unfortunately the Treasurer has foisted upon these departments with the massive spending spree that he has been on. This is an example of decisions made by the government at national level now affecting communities at the lower level.

There has been a great outcry in Adelaide and South Australia about this decision. It has caused a great deal of resentment, because again it seems that cities like Melbourne and Sydney—and in particular in this case Brisbane—escape the cuts. I remind the House that in 2001 the member for Griffith, the now Prime Minister, spoke very passionately in this place about the need to keep the archives office open in his electorate. It seems a little strange that the government has decided to shut down the archives in Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin but Brisbane has survived. So we are disappointed with this decision and thus I have moved this motion. I am very pleased that the member for Grey has decided to speak in favour of this motion as well. He has obviously had very similar feedback in his electorate in South Australia about the impact this decision will have. I will be interested in the contribution of the member for Lyons; I am sure he will be disappointed with the decision as far as Hobart goes as well. I am sure people in Darwin have had a similar reaction.

We should not forget that archives are a very important part of the cultural fabric of our country. If we do not study our history, we risk forgetting it. One of the great things Australians do is honour the past. We do that through war-time records. We honour people who served our country with great monuments around the country as well. These archives contain information about people’s service, they contain information about migrant records and they have a great deal of the state’s and city’s history contained in them. If you simply up and move them to an eastern state on the basis of bureaucratic penny-pinching—just because they are a hollow log from where the government can steal back money to pay some of the massive debt that this country has built up—then that is a disaster for smaller states like South Australia, like Tasmania and like the Northern Territory. We hope very much that the public outrage, which is clear in South Australia at the moment, is enough to force the Rudd government to reconsider this decision. I know that the Labor members from South Australia are privately disappointed. I hope they are able to bring the same passion to this debate as the member for Griffith did in 2001.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Mayo has brought forward this motion, and I thank the member for bringing this topic to light because Tasmania is also on the list for closure and that is why I sought to speak on this matter. The member mentions in his motion that ‘archives are important sources of primary information for all researchers, school students and the general public’, and that is always true. In his motion he mentioned the Special Minister of State, whose role as Cabinet Secretary is the important role that he has in relation to archives.

I do not know how much people know about or understand our Archives, but the Commonwealth Archives keep all the documents that relate to the birth of our nation as they have been collected over the years in each state. That is the central repository of Australian Commonwealth government records: it documents the full range of Australian government activities since Federation in 1901. My family goes back a long way too, and a lot of those historical records are there before 1901 and include significant 19th century records dealing with activities that were transferred from the colonies to the Commonwealth. It includes mainly 20th century records created by the federal government since Federation in 1901. We also hold 19th century records that were transferred from the colonies after Federation—for example, records about defence, Customs, patents, lighthouses, naturalisation, shipping and postal and telegraphic services in those early days.

At the moment in Tasmania it includes documents such as railway records, the Australian Antarctic Division, the CSIRO, lighthouse logs, immigration papers, and weather and tidal records among many other things. You will now also be aware that on 2 November the Australian government, as part of the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook—the MYEFO—statement, announced that the National Archives, along with other government agencies, were required to find significant budget savings for the current forward estimates years 2009-10 to 2012-13. The savings were $700,000 in the first year and $1.4 million in each year thereafter.

In order to make savings of this order and to meet current commitments and to move to being a 21st century organisation that can meet future demands, it was thought that there was a need to make fundamental changes to the way the Archives operate. To achieve this as well as reduce service costs in Canberra, a decision was made that the state offices in Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart would be closed over the next 2½ years as the buildings’ leases expired. While I understand the need to make changes, I believe closure should be the option of last resort and that the importance of being able to keep federal documents in their states of origin is beyond just money. Many historians around Tasmania have signed a petition by the Australian Society of Archivists to save the Archives.

I have already written to the Special Minister of State and Cabinet Secretary, Senator Ludwig, to argue the case for the retention of the Tasmanian records in Tasmania. I think the discussion should be based not necessarily on the closure of the federal archives but on whether the Tasmanian collection could be handed over to the state to be included in their collection and to be henceforth managed by the state. I believe the staff looking after the current archives should be transferred too, as they have the experience with the collection that is presently there.

My argument is that Tasmania is beginning to develop a whole new line of research on convict history and early colonial development that requires deeper access to the nation’s archives. I had hoped to use the National Archives as one of the major sources of information for visitors to actually find sourced data in Tasmania. Our state archives are well used and are a direct link, and maybe sharing people and resources might allow for a better economic outcome for the National Archives.

I understand that in the past there has not been a great use of the material there, but in light of these new developments it would make a lot of sense to keep these records in Tasmania. If there was a need to amalgamate some of the resources, could they not be centralised in Tasmania? We have the expertise of researchers there. The University of Tasmania is working on a more community based approach to history development and there are a number of products being developed through all these resources to allow the tourist industry to make use of Tasmania’s rich and varied history, especially a very detailed maritime picture in keeping with the island heritage of our state.

I believe the Tasmanian state government is already negotiating to have the transfer of ownership of the railway records from the Commonwealth to the state. Many of these continue to be used today to resolve day to day engineering problems in Tasmania and it would be really stupid to take them elsewhere. It would be good to see other similar documents, such as those relating to defence, customs, patents, lighthouses, naturalisation, shipping, postal and telegraphic services retained because there is still ongoing use. To my mind, rather than shift all the documents around, it would make sense to integrate it with the local archives and develop an online link between the state and the Commonwealth to ensure that the information is easily available. Many of the documents are very delicate and would need some considerable care to move and store them at this stage. That is a cost that would be additional to the current costs. I believe there is a compromise would save costs but still keep federal archive material in the relevant states.

I would like to thank the honourable member for Mayo for bringing this matter forward. I have had some representations about it, but the honourable member should also realise—I think penny-pinching was the term he used—that the Howard government, as he would no doubt be aware, transferred considerable amounts of the holdings of the Adelaide archive office to Sydney. They basically gutted the Adelaide archive office and moved most of the material to Sydney during his party’s time in government. I understand that there are no plans to close the Brisbane office, which he indicated might be a possibility. From my research, I understand that there is no government policy in that direction at all. So I think the honourable member was using the motion to also play politics and try to make some political points, which is very unusual for the member for Mayo. He is such a straight shooter in many regards.

The archives are so important to us—for example, in relation to lighthouses. Tasmania has a lot of lighthouses. One of my staff grew up in lighthouses, as her father was a lighthouse keeper. So those records have great significance to many, many Tasmanians. This recording of our cultural history will allow us to create tourist products that are based on the proper history from our archives. If we can find a way of keeping this information in Tasmania, it would be great.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to support this excellent private members’ motion from the member for Mayo. I welcome the support also from the member for Lyne and I suspect also the member for Makin.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Lyons.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. I support this motion that recognises the importance of the national archives and their value to the community, and asks that the Special Minister of State reverse the decision to close the South Australian National Archives Office. This attack on the archives is a further example, if any is needed, that this Rudd Labor government is totally eastern seaboard focused. In fact, the plan to relocate the records to Sydney and Brisbane surely is a sick joke. What is the point of preserving history if you are going to park it where, for all intents and purposes, no-one can access it? Sometimes you will hear people joke about how well schools run in the weeks when there are no children there. We all remember the episode of Yes, Minister which featured a hospital with no patients because it ran much more efficiently. It would seem that the bean counters in this case that the member for Mayo has identified have realised just how much more efficient this service would be if no-one accessed it. Sure, the department would save money because the numbers of South Australians—and Tasmanians and Northern Territorians, for they too are affected by the decision—accessing the service would drop.

Residents of South Australia are sick of being treated as second-class citizens. I have been contacted by a number of constituents in the last few weeks who are appalled by the closure of the office—from Kadina, Georgetown, Jamestown, Lock, Yacka and Yongala. The nearest constituent in my electorate of Grey is more than an hour’s travel by car from Adelaide and the furthest is 15 hours. Clearly, just getting to Adelaide is an enormous impost for many; travelling to Brisbane would be ridiculous.

Just what are the records held in these offices that the government is so keen to relocate to Brisbane and Sydney? The offices in Adelaide contain immigration records dating back to 1848, just 12 years after the establishment of the colony. There are records for almost all families who immigrated to the state prior to 1980. Not only is this a treasure-trove for family historians; it also assists on many occasions to provide relevant information for Centrelink applications and passports. There are records pertaining to our Indigenous population and employment records, and pension numbers that are vital for those of the stolen generation who are trying to reconnect with their families. How appalling to see that the government is preening itself on its apology to the stolen generation while it strips away access to research tools for the affected people to try to relocate their families.

The national archives contain other diverse records which for individual groups are of great importance—records of the British atomic tests at Maralinga, invaluable for the servicemen and their families who were stationed there at the time; rafts of information about buildings and defence fortifications; records from the two world wars; and records from the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody—which, incidentally, were promised would remain in Adelaide. Family historians throughout South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are appalled by this.

It is common for researchers to be senior Australians; after all, retirement is a period of their lives when they have time to concentrate on those questions and look through records of family history that were so difficult to access during their working lives. By their very nature, this group does not find it easy to travel interstate and for those who live in my electorate and face the challenge of getting to Adelaide—let alone even contemplating how they would get to Sydney or Brisbane—relocation will severely limit access to one of their most valuable resources. Electronic searches are regarded as second-best, expensive and often incomplete. This work by its very nature requires poring over the records.

This penny-pinching assault on the national archives is an almost inevitable result of Labor’s profligacy since the last election. There has been an explosion of debt since the election. They have been intransigent on considering the possibility of winding back their stimulus spending, even as they claim we are through the worst of the economic challenges. This ill-considered move plans to save $3 million to underwrite a $150 billion debt.

I bring to the attention of the House a speech, which the member for Mayo also cited, given in this place in 2001 by the member for Griffith, now the Prime Minister. He condemned the moves not to close the Brisbane and Adelaide offices of the national authority, but to relocate them within their own cities. He asserted that the movement of a few kilometres would threaten the integrity of the collection. He questioned what would become of the staff and he suggested the anticipated savings were not real. I suggest the Special Minister of State contact the Prime Minister for support in reversing this appalling decision.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion moved by the member for Mayo in respect of the National Archives office in Adelaide. I note that other speakers have also referred to the closure of offices in other capital cities. In recent months I, too, have been contacted by many people concerned about the impending closure of the Adelaide office of the National Archives. As a result of those representations, I have in turn written to the Special Minister of State, the Hon Joe Ludwig, raising my concerns about the closure and the concerns that were raised with me by those people who contacted my office.

The Adelaide office is expected to close on 31 March 2011 when the current lease on its premises expires. The office employs six staff and I am advised that, in the year 2008-09, there were 720 visits to the Adelaide reading room. I am also advised that those six staff will be assisted in their transition to other forms of employment within the public service. Those 720 visits compare with 22,290 visits nationally. I am also advised that the Adelaide office holds 0.9 per cent of National Archives of Australia’s total record holdings and I understand that, overwhelmingly, public access to National Archives’ services is from online users. In 2008-09, 1.9 million records were accessed online compared to 57,000 records accessed in all National Archives of Australia offices around the country.

Importantly, I am advised that the closure of the Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart offices will not adversely affect the storage of records and no archives will be destroyed as part of these changes. Neither will the office closures change existing access arrangements for records relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The closures will not affect the government’s undertakings to assist individuals in their search for information about themselves, their families and their country. The National Archives holds many records that contain information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their history, as other members have previously said. These records are held in National Archives repositories around the country.

In response to the recommendations of the Bringing them home report, the National Archives created an index of names of Aboriginal people who appear in archive records known to contain information about Aboriginal people. As determined in consultation with Aboriginal communities in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria, the index can only be accessed on behalf of Aboriginal people by National Archives reference staff or by Link-Up staff with password protected access. There is currently no direct client access to the index in National Archives offices and access requests are managed by the office holding the records. Copies of relevant information are then sent to the applicant free of charge. National Archives officers will continue to provide this service to Aboriginal Australians, regardless of the location of their records.

Having outlined the facts relating to the Adelaide office, I nevertheless urge the minister to consider the matters raised by those people and organisations who have raised concerns about the closure of the office with me. Not all people have access to, or are fluent in the use of, online services. Furthermore, National Archives staff provide invaluable guidance with research. Again, that is simply not available in a personal way with online research.

I take a moment to refer briefly to some of the representations I have received on this issue. Associate Professor Susan Schech wrote to me on behalf of all researchers and staff of the Migration and Refugee Research Cluster at Flinders University. The cluster is a leader in research into Australia’s migration history and the ability to personally access the National Archives office contributes to the work they do. The researchers at Flinders University feel that their work would be made more difficult, more expensive and less productive by the closure of the Adelaide office. Individuals and genealogists researching family trees find it much easier to do so if they able to attend the National Archives office at Adelaide in person.

I have also been contacted by several local historians and researchers, as I understand have many other federal parliamentary colleagues from South Australia. These researchers, most of them volunteers, attend the Adelaide office of the National Archives in the course of their work researching the history of their local communities or their own families. It is my view that the importance of a service should be measured not simply by the number of users of the service but rather by the contribution the service makes to the broader community. In that regard, I believe the Adelaide office of the National Archives provides an important service which should not be lost to the people of Adelaide.

Mal Washer (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.