The Director-General of the NAA indicates that
In order to make savings of this order, to meet current commitments and move to being a 21st century organisation that can meet future demands, we need to make fundamental changes to the way we operate.Being a '21st century organisation' (whatever that is ... presumably one that uses the latest management-speak and has lots of high-tech kit with impressive blinking lights) should not involve excising arms and legs.
Meeting 'future demands' should not mean fundamentally restricting demand by restricting access, especially restriction on the part of an organisation that boasts about its provision of "leadership in archives and records management within Australia and internationally".
Restriiction is antithetical to the Government's announceme earlier this year that
In a significant pro-disclosure reform to the Archives Act, it is proposed that the "open access period" be substantially brought forward. The Archives Act is to be amended to bring forward the open access period for most records from 30 years to 20 years, and for Cabinet notebooks from 50 years to 30 years.In announcing the changes the NAA Director-General notes that
Some of the records may be relocated to our repositories in Sydney or Melbourne, while others may be relocated locally under a memorandum of understanding arrangement with other sympathetic local cultural heritage institutions.The closure is attributed, correctly or othwerwise, to the Mid-Year Economic & Fiscal Outlook budget cuts. Although details are uncertain, the closures will reportedly 'save' a derisory $4.9m - a reduction of some $700,000 in the current financial year followed by reductions of $1.4m per year over the next 3 years. Real savings may be less once staff redundency payments are factored in, there is payment to the "sympathetic local cultural institutions" (unlikely to be so sympathetic that they will obligingly accept burdens without recompense) and there is recognition of 'hidden' costs such as trans-Australian shipment of files to 'information access offices' provided by other agencies or 'digitisation on demand' for remote access. The cost of relocating files from the regional offices to the remaining offices, referred to by the Director-General, is unclear. One might wonder how long those offices will remain (are Brisbane and Perth next in the queue for 'rightsizing'?) and ask whether the latest iteration of the 'new federalism' should be more than unilateral buck-passing.
$4.9m is less than the cost of sundry military projects of proven unfunctionality (Collins Submarines, anyone) or successive IT projects damned by the Auditor-General as ill-conceived and poorly executed. (The $8m on the DOA site known as GroceryChoice is small change compared to some of the monumentally dysfunctional systems in agencies such as Customs and Defence.) It is also less than the notional cost of various 'government accessibility' and 'government 2.0' public consultation exercises underway at the moment.
Other benchmarks may be more invidious. As a community we are comfortable paying for tangibles - things that we can stroke, photograph, sit on or formally launch - rather than access to information. The latest annual report of the National Capital Authority notes that "RG Menzies Walk reconstruction Stage 1" in Citizenship Place (which "includes a sitting wall on a gravel beach with the citizenship affirmation inscribed in brass lettering and a sign showing the timeline of Australian citizenship") cost $450,000. The NAA annual report notes that "media advertising company hma Blaze was paid $126,280 (including GST) by the Archives in 2007–08".
The NCA also reports that
On 17 March 2008, a custom-made glass panel spontaneously shattered at the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial. The panel incorporated artwork that forms part of the memorial's curving commemorative walls. The Authority undertook a structural audit of the memorial to determine the cause of the breakage and determined that the glass panel could be replaced. Remedial paving works were performed in conjunction with the glass replacement. The memorial was reopened to the public on 27 October 2008. The cost of these works was $109,223 (including GST).Should memory and memorialisation be restricted to glass panels and bits of photogenic bronze?
The rationale for closure of the NAA's regional presence is unclear. Tensions within the Archives have been apparent over a number of years, with suggestions for example that the organisation simply centralise all access in Canberra (with academics, journalists, students and other members of the public being forced to come to the national capital) or rely on digitisation of the kilometres of records in its repositories across Australia.
Past executives and members of the organisation's Advisory Council have resisted such quick fixes, arguing that there is value for officials and for the public in having a network of Archives regional offices (ie having archival material stored in the region in which those files or other items were created and being able to examine that material in the relevant state/territory capital or retrieve it from that office for official scrutiny). They have criticised the 'cost savings uber alles' ethos, noting that a quite nifty way to save small amounts of money - by federal government standards - would be to turn most archival material into cardboard. Why not get rid of that pesky FOI Act as well ... and some inconvenient courts or administrative law?
The Archives Act 1983 (Cth) does not prohibit the closure. Section 63 of that Act ('Location of material of the Archives') gives the Director-General considerable discretion. It specifies that "material of the Archives shall be kept at such places as the Director-General considers appropriate". If it was cheaper to store records in Nauru, Patagonia or Antactica the Director-General presumably has the authority to authorise such a transfer. Section 63(2) of the Act states that
In considering the places at which material of the Archives should be kept, the Director-General shall take into account:Closure is analogous to the National Library closing its reading rooms for four days a week ... readily justifiable on 'cost' grounds (analogous to the Yes Minister model of refusing any patients access to a hospital, because all those sick people get in the way of the floor polishing and people with management consultant clipboards) but contrary to the organisation's raison d'etre.
(a) the convenience of persons who are likely to require access to the material;
(b) the desirability of keeping related material in the same place; and
(c) the appropriateness of keeping in a State or Territory material that relates in particular to that State or Territory or to places in that State or Territory.
The closure is a short-sighted and self-defeating measure that should be strongly condemned by anyone with an interest in Australian history and public administration and by anyone who expects the current Government to 'walk the talk' about public access to public information.
