James Bidgood (Dawson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think I have hit a nerve with the member for Dunkley. He has obviously experienced a digital crash once or twice in his life. Hopefully, it was not a midlife digital crash.

We have new forms of technology, whether they come from old ancient traditions, from our industrialisation traditions or from the new digital revolution—and these digital revolutions will also be eclipsed in time because time marches on and things change; they always do—but we have to have new modes of storing these bits of information. I personally have a passion for history and I would like to see an audio, a print and a visual archive. I believe it should be placed in regional centres around Australia because capital cities around Australia in the states have the big infrastructure. The old tradition of historical museums, being very tactile places with prints explaining what is happening, may also be eclipsed by multimedia historical museums. This is a project which I personally have a passion for and am working towards.

In my own seat of Dawson I have put that idea out to the regional economic development communities there, in Mackay, Proserpine and Bowen. They have traditional archives of historical information, and that is all well and good. But how can they retell stories of the generations in a new and interesting form? We have to embrace the technology of the digital revolution. Whether that is through the internet or through optic fibre or digital projection, we can add interest to the archiving of historical knowledge.

This is all encompassing, and I think it is excellent that it has bipartisan support. It was started in 2006. It is very important that we deliver this and that we go ahead and record events in many different ways. This is highly commendable. I am truly passionate about archive history and the way it has been recorded over thousands of years. We can help preserve things through new digital technology. For example, I have never actually seen the diaries of James Cook, but I have on the internet because each page is photographed and each page is available. Isn’t it amazing that anyone in the world can access that? That is how great this digital revolution is. We are going to be using all forms and all means. That is why this legislation is important. I read the Archives Act very carefully and it gives a very broad and encompassing definition of all forms of archive information, which means objects, items and, as I alluded to earlier, things such as coins and stamps—not just papers but also audio and visual and any other digital technology that may arise over time. I commend this bill to the House.

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