Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with much pleasure that I rise tonight to speak about the Archives Amendment Bill 2008.  I listened to the member for Dawson and his passion for archives. It is an interesting topic and, when you dig deep into archives, there are many treasures. I will talk to my personal experiences later in this debate, but I want to outline what this amending legislation is about and what it means to the process of archiving.

The Archives Amendment Bill 2008 proposes changes to the Archives Act 1983 and implements certain recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report No. 85: Australia’s federal record: a review of the Archives Act 1983. A majority of the recommendations have already been implemented administratively. It has been 25 years since the introduction of the Archives Act 1983 and not much has changed since the introduction of that act.

There are many points in the explanatory memorandum, and too many to go through, but I really want to home in on a couple of points. The proposed minor amendments to the act include the addition of an objects clause to part 1 of the act. The objects clause acknowledges the advisory role that the Archives play in record keeping across the Commonwealth and acknowledges that archival resources of the Commonwealth will be preserved, promoted and made publicly available. The amendments also provide for records to remain in the care of the Archives while in the custody of persons other than the Archives.

Schedule 1, item 1 of the bill confirms the role of the National Archives of Australia as identifying and preserving records comprising the archival resources of the Commonwealth and promoting their public availability. It also acknowledges the role of the National Archives of Australia as the Commonwealth’s authority on record keeping and acknowledges its function of determining standards and providing advice to Commonwealth institutions.

Item 2 provides an explanation of the meaning of a record being ‘in the care of the Archives’. This is one of the key concepts of the new amendments. A record is ‘in the care of the Archives’ whether it is in the custody of the National Archives of Australia or in the custody of a person under an arrangement made with the National Archives of Australia under section 64 of the Archives Act. This point explains that there is some archival information the National Archives may not be able to provide custody for. For example, some types of scientific data may require specialist hardware to allow the software or media in which the data is stored to be read. The National Archives of Australia may not have access to the appropriate hardware or, where it does have access, the hardware may not be in an environment which is conducive to the storage or security requirements for the data. In other cases, National Archives of Australia staff may not have sufficient knowledge or training to interpret, retrieve or manage the data. The member for Dawson gave some very good examples of that type of data. Even where arrangements are made with a person to have custody of a record, the National Archives of Australia must still be able to meet its obligations under the Archives Act—for example, to make records available to Commonwealth institutions under section 30(1) and to make records publicly available under section 31(1). This bill introduces the concept that archival records are to be considered in the care of National Archives even though they may not be in the physical custody of the Archives.

Turning to item 7, on section 5(1) of the act: the National Archives of Australia was originally established by the Archives Act 1983 to sit within a department—initially the Department of Home Affairs and Environment—but in February 2001 it was established as an executive agency by order of the Governor-General, made under the Public Service Act 1999 in February 2001. The proposed amendment omits the words ‘within the department’ from section 5(1) of the Archives Act to reflect the National Archives of Australia’s status as an executive agency. In so doing, it implements advice which counselled that there was no need to amend the act prior to the establishment of an executive agency having the name National Archives of Australia but that consideration should be given to making appropriate amendments to the Archives Act should that act need to be amended for other reasons in the future. It is considered appropriate and convenient to make the amendment at this point in time. The order establishing the National Archives of Australia as an executive agency gave it the functions specified in the Archives Act, as in force from time to time. This means that the National Archives of Australia will have as its functions those functions, as amended by the proposed amendments to section 5(2).

The second reading speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister highlights further points:

... the bill amends the definition of ‘material of the Archives’, removing references to records or other archival material being in the ‘custody of the Archives’ and replacing them with references to being ‘in the care of the Archives’. ...

The bill also deals with the nature of the arrangements which are to be put in place where records in the care of the Archives are in the custody of others. Importantly, it provides that such records, if in the open access period, are to be available for public inspection. The arrangements must also provide for the protection and maintenance of the records, for inspection by the Archives, for access by institutions as required and for the records to be transferred to the custody of the Archives if so directed by the Director-General of the Archives.

Another point that the parliamentary secretary raises is the emerging and ever-changing technology. In the 25 years since the act was drafted, the changes have been extraordinary. Technology has changed the way that government affairs are executed and information is recorded. The act has on previous occasions attempted to allow for electronic creation, capture and management of records in a specific way. The new definition reflects technological developments and provides for further advances by substituting a new definition of a record as a document or an object in any form. This also gives records the same status whether in electronic or paper form.

The reason I am giving that background to the act, and certainly the technical side of the act, is to lead in to my own personal experiences with archives. As we know, and as other speakers have said tonight, it is about recording our history; it is a means of protecting our history and that depth and level of understanding. Many governments around the world are envious of the fact that in this country we have such a wonderful record keeping system.

I want to give another perspective on the importance of archives, probably to an emerging group in our community. Many have heard me talk in the Main Committee and in the other chamber on many occasions about my background. In 1960 I was adopted. My mother was only 17 and unmarried and in those days there were no benefits that we see today to be able to keep a child in that condition. So I was adopted. It was a Queensland adoption, all run by the state, which was a good thing at the time in terms of their record keeping. But the reality is of course that by 1964 it became a real issue socially and all the records and access to adoption records were closed off. So no-one had any access to information. It was supposedly to be kept secret and away from public view forever. In fact, after 1964 if you adopted a child you were given a guarantee that that information would be locked away forever.

We talk about locking information away. We have the archival process of course but this was very much a regulatory regime that believed that it was in the interests of the child, mother, father and everyone else in the extended family that this information should be withheld and not released—there was a range of reasons. During the following 29 years of my life, while I had a very good understanding of my circumstances and my history, there was no way to get access to information. In fact, to go down the normal route to get birth certificates and other information was simply illegal in Queensland. I had a big involvement in the changing of the laws in Queensland to allow that access to records, particularly those held by the state. By the time these laws were changed they had been in force for some 18 years. In fact, it is only an amendment going through the Queensland parliament right now, this month, that will open up and finally put to rest some of the secrecy that surrounded adoption in Queensland. Queensland is the last state to actually open its records to the public. I was very tenacious in the way that I went about finding information but the only information I had was the fact that I was born Colin David Smith. The Christian names were fine but having a surname like Smith in the milieu of the time and with the record keeping made it very, very difficult.

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