AustLit

'As we write this editorial and send the latest batch of outstanding research articles and reviews off to the publisher, we do so having had the chance to engage (virtually at least) with many of you at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Australian Historical Association (AHA). As we noted in our first editorial for 2021, ‘From the President’ will now appear annually in the issue after the AGM, which in terms of production timelines means it appears in the final issue of the year. There was, moreover, some good news to celebrate at this meeting. That very morning the Morrison Government announced it would provide funding for the National Archives (NAA) to preserve records in danger of falling off the digital cliff. ‘Dragging their feet’ would be a generous way to describe the response of the Government to the Tune Review, which was only publicly released in March 2021, more than a year after the Government received it. This review confirmed what many historians of Australia already knew; namely, that the archives are woefully understaffed and working through an incredible backlog of requests for researchers. More disturbingly, the Tune Review confirmed that many records were in a perilous state, requiring urgent preservation work if they were not to decay beyond repair. The AHA, both as an organisation formally and from its membership, led the charge on trying to force the Government to revise its initial choice to essentially ignore this crisis; after the May federal budget, a paltry $700,000 was allocated to meet needs. According to the Government this was ‘nothing to be embarrassed about’, even as the Tune Review recommended that over $65 million was required.' (Leigh Boucher, Michelle Arrow and Kate Fuillagar, Editorial introduction)