Richard Barton Gleaning #1

This story speaks volumes about where Launceston is at right now!  ... LB

Despite the investigations, the exposes and the Tune report, there remains a mystery around the genuinely shocking neglect by and of the Australian National Archives (NA). As news reports have made clear, the archives appears to have allowed itself to approach a “digital cliff” in which large amounts of material in the form of old tapes, film and the like are hitting the point at which they dissolve into their elements. .............. The report by David Tune on the NA’s woes put forward a figure of $67 million required to catch the place up to its digitisation and preservation requirements. In the most recent budget, the government gave it nothing for this — zip, zero. This despite the fact that more public-facing institutions such as the National Library all got specific new allocations. ............. How did it get to this state? ............. None of the reports have been able to give us an answer. It doesn’t appear to be a political punishment; the NA is run by an ex-ASIO spook, who spent far too much money and time trying to block the release of the John Kerr-Buckingham Palace letters from public view. Quite possibly, it’s the opposite.  ............. The NA leadership was unwilling to give the government problems it doesn’t need, and so didn’t advocate for itself.READ MORE HERE

A nation without history, the poet A.D. Hope called us, but he didn't intend it as a programmatic statement. Coalition governments have fixed that.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Desmond Tutu