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TRANSCRIPT: $47 MILLION TO PRESERVE AUSTRALIA’S AT-RISK COLLECTIONS
TRANSCRIPT: Friday 3 December 2021
Doorstop with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Minister Zed Seselja
PATRICK MCINTYRE, NFSA CEO:
Thanks for coming. My name’s Patrick McIntyre, I’m the CEO of the National Film and Sound Archive. Firstly I’d like to, on behalf of all of us here, acknowledge the traditional owners of the land and pay our respects to their elders past and present. This morning we are gathering for a very exciting announcement. We’re going to hear from the Treasurer, the Honourable Josh Frydenberg; the Honourable Paul Fletcher, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts; and Senator the Honourable Zed Seselja, Minister for International Development and the Pacific. We’ll start with you, Treasurer. Thank you.
TREASURER JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, thank you very much, Patrick, and to Cathy, too, for the warm welcome for myself and my colleagues, Paul Fletcher and Zed Seselja. Paul’s doing an outstanding job promoting the arts and securing funding for projects such as these. And Zed is an standing representative for the people of the ACT as a senator but also as a minister.
We’re here at the Film and Sound Archives, and also represented here is the National Library, for a very significant announcement. Today we’re announcing more than $47 million in new funding to help digitalise and preserve some of the great footage of Australia. This money will be used to preserve around 240,000 at-risk items – 240,000 at-risk items, with some 3 million here at the Film and Sound Archives.
There’s also money for the Trove website. The Trove website is a portal to some 6 billion individual documents and images and footages and audio recordings. And there are some 30 million visitors a year to the Trove website. So by helping to preserve and digitalise these sound recordings, this footage, as well as securing our website, the Trove website, we’re able to give Australians a window to the past. And by giving a window to the past that’s going to make for even a brighter future.
Now some of these footage, some of these recordings, are very, very significant in Australia’s history. I’ve got a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. I hope that when they grow up they know the household names of Dame Joan Sutherland, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, Robert Menzies and Donald Bradman. And, indeed, those names are represented in some of the at-risk documents and recordings that we’re going to help preserve today.
Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm made that first flight from the United States to Australia. Don Bradman did some movies during the Second World War which we’re going to help to be preserved and protected here. Sir Robert Menzies was known for carrying his own camera around the world and, indeed, around the country. And his collection is being preserved here, as well as Dame Joan Sutherland’s [indistinct] wonderful artistic talent she was and a great ambassador for our country.
And finally, this $47 million is in addition to other previous announcements Paul and Michaelia Cash and Zed and I have made about preserving and digitalising our past. Including more recently the $67 million for the National Archives, there was $10 million for the National Library to the records of Sir John Monash and Sir Robert Menzies, and there was an additional $5 million as well for further recording and digitalisation to be protected and preserved.
So today is all about protecting the past so we can have a brighter future so that some of those household names, so that some of that important history, is recorded. And that history is right across civilian life, our political life, the work of our Defence Force and the lives of our First Australians, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
So, thank you for having us here today. It’s a very special occasion. It’s a significant amount of money, and it’s all about preserving the past so that people in the future can enjoy it, too. Thank you.
PAUL FLETCHER:
Well, it’s great to be here at the National Film and Sound Archive with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Senator Zed Seselja, Patrick McIntyre, the Director of the National Film and Sound Archive, and Cathy Pilgrim, Deputy Director of the National Library.
And this $47 million is a really important commitment to our cultural heritage as a nation. It’s about capturing and storing that cultural heritage in a digital form so that it’s recorded effectively and permanently, and about making that cultural heritage accessible all around Australia.
The National Film and Sound Archive in particular is an extraordinary national resource, a remarkable collection of films, sound recordings, music, TV footage, but much of that is in analogue form and that analogue form being videotape, be it magnetic audio tape has a limited life. Once we digitise it, it’s effectively there permanently and it's much more accessible because you can attach metadata, you can access it very, very quickly. So, this extraordinary cultural heritage becomes more accessible for all Australians.
And I just want to particularly mention the Trove. As the Treasurer rightly said, the Trove is a national treasure administered by the National Library. An extraordinary volume of information there - full texts of newspapers going back to the 19th century. You can spend many enjoyable hours delving around Trove. I’ve certainly done that once or twice [indistinct] some free time to do it. But it requires deep expertise to maintain and make access to the resources of Trove, and that’s why included in this announcement is $5.7 million for the National Library to continue to maintain Trove through to 30 June 2023 and also some upgrades within what they’re doing there.
So, a very significant announcement today for Australia’s cultural heritage, our national collecting institutions serve the whole nation. They serve the whole nation. And it’s important to make the point that the funding is going to the National Film and Sound Archive today, and a number of the items that they will be digitising are in the collections of the other national institutions. But because the National Film and Sound Archive has that deep subject matter expertise about film and sound digitisation they’re the appropriate organisation to do it.
Can I say, Treasurer, thank you to you for your strong and consistent support of our culture, our heritage as a nation. This is one of the most important things we do. And it will benefit Australians for generations to come. I’ll pass to Senator Seselja.
SENATOR ZED SESELJA:
Well, thanks very much, Paul, and thank you to Patrick and Cathy for being here today, for the work they do. And I want to acknowledge my good friend the Treasurer as well and thank him and Minister Fletcher for this really important investment. In Canberra we are very pleased as the nation’s capital to work in, to have our citizens work in, so many great institutions including the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Library, as we’re seeing today. But we’ve seen an investment from the Liberal-National government in these institutions, significant investment in these institutions, in recent years. We’ve seen large investment in our National Gallery, we’ve seen large investments in our archives. We’ve seen the huge expansion of our War Memorial. And so today on top of that to see this significant investment not just in our nation’s history and in preserving our nation’s history but it’s also an investment in our nation’s capital. And I always am very, very pleased to see that.
For me the National Library has a particular attachment – I served on the council there and my father Louie as a photographer worked there for the vast bulk of his career. And that’s just a snapshot of how many Canberrans have played a role in these great national institutions, which we’re very proud of as Canberrans, but which serve the wider national interest. That’s what we can be proud of today. So, thank you again to the Treasurer and to the minister for what is a significant investment here in Canberra but for our nation.
PATRICK MCINTYRE:
So, we’ll also hear from Cathy Pilgrim who is the Acting Director-General of the National Library of Australia as well. And I think the Treasurer and the Minister said it best – all that is up for us now to say thank you so much. This is a landmark here. It’s a very substantial investment in the preservation of these collections not only for the NSA but across eight national institutions. These items do belong to the people of Australia and [indistinct] that will continue to be repaid for future generations.
Obviously, the race is on internationally when it comes to perishable media types and obsolete playback equipment. So, this investment will also mean that Australia is able to position itself at the forefront of this movement to protect world audio visual heritage items before they become redundant and unplayable.
So, I’d like to say again thank you so much to the Australian government for this investment. Thank you to your partner institutions for collaborating on making it happen. And also, I would like to say thank you to [indistinct] who helped us develop the bid and partner this announcement today. And I’ll now ask Cathy to ask further about Trove.
CATHY PILGRIM:
Thank you, Treasurer, minister, senator, and Patrick. The National Library is delighted to be here today and is pleased by the amount of this additional funding to support Trove. In these uncertain times Trove is an essential service for connecting Australians with their cultural heritage. Providing access to collections of more than 1,000 partner institutions including galleries, libraries, archives and museums and local societies, Trove is used and loved by those in our major cities and those within our remote communities.
With more than 200 million page views every year, Trove is one of the world’s most visited cultural portals and is a mainstay of academic professional community and historians. This additional $5.7 million will ensure that the library can maintain and sustain Trove through until 2023 and manage the [indistinct] cyber security climates.
Trove at its heart is a collaboration across the cultural sector. And we’re delighted to be part of [indistinct] cultural issues announced today. We look forward to continuing to work with the national cultural institutions to ensure Australia’s heritage is safe, accessible, and alive. Thank you very much.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Are there any questions about today’s announcement first and foremost?
JOURNALIST:
Is this funding enough to save all of the at-risk records or is it just some and, indeed, have we already lost some very important ones?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, I’ll ask Patrick and Cathy to speak to that. But today is all about protecting our past so we can enjoy it in the future. There’s 240,000 different images and recordings that are going to be protected, and that’s a very significant development and a very substantial investment. So of course we need to continue to ensure that those recordings are protected. I don’t think this will be – this is certainly not the first and I don’t think it will be the last by the government in preserving our history.
PAUL FLETCHER:
Just to quickly add to what the Treasurer said, as he rightly said, this is a very significant investment. The way that we developed this through the process has been to essentially identify categories of at-risk items across all of the national cultural institutions. That is around 240,000 as we’ve said, of which the majority sit within the National Film and Sound Archive given the nature of their work [indistinct] but by no means at all. It is across eight national institutions, and so we worked backwards from that to establish a program to work out what needs to be done to digitise those over a time period which means it can be done before you hit that critical point at which those old films or video tapes or magnetic audio tape recordings have decayed.
So, this is a very significant structural investment commitment and it’s been scoped to meet the needs based upon an assessment of audio visual items held within collections [indistinct] institutions.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Any other further questions on today’s announcement?
JOURNALIST:
Do you have enough staff to be able to do this? Like, the money actually [indistinct]. Is there enough expertise?
PATRICK MCINTYRE:
Yes, the investment covers capital expenditure as well as some staffing. We’re going to be running double shifts on the equipment to make sure that we move through the program really quickly over the next four years. So, part of the funding is for people. The bulk is for [indistinct], including configuring all the servers and the permanent storage of the data savers [indistinct].
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Any further questions, on anything?
JOURNALIST:
Just on politics of the day, Treasurer.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Thank you, Cathy, thank you, Patrick, for having us here today. Now for the interrogation.
JOURNALIST:
I wouldn’t call it that. But your colleague Alan Tudge is standing aside. Do you expect that he’ll be back on the front bench come the election?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
I certainly hope so. And Alan is a very valued colleague, is an outstanding minister. He’s a good personal friend of mine, and I think he’s done the right thing here. And he’s welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement and he’s welcomed this independent process. I’ll let that run its course. But I certainly hope he’s back at work on the front bench as soon as possible.
JONO KEARSLEY:
[indistinct] allegations [indistinct] Alan Tudge to stand aside. Is this an indication that this election campaign [indistinct] deeply personal? The issue of the [indistinct]?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, certainly with Alan Tudge’s case he very strongly and has consistently denied the characterisation of the consensual relationship, and both parties have talked about that, and he deeply regrets it. So I’ll let that [indistinct] process run its course.
But this week we had the Jenkins report. Now that report was very confronting and it did reflect the drastic and urgent need for cultural change in Parliament House. A large number of recommendations which we’re certainly leaning in to through a multi-party process. Because this, Jono, is not about one particular party; this is about the parliament as a whole. And Australians rightly expect that their parliamentarians uphold the highest standards. We are the elected representatives of the Australian people and we have to lead by example.
And so Kate Jenkins’s words have rung loudly through the ears of the Prime Minister, myself and our parliamentary colleagues and, indeed, across both sides of the chamber. So make no mistake, we are determined to see cultural change in the parliament and to act on Kate Jenkins’s review.
JOURNALIST:
Will you commit then to implementing all of the recommendations?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we’re certainly leaning into it, and we’ve got a multi-party process. But, you know, looking at that report there does need to be urgent action, and there are, as you know, I think it’s 28 individual recommendations, and we’ll work through that as quickly as possible and then make an announcement. And it will be an announcement based on the work of all the parties through this multi-party process.
JOURNALIST:
Brittany Higgins said that not enough has been done to prevent sexual harassment and assault in Parliament House. Do you agree?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we’ve already acted on a number of initiatives and put in place independent processes providing more support through help lines and the like. So we have taken actions. There was the Foster review, now there’s the Jenkins report. There is an urgent need for change, and that’s what we’ll ensure will happen.
JONO KEARSLEY:
Treasurer, just on energy policy, Labor’s [indistinct] on their climate policy [indistinct] 40 per cent targets by 2030. Why not [indistinct] your projection into a target for the next election?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, as you know, we took a target to the last election, Jono – 26 to 28 per cent reduction by 2030 on 2005 levels. The good news is that we’re on track to meet and to beat that target.
JONO KEARSLEY:
[Indistinct].
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
With emissions down by more than 20 per cent. Why that number is important is it not only shows the progress that one in four Australian households have solar panels on their roofs, the fact that we’ve seen tens of millions of dollars invested in renewable energy across the country, Snowy 2.0, a project that’s underway with 5,000 jobs being created [indistinct] on the east coast of Australia, all that work is underway. And we have reduced emissions by more than 20 per cent. In Canada it’s less than 5 per cent. In New Zealand it’s about 1 per cent, and we have been strongly ahead of many other countries in the world.
Now, the Prime Minister and the Energy Minister recently said that we’re actually on track for a 30 to 35 per cent reduction by 2030. So it would be great if we could achieve that as a nation. But we did take a target to the last election, and that is what the Australian people voted on. They rejected Labor’s [indistinct] of 45 per cent and they voted in favour of the Coalition’s policy and the Coalition’s target. And we have as a Coalition made a major step forward in embracing net zero by 2050 and releasing a plan to get us there focusing on technology not taxes.
Now, I haven’t seen Labor’s announcement so I’ll reserve my comments until I’ve seen it. But what we do know is that their track record is about taxes, not technology. What we do know is about higher targets but they have a cost. So l see if today’s any different, but I suspect no.
JONO KEARSLEY:
[indistinct]
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Again, I’ll have more to say, and so will the Prime Minister and the Energy Minister, once we’ve seen their announcement. But, again, leopards don’t change their spots. Their track record is of embracing higher taxes on people’s electricity bills, and we’ve been focusing on technology. And I point this out to you, Jono, since December of 2018 electricity bills are down by 10 per cent whereas under Labor electricity bills doubled.
JOURNALIST:
Just a final question on the Jenkins review, it also calls for greater diversity in parliament, including cultural diversity. How is the government addressing that?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, we’ll have more to say about the recommendations and the multi-party process in response in due course. But we have an opportunity now with two of my close parliamentary colleagues – Greg Hunt and Christian Porter announcing that they won’t be contesting the next election – to preselect two women in the seats of Pearce and Flinders. Now, there are opportunities for the preselectors. Ultimately the decision is theirs. In our party it’s the preselectors who have the final say about their parliamentary representatives. But I know of outstanding candidates for both those seats and I wish them the best of luck.
JONO KEARSLEY:
Treasurer, a Senate committee yesterday recommended the Prime Minister for once and for all explain to the parliament exactly what his role and the office’s role, what Alan Tudge’s role and what Alan Tudge’s office’s role [indistinct]. You asked before [indistinct]. Isn’t it about time that the government said that this car parks funding was what it was about, which was about trying to win an election.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, Jono, I’ll ask Paul as the responsible minister to talk as well on this. But let me point out, by the end of next year we’re looking at about 70 per cent of those projects either under construction or completed.
JONO KEARSLEY:
That’s not the point.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
And I –
JONO KEARSLEY:
You’re putting them into areas where congestion wasn’t [indistinct]. You’re putting them into seats you wanted to win to stay in government. Isn’t that right?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Look, two Labor seats. Two Labor seats –
JONO KEARSLEY:
Isn’t that right?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
No. Two Labor seats – Calwell and McEwan – you’ve already seen car parks completed. And Labor took a $300 million park-and-ride policy with a focus on 24 –
JONO KEARSLEY:
[indistinct] . Was it a $4.8 million report of taxpayer money for the for the congestion [indistinct].
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
It was a focus on helping people get to work sooner and safer across the country. Paul.
PAUL FLETCHER:
The basis for the Urban Congestion Fund [indistinct] was on congestion issues and remains on congestion issues in our cities, based on advice, for example, from Infrastructure Australia, which recommended that an effective way to reduce congestion would be to get more people using rail by doing [indistinct] in places which make it easier for them to get on a train rather than driving their car all the way to [indistinct]. It’s based on, for example, the consideration of where there were already commuter car parks that were being built or had been built. So, we focused on areas where we felt there was a greater need, and it was based upon evidence from Infrastructure Australia that, for example, 38 per cent of homes in Melbourne were not living walking distance from public transport compared to 25 per cent in Sydney.
So that was the evidence that we drew on. And, indeed, we hear Labor’s tired old talking points on this. And I might say yesterday’s Senate report was nothing more from a Labor and Greens-nominated committee than a repeat of the same tired talking points. They’re so focused on the Canberra bubble. What we’re focused on is actually getting [indistinct] –
JONO KEARSLEY:
Minister [Indistinct] taxpayer money to win government seats.
PAUL FLETCHER:
There are six commuter car parks now completed – Craigieburn, Croydon, Hurstbridge, Epping, Mandurah. So, we’ve got six completed, we’ve got four underway and there’ll be another two underway by the end of this year. We expect to have another [indistinct] by the end of next year.
So if you live in Mandurah in Perth or if you live in Ferny Grove in the Brisbane area, what you care about is how do I get to work, how do I get there efficiently? These commuter car parks are meeting a need. We’re delivering them [indistinct].
SPEAKER:
Last question.
JONO KEARSLEY:
Treasurer, Labor’s just confirmed a 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030. Your response?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, Labor’s policies are never costed and they’re always based on higher taxes. We’re focused on new technology to reduce emissions because we want the triple objectives met – smaller carbon footprint, lower electricity prices and more stable and reliable grid. I say to the Australian people:
look at Labor’s track record. We know when last in government electricity prices doubled. The Australian people rejected Labor’s target at the last election and they’ll have their opportunity at the next election.
JONO KEARSLEY:
Is it too high, 43 per cent?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, Labor doesn’t cost their programs, they don’t plan for their programs. A target without a plan is worth – not worth the paper it’s written on.
END
