The Albanese government has kicked-off the pre-Budget official leak season, riding to the rescue of the National Library of Australia with a chunky $33 million package to rescue the institution’s beloved Trove digital archive repository and system from hitting the fiscal wall.
To be meted out over four years, a move to pre-empt the Budget media cycle by announcing major rescue packages for projects and programs conspicuously sidelined by the previous government’s spending priorities is primed to increase in coming weeks to build anticipation for the big day.
To be fair, Trove, along with the National Library, was on its financial knees as the wildly popular historical repository struggled to keep up with demand and funding for staff.
And it’s a little unclear why the National Library was apparently so on-the-nose with the more hardline elements of the previous government given the institution’s role in preserving national history and its huge public popularity.
For those unfamiliar with Trove, the world-leading project gives the public digital access to a raft of historical publications, documents and images, including newspapers and official documents.
It is also a key education resource in terms of primary historical research previously unavailable, acting as a hub to provide access across a network of libraries.
A major innovative feature is to allow readers to correct optical character recognition scans of text where machines struggle to make out a blurred word or letter, an innovation that has generated huge amounts of public interest goodwill.
Which is what makes its deliberate starvation all the weirder, given the warmth of regard for it in the community, and the clear electoral repercussions.
Minister for the arts Tony Burke wasted little time in calling out the $33 million as an antidote to what Labor has called ‘fiscally bashing’ the arts sector, saying the government was “very aware of the significance of Trove and the importance of safeguarding its future.”
“Trove is, in many ways, Australia’s digital memory,” Burke said. “It records and retains some of our most important stories, moments, challenges, controversies and successes in one accessible location. “
“Whether you’re using it to look up a bit of family history, or for academic research — Trove is an incredibly important part of our national cultural institutions,” the Arts minister continued.
“This funding helps restore and maintain our strong cultural infrastructure — a key pillar of Revive, the Government’s new National Cultural Policy.
“It takes us a step closer to ending the budget cuts and culture wars of the previous government.”
It may do, but it’s a drop in the fiscal bucket compared to the huge amounts earmarked for AUKUS and its accompanying National Security Precinct, replete with a dedicated lakeside multistorey car park near Kings Avenue for securocrats unfamiliar with slumming it on public transport.
That deal, awarded to Barangaroo developers Lend Lease, was announced last week by minister for finance and the public service and ACT senator Katy Gallagher.
Gallagher was at pains to point out there is also fiscal love at the Commonwealth Avenue end of Parkes, and said funding certainty meant Trove and the National Library “can keep doing what they do best — collecting and preserving today’s stories for future generations.”
“We know just how important Trove is to so many Australians and the Albanese Government is pleased to be able to provide our National Library the funding needed to finally take Trove off of life support.”
“Without this funding, Trove would simply cease to exist in a few short months — and with that, free, digital access to much of Australia’s history would be denied to millions of Australians.”
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