Page 969 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 17 June 1992
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ADJOURNMENT
Motion (by Mr Berry) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Noel Butlin Archive Centre
MR LAMONT (3.50): Mr Deputy Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise in the adjournment debate to pay a tribute and my personal respect to Professor Noel Butlin, who was the founder of the organisation called the ANU Archives of Business and Labour. Professor Butlin was responsible, as a very fine Australian, for ensuring that records of business be kept in an appropriate manner and be able to be kept as a pool, as a resource, for research into business in Australia. In paying tribute to Professor Butlin, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will quote from a speech by Dr Neal Blewett, who also paid his respect and the respect of the Australian Government to Professor Butlin when the ANU decided to rename its archives after Professor Butlin.
When Noel Butlin commenced his research at the ANU on capital formation in nineteenth century Australia, about 40 years ago, the raw materials he required did not exist in their current form as a convenient national resource. Even the National Library did not collect primary source material for research into Australia's economic history. In the 1950s, to many Australians, history was British and so were we. But Noel Butlin was not content with that and began an ambitious program to collect, catalogue and preserve the records he needed for his research and which he realised were essential for the writing of Australian history more broadly.
In 1961, with the agreement of the ACTU, the archives became the established custodian of trade union records. Mr Deputy Speaker, as a former trade union official in Canberra, I can speak personally when I say that all of the records of that organisation were quite adequately kept by the archives. The professionalism of the staff in providing access to and the preservation of those records, I believe, is of the highest order, not only in Australia but throughout the world.
The collection now holds the archives of organisations ranging from the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union to the New South Wales Farmers Federation. The records occupy several kilometres of shelf space, and extra space will certainly be needed as the Noel Butlin Archive Centre's most recent project gathers momentum - the creation of the national AIDS archives collection which will house Australia's AIDS education material. The collection of this material will provide an invaluable resource for those wishing to chronicle Australia's response to AIDS. It will be funded primarily by the Department of Health, Housing and Community Services through a grant of $150,000 and will include a comprehensive collection of publications, posters, videos, newsletters and bulletins. The centrally located materials in the AIDS archives will be available to researchers and, where possible, the general public.
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