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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3429 ..
MR CORBELL (continuing):
Urban infill is an issue of considerable concern. The government has said one thing, but it was caught out clearly doing another. I simply put the question to members again: would Gary Humphries have said the government was not looking at urban open space for urban infill if the Labor Party had not requested the original batch of documents that indicated 139 sites of urban open space as possible urban infill sites across Woden and Weston Creek? Would he have said, "We are not looking at them" if we had not done that? I think the answer is no. That is why we need this motion supported today.
Question resolved in the negative.
MR WOOD (5.41): Mr Speaker, I ask for leave to amend my notice in the terms circulated.
Leave granted.
MR WOOD: I move:
That, noting:
(1) the significant role of the Australian National University in teaching postgraduate study and research;
(2) the importance of the National Capital in maintaining leadership in the keeping of nationally significant historical documents;
(3) the importance of the Noel Butlin Archive in collection and research
the Legislative Assembly calls upon the Chief Minister to transmit to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs-
(1) its regret at the proposal of the University to cut funding to the Noel Butlin Archives and its concern that this will result in the Archives being effectively inaccessible to the public; and
(2) its request that the Minister call upon the Australian National University to uphold its responsibility to administer and maintain the Noel Butlin Archives Centre as Australia's most important archives of business and labour records, and a unique repository of information on the history of Australian working life.
I am sure members of this Assembly are aware of the debate about the Noel Butlin Archives. There has been quite a deal of discussion about them in the local media in recent times. The archives hold a very significant collection of business and labour records going back as far as 1820. There are 13 kilometres of shelving, compared with nine kilometres of shelving of similar material in the National Library. Mind you, kilometres of shelving is not necessarily a measure of the worth of anything. But this is a significant collection. A great deal of research work has been carried out over the years from material within the archives. People who come to Canberra and students within Canberra value that archive, and it has been the source of much research work.
Notwithstanding the name and the connotation some people may give to the word "archive", an archive is a living thing. It has to be sustained and it has to grow. An archive is not a place where documents are filed in remote and dusty places. It needs to be used, it needs to be encouraged and it needs to grow.
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