he Australian War Memorial has been, and only perhaps still is, one of Australia’s great cultural institutions. It was set up with the highest ideals and public purpose. Now those ideals and the institution itself are under challenge _ culturally, financially and organisationally.
It is in danger of losing its independence as an institution that stands for the commemoration of The sacrifice of Australian soldiers who served in war.
For better or worse, a stream of different values are diluting the original purpose. In some ways they mirror some of the broader changes in Australian society. These changing values can be expressed in shorthand colloquialisms: “”You can’t touch me I’m part of the union”; “”I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”; “”Don’t mention the war, we’re trading with the Japanese now”; “”User pays”; and “”Australia is a multi-cultural society”.
Let’s take them one by one:
“”You can’t touch me I’m part of the union”.
Earlier this year some employees at the War Memorial complained of harassment. The allegations were of abuse of power and threatening behaviour.
The Minister Assisting the Minister on Public Service Matters, Gary Johns, referred the matter to the Merit Protection and Review Agency. He used one of the catch-all sections of the MPRA Act to do so. Some at the memorial say it was the wrong body to conduct such an investigation.
The MPRA’s primary purpose is as an appeal body for individual public servants who have been fired, moved, demoted, retired out and the like.
In other words, it is a defender. It is not primarily a prosecutor. In so far as it is a judge it is primarily an appeal judge: one that either over-turns convictions or lets things lie. It was not meant to be a judge at first instance, that is, one that convicts from scratch, one that makes findings of guilt. But that is the role it has been given in.
In its defence/appeal-only mode, it is quite appropriate for it not to have to worry about the rules of evidence, natural justice or openness. After all, the only result could be the over-turning of an existing adverse finding; not the creation of a new finding.
At the War Memorial, however, it has undertaking a prosecutor/first-instance judging role, but has still kept the procedures which are appropriate only to a defence/appeal mode process.
It listens to evidence in secret; it tells witnesses they need not give their names when they accuse and their identity will be protected; there is no cross-examination by the defence; it has asked the staff as a whole that if they have any complaints here is their chance: in secret. It is a Star Chamber. No-one should take the slightest notice of its findings because no-one can see the evidence upon which it is based.
True, those accused may see the nature of the complaint against them, but not know the identity of the accuser. Without that, how can the test the accusation?
In short, a sham. When you match what is at stake (public service careers), the process simply does not have enough protections and should be stopped.
A body set up to ensure any that any public servant who is mistreated by the boss gets an independent review (which incidentally in a very high percentage of cases says the bosses were wrong or too harsh) is now being used to set upon the bosses in an accusatorial way.
In doing so it is so easy to blur “”discipline” with “”harassment”, defined as threatening. Of course, an employee will feel threatened if a boss says: “”Look, this work is not good enough. Do it again properly by Friday.” And a good thing, too. But you can’t touch me, I’m part of the union.
“”I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help you.”
The War Memorial is supposed to be an independent memorial set up by the Parliament. Its council is to contain the heads of the three services and eight others, usually including ex-service organisation people. The director is an independent statutory officer appointed by the Governor-General for a maximum seven years answerable to the directions of the council.
The trouble is the present director and the new acting director are public servants who have kept their lifelines back to the mainstream public service so that they could always return at the end of the term. No matter how competent and diligent the individuals are, this arrangement can only give rise to a perception that the Government’s, Minister’s and Department’s bidding and emphases will come first and the council’s and service’s view will have to get accommodated to those.
It is similar to the process that has drawn that other icon of the ex-service community _ the Repatriation Commission _ into the bureaucratic fold.
That perception can be argued in the direction the memorial has taken with the next three colloquialisms.
“”Don’t mention the war; we’re trading with the Japanese now.”
Notice how the logo for Australia Remembers is of a Digger returning from Europe, not from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. The European theatre was important, but from an Australian perspective the war against Japanese was more significant: it affected national security and more Australian soldiers were killed, injured and mistreated by the Japanese than in Europe. That was the nature of the suffering and sacrifice and therefore the symbol should have reflected it.
Apparently next year we are to have VP not VJ commemorations. (Victory in the Pacific not Victory over Japan). The euphemism is not warranted and runs counter to what most Australians leant at school.
“”User pays”
Twice in the past few years there have been attempts to introduce entrance charges so the memorial can join the “”user-pays” philosophy of the Department of Finance. It is a bit like conservationists having to defend some part of heritage against the bulldozers: the dozers only have to win once, the conservationists have to be forever vigilant.
The user-pays call rests on a false premise. It assumes the taxpayers cannot or will not collectively pay for a memorial to those who helped the nation in time of war.
“”Australia is a multi-cultural society”
This one is harder to quantify; it is more subtle. But the bulk of the soldiers in the two world wars were Anglo-Celtic. In the past decade, the Government has pushed the multi-cultural theme, quite properly, in many fields of Australian life. But there are some places where it would distort history to give great emphasis to that theme.
It is fortunate that these five points to date are not dramatically corrosive of the memorial’s overall function, because the ideals of the memorial are so enduring, but they are worth pointing out. Change can creep up and slowly the place comes to mean something completely different. As the diggers who fought in the wars know, you cannot take anything for granted.