There is a simplicity about Charles Bean’s view of the Australian War Memorial. Bean, the official historian of Australia’s role in World War I, spent several months immediately after the war collecting artefacts for the memorial.
“”The conception of that memorial is that is should impress the visitor with the feeling: here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made,” he wrote.
The memorial is now in a state of transition. There is a danger the memorial role, expressed by Bean, could be eroded. Certainly the RSL sees that danger.
The danger arises from the future of leadership at the memorial.
At the end of this month the director, Brendon Kelson, retires.
Kelson’s five years on the job culminated a very long public-service career. He goes with the thanks and praise of the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs, Con Sciacca.
The trouble for the memorial is that the has Government failed to ensure a successor has been appointed in the spirit of the Australian War Memorial Act _ an independent statutory officer with a fixed-term appointment.
Instead it has appointed a public servant to act in the position for a year _ Peter Hawker, who heads the benefits section in the department.
Kelson himself always had preserved his rights as a public servant and could go back to the mainstream public service at the end of his statutory term. (As it happens, at 59, he wants to retire and made it clear he did not want an extension of his term.)
Kelson’s temporary successor, too, will have the lifeline back to the mainstream public service.
Given the Australian War Memorial is set up under its Act as an independent entity it is open to question whether it is a good idea to have what are de-facto public servants as directors. Whatever the individual’s merits, there will always be a perception that such people may not be fearless; that they will give preference to the view of the Minister, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the Government rather than to the ideals of the memorial.
This can manifest itself in subtle ways with greater emphasis and accommodation for pet government or ministerial philosophies.
The perception is perhaps evidenced by the call from the RSL that the next director be a military person. In the words of RSL national president Digger James, “”Only a military person with knowledge of military leadership would understand the fundamental nobility of the memorial and the fact that it commemorates 100,000 Australians who died in was and hundreds of thousands who served.”
However, the last time a military man was director, Air Vice Marshall Jim Fleming, he came under considerable attack. He was seen as too direct and impatient of procedures and red tape _ a bit too fearless.
But one less-than-successful military appointment does not mean military appointments per se are no good.
The change of directors at the end of the month comes at a critical time. The memorial has a great opportunity to build on national attention given during the entombment of the Unknown Australian Soldier last year with next year’s 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.
However, a couple of unpleasantries hang over it.
A Merit Protection and Review Agency investigation is under way into allegations of abuse-of-power-type harassment by senior staff.
The memorial is short of money for the tasks it has set itself.
The MPRA has already had an effect. Until it has reported the Government is not is a good position to advertise for a new director. If anyone from among the memorial’s 250 staff wishes to apply, their application might be prejudiced by the on-going hearing.
The MPRA inquiry is having an on-going disruptive effect at any event (see adjacent article).
The money issue is also critical.
The memorial in the middle of a large capital appeal for the refurbishment of the galleries.
It started with $2.5 million from the Federal Government and the memorial is getting the state and territory government collectively to match it. The ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania have given and the other will come in the next two to three months.
Kelson said that advisory committees in each state would get major corporate and individual benefactors at the time the state government gave and in April or May next year there would be a public appeal so the public at large could feel they were stakeholders in the program.
“”This is the first time any major museum or institution in this country has attempted at one time to completely rethink the philosophy of all its galleries and all its displays in interpreting what this national experience of war has been,” Kelson said this week.
“”We have developed a whole philosophy to underpin this and the whole thinking is focused on what is our strength _ and that is our collection. The collection of artefacts, objects and materials which Australian servicemen and women brought back to this country from World War I and subsequent conflicts.”
The memorial would use audio-visual and computer to interpret the collections in the most effective way, but it would not become a place of virtual reality.
“”The strength of museums is in their collections,” he said. “”When people can actually go to a book or computer and get a superb image of the Mona Lisa, why is that they still want to go to the Lourve and see through dark glass with 30 or 40 people in front of them just to peer and see this thing vaguely in the background? Because it’s the experience the communion, the contact that they have with the real object.”
You could show films of Gallipoli and see pictures, but the Memorial had an actual landing boat in which the Australians landed In 1915 which people could touch and feel, he said.
The museum-memorial debate had gone on for some time.
However, “”it was not part of the debate in 1980 when the act we are operating under now as presented as a Bill in both Houses where on both sides of the Parliament there was a recognition in the debates and discussions that it was both a memorial and a museum,” he said. “”This memorial is a memorial by way of being a museum.”
The debate is more than one of semantics. The more the institution is seen as a museum, or partly a museum, the more people suggest entrance fees are appropriate. The more it is seen as a memorial, the less acceptable fees become.
The RSL is unequivocal about the institution being a memorial. Digger James says the displays and artefacts themselves are a memorial. That view is consistent with the view put by Bean and others since 1920.
Kelson is against fees, too, but points to the fact that nearly every other institution in Australia and around the world has them and that a recent management consultant’s report into the memorial had recommended an entrance fee as a way of meeting about $1.4 million of the $2 million to $2.5 million annual shortfall in the memorial’s funding.
“”I have a quaint old 19th century view about charging people to go into museums, art galleries, libraries, places where people are able to access their nation’s heritage,” he said. “”I say it is quaint because nowadays the user pays principle applies everywhere. I look around and there is hardly a museum or art gallery where there isn’t a charge in this country or overseas.
“”In any event, there would never be any charge for people going into the commemorative area; the hall of memory the rolls of honour. There would be a charge merely to support the galleries to assist us with defraying the cost of those activities.”
The decision was up to the Government, Opposition and ex-service community, he said. The Minister had said he would not introduce fees unless the Opposition and ex-service organisations agreed.
The consultant, KPMG Peat Marwick, suggested “”some cuts to the staffing of the organisation where this is non-core activity, to look at out-sourcing and to look at beefing up some of our commercial operations”. On the commercial front (the shop, restaurant and charges for research) the memorial was doing pretty well, so there was not much extra it could get _ perhaps $150,000 to $200,000 a year. And after the capital appeal the memorial would look at a bequest program through a foundation which could “”yield significant fin benefits in long term”.
The memorial faces a year in the spotlight next year. Last year’s entombment resulted in an extra 100,000 visitors in the subsequent 12 months to 940,000. Lack of similar growth in visitor numbers to other Canberra institutions point to the entombment as the key factor because of the national media exposure.
There was some mild controversy over whether the Prime Minister should be pall-bearer.
Next year with the 50th anniversary the exposure will be greater, and so perhaps will the controversy, with views ranging from calls for renewed apologies from Japan to calls for an opportunity to cement friendship with Japan, or at least not to upset them (see adjacent article). Bear in mind Japan is a key player in Paul Keating’s APEC dream.
Subtly, the VJ Day learnt in schools is to be commemorated as VP (victory in the Pacific) Day.
Next year the memorial plans a VE Day exhibition, a VE Day ceremony, and a VP Day ceremony at which time the 1945 exhibition will be opened.
There will also be a major history conference focusing on the end of the war.
Kelson said, “”It was very important to me because we tend to think of the Pacific War that we should not lose sight of the POWs that were coming home from German POWs camps . . . the guys who were in bomber command and serving with the RAF. It is very easy just to think of the Pacific War and forget a lot of the guys who were over there _ that we don’t lose sight of the European theatre, and of course the post war migration was largely from Europe.
“”And I think the minister picked it up and said we mustn’t forget the European theatre.”
But VP Day would be the major ceremony and that would be the major focus.
“”We use the notion of VP day because that was the same as victory in Europe,” he said. “”. . . definition by geographical area which we tend to do here anyway.
Further in the future, the memorial has a master plan which includes redevelopment of part of the site for commemorative gardens, opening surrounding space for more community use, plans for redevelopment of Anzac parade to link across the lake to Parliament House, a new exhibition space and new research building on the opposite side of the main building mirroring the administration building. Another program is for conservation of the 60-year old building.
Kelson says that with this on the memorial’s hands it could not take on a role in promoting a Bean centre at Tuggeranong Homestead where Bean wrote much of the Anzac volumes of the official history.
As to the future role of the memorial in Australian society, Kelson was optimistic.
“”I see the memorial continuing to play an important role in understanding what it is historically to be Australian,” he said. “”In the 20th century the two great wars have had an enormous impact on Australia, socially, politically economically. In World War I, one in 10 or 420,000 in a population of four million 420,000 were in uniform, so there wasn’t going to be a family in Australia not affected.
“”World War II showed how close war came to us. A consequence of that war was the major migration programs after the Second World War which started to change the whole composition of Australian society in significant ways.
“”If you think about things that have been changing the nation, those two conflicts are fairly important so what the war memorial does in terms of explaining to people the impact of war on Australian society, not only at the sharp end but in other ways, is important.
“”It really is important for people to understand how this nation has been moulded by the sorts of things we hope to present to them here.
In looking towards the end of the century and into the next century we have to be conscious of certain things if we are going to be effective.
“”If we are not gong to become irrelevant as a war-museum type institution as you sometimes see them overseas where they deal with the war and have nothing to do with the rest of society, you’ve got to keep making those links into the mainstream of Australian society and Australian history.
“”We must be able to deal with that experience not only so it can be understood and felt as part of the experience of those people who belong to the Angle-Saxon-Celtic society which provided the bulk of those forces but to people who have come to Australia largely since the Second World War who have made this their home and have an equal right to feel that this is part of their inheritance as Australians.
“”We have to be able to tell this experience of war in ways in which a person coming from any part of the world will draw the universal lessons that can be drawn about the impact of war on society from this nation’s experience.”
“”If we can do these things then this institution will be relevant to Australian society. It will have a lot to do with defining ourselves as Australians for a long, long time to come.”