Would America – and the world – be a different place if Bill Clinton’s 1992 election mantra had changed one word and declared, “It’s the history, stupid”? This question hangs over Nick Bryant’s important book, The Forever War.
If his mantra had changed, instead of consolidating decades of economic growth at almost any cost – creating a market that still celebrates winners and ignores the losers – the scores of the past might have been interrogated and reconciled. It may have created a more robust foundation for the 21st century than the fanciful notion that history ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Bryant is not interested in a Disneyfied history – gems so polished into myth that they have almost lost meaning – but rather the uncut diamonds that have the potential to throw more light on the past and the present.
The sort of light that would have made it impossible for a US president to say that “violence has no place” in American politics, despite centuries of tragic evidence to the contrary. The sort of light that would make it impossible for an Australian prime minister to stress the practical and wave away the historic legacy for First Peoples that must inform meaningful recognition and makarrata, or an opposition leader to adamantly say “no” to truth-telling.
I thought truth was supposed to set us free, but some truths are more palatable than others. As Bryant writes: “All politics is history. All history is politics.”
Australia has been even more diffident than America about exploring its history and the way the tendrils of the past shape the present. But as the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris demonstrated, history and culture are inextricably linked.
Australia’s nine collecting institutions – including the national gallery, museum, library and archives, which as the holders of the collective memory should be the nation’s pride and joy – have, despite some recent increases, been starved of funds for decades, dependent on the drip feed of donations and crowdfunding.
There is still no national museum celebrating the deep history and lives of the 3% who are the First Peoples; nor is there a dedicated national museum that captures the stories of the 20% who can trace their lives on this continent to the convict settlement; nor a national institution devoted to the 50% who were born abroad or are the sons and daughters of those immigrants.
Knowing at least some history is central to citizenship, as those swotting for the test that will permit them to become Australian passport holders know. It is, however, something that the Australian-born need never learn.
Tony Burke, the minister for arts, has been assigned a mini cabinet of men, and one woman, who are also responsible for safety, immigration, social cohesion, protection from threats, unwanted arrivals, emergency management, the $26bn generated by the visa and customs system and citizenship.
It might seem like arts is an odd fit with these traditionally defensive, highly politicised, ministries. But citizenship is the secret sauce.
Citizenship and the arts are umbilically bound. What it means to be a citizen is communicated through culture, not just tests. The ALP traditionally ties multiculturalism to citizenship; it could now bind citizenship to culture and history, its conjoined twin.
Citizenship touches everyone, not just those hoping for a new passport. As support for the Olympic athletes demonstrates, it is a positive affirmation of what it means to be Australian.
Professor Kim Rubenstein argues that citizenship has four elements: a legal status, a political activity, a way of defining the rights and responsibilities and an identity. In a rapidly evolving society, identity is the tricky bit – once you move beyond the Olympic podium, where many medallists were first-generation Australians.
For identity to evolve, it demands knowledge of what went before. As James Baldwin famously wrote: “to accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.”
To do that, our institutions need to be well-resourced, historians encouraged in their work and artists to reinterpret it.
In 2018, the Morrison government limited the number of items held by the National Archives that can be requested by individuals or groups at a time. This threw serious researchers, already frustrated by long delays, into “Kafkaesque archival limbo”.
Professor Jenny Hocking fought for years for access to the NAA’s collection of letters between the palace and the governor general. Then, in response to another request, she received an automated email saying she had exceeded the quota and her applications would not be processed.
Hocking’s Palace Letters case cost the self-proclaimed pro-disclosure NAA millions to defend. It also established a legal precedent of openness about that is playing out across the former British empire.
Last year Hocking said, “I currently have 33 outstanding access requests with the Archives dating back many years, six of which I applied for more than 12 years ago. I’ve written three books in that time, and I’m still waiting for a decision on access to documents that were intended for inclusion in them.”
The legality is questionable, but despite requests, the cap – which could be changed by regulation – has not been adjusted by the arts-loving minister for home affairs and citizenship.
Now is the moment to do so.
Researchers are the worker bees of active citizenship, and they need access to unpolished records. As Clinton might have said: “the key to the future is in the history, stupid.”