Service records of World War II soldiers, recordings of John Curtin's war-time speeches and tapes of the Stolen Generation royal commission are among thousands of unique pieces of Australian history the National Archives says could be lost if it doesn't receive a significant funding boost.
The National Archives is racing to digitise more than 11 million photographic items and 400,000 audio-visual items on magnetic tape and film that could be lost in the next five to 10 years due to deterioration or aging playback equipment.
While the National Archives has long warned that its collection was at risk, it's the first time it has detailed specific items that could disappear, including recordings from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, ASIO surveillance footage and original films of early Australian Antarctic research expeditions.
"We're really in a race against time to digitise all of the material that we hold on audio-visual tape so future generations can access it," National Archives of Australia director, David Fricker, said.
"It's internationally accepted that by the year 2025, the machinery that runs this stuff will have essentially failed, and the people who can maintain this stuff will have essentially disappeared from the workforce."
A Federal Government-commissioned independent review of the National Archives by David Tune, released last month, found on current staffing levels and processing rates, only 6 per cent of the audio-visual magnetic tape collection would be digitised by 2025.
The Tune Review found it would cost more than $400 million to preserve the archive's delicate collection, but recommended the Federal Government spend $67.7 million on a seven-year program to urgently digitise material most at-risk.
The government is yet to respond to the review.
The National Archives has been digitising its 384 shelf kilometres of records for nearly 20 years, but only 4 per cent of the collection has been digitised.
Nicola Laurent, president of the Australian Society of Archivists, said the National Archives had been chronically underfunded for years.
"It's unthinkable to consider that our family won't be able to access records of national importance because the government hasn't funded the National Archives well enough," she said.
"These are government records, the government should be funding their preservation and the government should be ensuring that they're accessible in years to come."
Archives 'overwhelmed' by requests to access records
As the National Archives attempts to digitise its aging material, it's also struggling to store the vast volume of content pouring in from government departments and the increasing number of Australians wanting to access it.
As of the end of march, there were 22,230 applications on the wait list to view records from researchers and people exploring their family history.
"We are overwhelmed by the demand that the Australian public has, quite rightly, to access the records that constitute the memory of this nation," Mr Fricker said.
"It is their right under the legislation to freely access those records."
The Tune Review found digitising the top five most-requested categories of paper records – consisting of 360,000 items including World War II service records – would go a long way to ensuring requests were met within the recommended 90-day timeframe.
Ms Laurent said ensuring access to the National Archive's records helped to hold governments to account.
"[For example], the records that are being created at the moment around the pandemic – in the future we're going to want to be able to access those records to review what happened and to look at the decisions that were made," she said.
"If the archives are not funded to keep those records and to make them accessible, they won't be there for us to be able to do that in the future."
Mr Fricker said it was essential that the "memory of the nation" was preserved for future Australians.
"It's a national collection but it's a collection about individual Australians. We hold material which is deeply personal, it connects us all with our own personal identity or the identity of our community and who we are as a nation."
