Link: “‘Inconceivable’: why has Australia’s history been left to rot?”
Some of my least favourite things about Australia are its solid anti-intellectual streak and its refusal to reckon with its own history – this story somehow encapsulates both. The Federal Government is refusing to chip in $67.7 million to digitise just the most highly prioritised records facing imminent disintegration (not even all of them!), even though they’ll spend many times that on dumb and cruel shit like imprisoning refugee families and bullying welfare recipients into early graves. For the Liberals, especially, “history” just means “making up myths to bolster modern-day militarism”, and never means legitimate historical inquiry.
Jessica Smith is a left-wing feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also very interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.