Selective rememberings? Access to ‘private’ documents at the National Archives of Australia

In Australia, academics and journalists have repeatedly invoked the 'public interest' and 'the right to know' in pursuit of administrative transparency. 2That perceived right is equally important, though not always effectively embodied, in national archives and other political and administrative record keeping institutions.These institutions, such as the National Archives of Australia (NAA), known as the Australian Archives (AA) between 1975 and 1998, 'hold … the memory of our nation' to 'shape our future and help safeguard our democracy' and support 'integrity and accountability in public administration'. 3 For researchers, the value of these institutions derives from their collection of both government documents and personal papers from a range of influential individuals.This means that their acquisition policies, depositing processes and access restrictions can profoundly affect the Australian nation's capacity to know.While this volume is focused on 'public humanities' and how our cultural institutions need to operate to face current and emerging challenges, this article is concerned with the risk of privatised humanities, with vital records of former Australian ministers, prime ministers and governors-general not being accessible by the public.The issue was thrust onto the mainstream political agenda by the so-called 'Palace Letters' case, which considered whether letters between former governor-general Sir John Kerr and the Queen were 'private' or 'official', and therefore whether they could be viewed by historian Jenny Hocking and indeed the public at large.Were these documents, so vital to our understanding of Australian political history, destined to be public, or were they to be kept private, potentially in perpetuity?As this case demonstrated, researchers' access to these documents can be severely limited, or even denied, due to restrictions 1 The authors thank the editors of this issue, the two anonymous peer reviewers and Katrin Travouillon, for reading and commenting on this work.