Cultural Diversity in Australia
Paper by John Thompson, Collection Research, Documentation and Promotion, for the National Conservations and Preservation Strategy Public Forum, October 1996.
Introduction
This paper has been written in response to an invitation from the Conservation Working Party of the Heritage Collections Committee of the Cultural Ministers Council. Its purpose is to consider the implications of cultural diversity in Australia in a program which seeks to implement the National Conservation and Preservation Policy for Movable Cultural Heritage issued by the Heritage Collections Committee of the Cultural Ministers Council in September 1995. That document included ten policy statements intended to provide the framework for a proposed National Conservation Strategy which might pave the way for a concerted effort to improve the conservation status of heritage collections in Australia. In relation to cultural diversity, the statement of policy (Policy Statement 2) was expressed as follows:
The Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local Governments acknowledge the diversity of cultures of the Australian people which should be reflected in the definition and identification of movable cultural heritage.
Expressed in this way, the policy statement does little more than state the obvious that Australia is a culturally diverse community and that efforts, unspecified, should be made to ensure that justice is done to this demographic and social reality in the programs which are developed by museums, libraries and archives to build collections and to provide a range of services and products based on these collections. Like motherhood, the statement is unchallengable. Who could disagree with it? What it does not do is to consider the challenges of cultural diversity faced by governments and the collecting institutions which derive their mandate and their funding support from the taxpayer. Clearly, this is another stage in the process but it is important to make the point that too often in recent years, there has been a tendency for governments and policy makers to assert the importance of policies of inclusion without considering the complex issues and costs of implementation if institutions are to achieve more than token recognition of the cultural diversity of the Australian community.
It has been too easy to place the onus of inactivity or failure on to institutions and their curatorial staff and to suggest that they are operating within a narrow cultural framework which derives from the dominant Anglo Celtic inheritance of Australian society. It has been too easy to suggest that if only institutions try harder, they will do better in addressing the imbalance which has led to what has been expressed as their failure 'to express the diverse totality of the Australian experience' [1]. In fact, many institutions have responded well to the exhortations of cultural policy planners that levels of performance must be raised but they have done so with little direct financial support or incentive from government, even where sophisticated bureaucratic structures have been constructed at both federal and state levels to give official and necessary recognition to the policies of multiculturalism.
This paper will give consideration to the diverse nature of Australia's heritage collections located inside institutions and at community and individual levels. As a broad discussion paper, it will refer anecdotally to specific examples using these to highlight problems and to point to possible trends and issues. The paper will look at some of the activities which have been carried out in a range of institutions as a specific response to the cultural diversity of Australia and it will attempt to draw general conclusions from these. At the same time, the paper will consider the continuing reality that many collections and materials remain in private or community hands and that a danger exists that much material of cultural interest and importance is in danger of loss as individuals and communities age and die. The paper will consider the difficulties involved in the preservation of living heritage and oral traditions and issues linked to the management and respect of and for cultural restrictions and sensitivities.
It is important to make the point that while the paper is based on a fairly wide range of readings drawn from the museum, library and archival sectors and consultation which the writer has conducted personally with a number of key curators in both Commonwealth and state collecting institutions, it is not presented as a definitive statement on the topic of cultural diversity. Indeed, when work was commenced on the writing of this paper, it quickly became apparent that there is no central point of reference for projects and programs either at Commonwealth level or in any of the states and territories. There is, as a consequence, no way by which a picture may be obtained quickly of the full range, quality and variety of activity either for its own sake or to assist in the development of on-going strategies and programs which might fill gaps or correct inequities and imbalances in the work currently in progress or which has been completed.
It is of interest in this context to note that the Commonwealth Department of Communications and the Arts has recently conducted a Cultural Diversity Survey of Collecting Institutions '...to assist the Cultural Ministers Council to gain an insight into implementation by cultural institutions of the 1991 Plan for Cultural Heritage Institutions to Reflect Australia's Cultural Diversity.' At this stage it remains unclear what the Cultural Ministers Council might do with the data yielded by this survey or even how useful it will be in the development of new policies, strategies and programs. The survey seems to be designed to gain some sense only of the extent to which Commonwealth and state institutions have implemented programs and policies to reflect Australia's cultural diversity rather than to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs or to gain any sense of the impediments or difficulties which have been experienced in their implementation and execution. This point will be developed later in this paper. But starting at the most basic level only, the possibility that the survey might provide the basis for some kind of publicly accessible register of projects and programs is one which should be considered.
Background
Although the wider social and political implications of the term multiculturalism continue to be debated, it is now broadly accepted across the political spectrum that Australia is a multicultural society. Put simply, this is taken to mean that contemporary Australian society is culturally and ethnically diverse. Governments at federal, state and local levels have moved beyond the mere acceptance of diversity through the endorsement of a National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia which was developed in the late 1980's at the instigation of the Australian Government '...to provide a framework of concrete initiatives to build on the foundations laid by successive governments....'[2]. The National Agenda was developed to look to a multicultural future in which all Australians, irrespective of background, could participate fully in national life, obtain a fair share of community resources and achieve their full potential without barriers of discrimination and prejudice. The twin themes of this formal policy of multiculturalism are those of social justice and economic efficiency.[3].
It is of interest that in the cultural sector, initiatives to recognise the cultural diversity of Australian society substantially predate the development of the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. The 1975 Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections (the Piggott Report) which led to the establishment of the National Museum of Australia, noted the importance of preserving Australia's European heritage and its fascinating local adaptions.[4]. The National Museum of Australia, despite the qualified support it has attracted from successive federal governments, has nevetheless played a key role both in building a rich migrant heritage collection and in the articulation of important questions of museological practice in this culturally sensitive area.[5]. In South Australia, in 1981, the Report on Museum Policy and Development in South Australia (the Edwards Report) made specific recommendations concerning consultation with ethnic communities to lead towards the establishment of what the report described as a South Australian Ethnic Museum.[6]. This recommendation led directly to the establishment of the Migration Museum (http://www.nma.gov.au/directory/s028.htm) in central Adelaide which, under the direction of Viv Szekeres, has become a national leader in the development of collaborative programs between the community and a mainstream institution to represent cultural diversity and to reach out to the wider community of Australians.
In Melbourne in 1988, the Victorian Branch of the Museums Association of Australia Inc, in association with the Library Council of Victoria, convened what is now regarded as a landmark conference New Responsibilities Documenting Multicultural Australia. This conference brought together representatives of museums, libraries, archives and historical collections to discuss the means by which cultural collecting institutions might, in their specific areas of responsibility, contribute to the implementation of a National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia. This conference provided an opportunity for an exchange of information on a range of existing programs and projects in both small and large institutions as well as projects being carried out by individuals working within specific communities such as the Greek-Australians project developed by Leonard Janiszewski and Effy Alexakis. The conference also looked at collection issues: problems of collecting and interpreting Australia's multicultural heritage; the responsibilities of conservators; and issues associated with developing acquisitions policies for ethnic cultural material in museums. It looked at issues of service delivery in a state library service and at the level of local historical societies and then at the role of national collecting institutions, through the experience of the National Museum of Australia and the National Library of Australia.[7].
The importance of this conference is that it brought a range of key institutions and individuals together not simply to exchange information though this was valuable in itself. Critically though, the conference raised major issues concerned with ethics, cross cultural sensitivities, the development and management of projects and the problems of implementation. It provided much useful and practical experience from a range of perspectives and established the basis of a network of interested individuals and practitioners. Finally, the conference debated and agreed the text of a series of major issues and associated recommendations together with the assignment of responsibility for their implementation.[8]. Since many of these issues remain current more than eight years later and since not all recommendations developed at that conference have been honored, I will return to them later in my discussion of key issues.
Following the release of the National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia in 1989, the then Minister for the Arts, Tourism and Territories established a Consultative Committee to prepare a Plan designed to co-ordinate efforts by cultural heritage institutions (museums, art museums and libraries) to reflect in their collections and practices the cultural diversity of the Australian people. When it appeared in 1991, the Plan proved to be a modest document, long on rhetoric but short on any practical support which might foster the development of actual programs.[9]. Nevertheless, it should be recognised that if it did nothing else, the Plan had important symbolic value as an indication that the Australian Government and senior policy makers had a clear view of the need to encourage new practice if cultural heritage institutions were to represent and reflect Australia's cultural diversity. Viv Szekeres has commended the Plan 'as providing some guidance, a useful framework, a check list...which can be referred to when planning programs and exhibitions'. It was and remains '...a policy mandate to be inclusive and thoughtful in our representation of culture and diversity'.[10].
Looked at critically, the language of the Plan was broadly that of encouragement with lots of prescriptions for what might be done but with very little practical awareness of the difficulties involved in achieving even a small part of the suggested program. The Plan offered no incentives or encouragement for compliance and provided no means by which performance might be tested and evaluated. As an instrument of change, it was ineffectual and it is not surprising that it raised barely a murmur at the time of its publication. From the perspective of my own institution, the National Library of Australia, the Plan passed quickly into obscurity and has apparently served no practical purpose in the subsequent development of corporate and strategic plans or of the major rewriting of the Collection Development Policy for Australian Materials which took place in 1993-1994. Almost certainly, the Plan met a similar fate in many other institutions. While this might be reflection of attitudinal indifference in some collecting institutions, I suspect that the relative failure of the Plan was due to its lack of performance measures and to the failure of government to consider resource allocation which might be linked to minimum performance guarantees by recipient institutions.
A problem with cultural planning statements of this kind is that, although they are motivated by goodwill, they tend to be constructed at a significant remove from operational reality. It is all very well to say that collecting institutions should do more or do better to redress perceived cultural imbalance in their programs but if no effort is made to understand the context in which this must be achieved, then documents such as A Plan for Cultural Institutions to Reflect Australia's Cultural Diversity lack practical application. Drawing on my own curatorial experience and on the comments of a number of expert individuals consulted during the preparation of this paper, it is clear that efforts to achieve the more effective representation of cultural diversity are hard work, costly, labor-intensive and generally require special skills and expertise which is not always readily available. Work with the community at any level, let alone minority immigrant communities, requires a careful, consistent and sensitive investment of time and personal effort. Kate Walsh, a curator at the Migration Museum in Adelaide, has noted the requirement in a multicultural Australia for folklorists and social historians to respond to the needs of community groups and to include their stories and their experience of immigration and settlement in the mainstream studies about what it is to be Australian.. She refers, by implication, to the specialised investment of resources and energy which is necessary in order to achieve this:
This requires us to work closely with such groups and to be involved with them in the decision-making and the process of documentation, collection and presentation. It requires us to be aware of diversities within diversities, and to be attuned to the inter-connectedness...of ethnicity, class and gender that exists within our culturally diverse society.[11].
The same point, but with a sharper focus, has been made by Tom Griffiths, speaking of the experience of the State Library of Victoria in its work with the Italian community in the early 1980's. While noting the success and the rewards of this collaboration, Griffiths drew attention to a number of problems and challenges as one large and important state cultural institution worked to meet 'new responsibilities'. The bureaucratic nature of institutions themselves, Griffiths describes as one impediment to success, but 'more immediate and specific' is the problem of how to embrace a new responsibility such as multicultural heritage- an active, entrepreneurial responsibility- at a time when state institutions are under pressure in terms of both staff and money. He notes the feelings of personal humiliation when staff of his institution had to plead poverty to a generous outside group who were themselves financially pressed. The success of the State Library of Victoria in working with the Italian community led to demands from other groups, posing in the end an inevitable dilemma and tension:
...we...have a diminishing ability to cope with their reasonable demands, or to meet expectations we ourselves have raised. The more we succeed, the more we are embarrassed. Even though the cultural and social pressures are going our way, the financial constraints are working against us. The Library is having trouble keeping its part of the bargain. We haven't enough staff to manage the existing collections let alone any new ones....Our conclusion can be briefly stated: If such partnerships are the way ahead- and our experience triumphantly proclaims they are- then the State needs to commit more money and more staff to this 'new responsibility'.[12].
In the 1990's, what has changed? On one reading, a great deal. There is ample evidence that a wide range of institutions from the largest to the smallest have acknowledged Australia's cultural diversity and that many have made substantial efforts to ensure that their collections, programs and services reflect this diversity. There are a number of success stories, some of them mentioned here: the programs of South Australia's Migration Museum continue to provide an outstanding model for the country as a whole; the State Library of New South Wales achieved heartening results with its Italians in New South Wales Project and the associated exhibition La Dolce Vita? Italian-Australians of NSW; the State Library of Victoria, in addition to its pioneering work in the 1980's with the Italian community, has presented a series of exhibitions which derive in part from its Building a Country archive of photographs and which celebrate the contribution of various ethnic communities to Victoria's growth and development; the National Museum of Australia has published (1992) Migrant Heritage. A Guide to the Collections by Glen Cook and Jerzy Zubryzycki; the National Library of Australia has published (1995) Our Multicultural Heritage 1788-1945 An annotated Guide to the Collections edited by Dr Barry York and has carried out a number of oral history projects concerned to document the experiences in Australia of a number of ethnic community groups; and the Office of Multicultural Affairs published (1991) Australia's Hidden Heritage (text by Judith Winternitz and photographs by John Houldsworth), a superb 'photo-documentation of multicultural heritage artefacts' from private and community collections in various parts of Australia. There are of course many other projects and, in some areas the crossing of 'new frontiers', one of the most interesting being currently the Italian Australian Records Project, led by Ilma Martinuzzi O'Brien of Victoria University of Technology, the purpose of which is to locate, microfilm and digitise records of Italian-Australian interest held in public and private collections in Italy and Australia.
On another reading, according to experts such as Viv Szekeres, there remain grounds for concern. While applauding the efforts of the Australian Government to promote the concept of a multicultural society, Szekeres has suggested, speaking of museums, that the majority of these institutions are still choosing to ignore the issue of the cultural diversity of Australian society:
From what I have seen few museums have changed practices, and fewer have produced exhibitions or programs which attempt to reflect Australia's cultural diversity. I sense that there is a general feeling that multiculturalism is a trend, which like many trends will fade and disappear. But I also get the feeling that the concept of multiculturalism may not be entirely understood, and that the complexities of cultural diversity are thought to be just too hard to address.[13].
One of the difficulties here is comprehending the range of responses which have been made by different institutions and different sectors to the representation of cultural diversity. It is clear that some have done better than others, perhaps reflecting different priorities but perhaps also reflecting different circumstances such as, in the case of large institutions, competing demands with too few resources to go around. By and large, libraries appear to have done very well not only in the provision of dedicated services to a multicultural constituency (the provision of reading materials in community languages) but in the construction of creative partnerships with communities to document cultural diversity and to present exhibitions and issue publications which explore some of the manifestations of diversity. Specialised museums such as South Australia's Migration Museum which have a defined responsibility and a governing and managment structure which is designed to be consultative and participative have achieved great success working with a range of different communities. And in certain instances, such as the Jewish and Chinese communities, dynamic collection development and exhibition programs have been developed in museums which have their origins in the communities themselves and which have provided significant financial resources to carry out this work.
It is no longer sufficient to suggest that collecting and exhibiting institutions have failed to respond to cultural diversity. Rather, it is necessary to consider the various barriers and impediments which have been factors in slowing responses and to consider the ways by which such problems might be overcome.
Issues and Barriers (including discussion of issues and identification of possible solutions)
1. Funding
A perennial barrier but fundamental at a number of levels. It appears sometimes to be an assumption that institutions have a freedom and flexibility to redirect existing funds and resources in order to meet new responsibilities and changed expectations. Generally this is not the case. Project or incentive funding which is specifically targeted and linked to agreed performance requirements and outcomes offers considerable potential to improve compliance with stated government objectives. The 1989 recommendations of the New Responsibilities conference under the heading Funding and Resources remain relevant here.[14].
2. Attitude
A difficult one to deal with because it requires a fundamental reorientation of the thinking of individuals at different levels in institutions. Where success has been achieved, it has been linked to the values and attitudes of key staff. Viv Szekeres has commented on the need to challenge the tyranny of '...individual curators with particular interests, obsessions and hobbies'. But she links this with the continuing problem that many boards of management and governing councils 'represent a particular social group with a limited world view'.[15]. Christopher Bowen, Director of Brisbane's Ethnic Music and Arts Centre, has referred to the barriers created by what he has described as 'institutionalised cultural inertia' Although some national and state collecting institutions have secured the appointment of indigenous/ethnic members to councils and governing boards, the practice has by no means become established or consistent. Bowen has noted the problem that Australia's large cultural institutions, with their minimal representation of non-English-speaking background or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on their boards and at senior management level, effectively give voice only to the traditional Anglo-Celtic majority.[16]. I believe this constitutes a significant barrier to the changing of attitude to issues of cultural diversity in major institutions. Szekeres has also pointed to the importance of consultation with the people whose cultural experience institutions seek to represent. The alienation of communities from major national and state institutions through the failure to consult remains a barrier to success. There are now enough success stories in place to demonstrate the value of consultation and collaboration. (See also 7 below, Cross-Cultural Awareness).
3. Research and Data Collection
As noted above, it is difficult to achieve a comprehensive picture of activity in the area of cultural diversity. The New Responsibilities conference highlighted the need for the identification of areas in which collections should be augmented. While there have been some outstanding individual projects in a number of institutions and in different states, there is no sense that there is any consistency of approach or any effort by institutions to work collaboratively in order to fill gaps or to represent a range of community experience. Survey data can serve a valuable purpose in identifying areas of neglect and in providing a more certain framework for the planning of collection development. We know that major institutional projects have been carried out in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia with the Italian community but it is apparent that there have been differences of approach and emphasis and that the work has been directed to different but overlapping outcomes The State Library of New South Wales reports that it has placed placed a greater stress on the collection of the personal papers of Italian community members but that business records are still under-represented in its collection.[17]. If personal records have been collected in some depth, what work has been done by oral historians? If substantial attention has been given to the Australia's Italians, what about other communities? Are there differences of approach working with older established communities as compared with more recent arrivals?
Referring to the recently distributed Cultural Diversity Survey (Department of Communications and the Arts), Margy Burn of the State Library of New South Wales has commented on its inadequacy to yield any precise understanding of critial issues affecting performance in the efforts by different types of institutions to reflect cultural diversity. While the survey will yield information about whether or not responding institutions have been active players, Margy Burn is doubtful that it will provide any understanding of specific issues and difficulties. She suggests that the survey seems skewed in the direction of social history programs in museums and that it fails to comprehend the different requirements and characteristics of library and archival projects. It is possible too, that the survey overlooks the special problems associated with the representation of cultural diversity in art museums. Burn points to the need for some detailed case studies of a range of distinct projects and institutional applications to yield better information to assist in the planning for better coverage and better results.
4. The Quick Fix
Margy Burn has warned that institutions seeking to develop programs to reflect cultural diversity must be prepared to give and make a sustained effort. She comments that if early results are not delivered, some institutions get discouraged and that projects can be left to fall away. She notes that work with communities is enormously time-consuming and can require years of work and a sustained effort to build trust and rapport. It is in this context that she, like Tom Griffiths of Victoria, emphasises the importance of dedicated funding, perhaps to support the appointment under contract of a field officer with community language skills and some understanding of community protocols.
Mark Cranfield of the National Library's Oral History program makes similar points to Margy Burn, noting that oral history projects carried out in partnership with community groups require a substantial investment of time, skill and effort. At the same time, he emphasises the importance for projects of this kind to be carried out according to agreed archival and technical standards if an oral tradition is to be preserved for future use. Mark Cranfield notes that some national groups approaching the National Library as a partner in community oral history projects have been dismayed to find an emphasis placed by the instituion on recording to meet a defined standard. While he appreciates the appeal and convenience of small cassette tape recorders, Cranfield stresses that in the longer term materials collected using inferior equipment and poor quality tape stock will not survive and that the value of such an investment will therefore be lost to posterity. Without adequate documentation, professional equipment and archival tape stock, Cranfield warns that the accumulation of many hours of cassette tape is of little use in the longer term.
5. High Culture vs Community Culture
Although many institutions have worked hard in recent years to break down the barriers between high culture and community or popular culture, there remains a difficulty in persuading communities that personal records can serve a valuable documentary purpose. In conversation with me, Viv Szekeres stressed the problem her institution has faced in its efforts to document the lives of working people who simply may not recognise that their own experience of immigration or settlement in Australia can contribute a valuable dimension to the understanding of cultural diversity. Over time, this problem is being overcome with older communities but Szekeres in a museum context and Burn in a library and archival context, each point to the difficulties in working with recently arrived communities and the danger that some communities may be underdocumented.
6. Institutions vs Communities
Partnership collaboration between institutions and communities has been stressed again and again as the key to success in the documentation of cultural diversity in Australia. But while a number of older communities have been persuaded over time to work in collaboration with established state and other public institutions, it is clear that other groups may wish to retain community control of records and other materials.
Funding and other support programs need to be in place to ensure that community resources are adequately maintained. In this context, it is important to highlight the value of the Community Heritage Grants program administered by the National Preservation Office in the National Library of Australia and with additional financial support provided by the Department of Communications and the Arts. For a modest financial investment in the funding of a grant program, the Australian Government has given practical support to a number of ethnic community groups in their efforts to carry out preservation projects on records and material culture collections in community ownership. In the period since 1994, support has been given to the Jewish Museum of Australia (http://www.nma.gov.au/directory/v166.htm) , the Estonian Archives in Australia and to the Museum of Chinese Australian History for projects directly concerned with the cataloguing and preservation of archival heritage materials. Such support is critical to the viability of community collections of movable cultural heritage and constitutes important recognition of cultural diversity in Australia.
7. Cross Cultural Awareness
A recurring theme in the literature of multiculturalism and cultural diversity in Australia is the need for a greater level of sensitivity by institutions, their management and their staff to cross cultural issues both in relation to Australia's indigenous community and to those whose family background has its origin in immigration to this country. Unless such awareness exists, it is easy to ignore, trivialise or simply not understand cultural diversity. Dr Amareswar Galla (1993) has made this point strongly in in his consultancy report on a project to develop guidelines for cross-cultural training in the museum sector.[18]. While some institutions have responded to this and other prompts, it is clear that in a range of cultural heritage institutions, more needs to be done to ensure that staff are equipped to understand both the issues and the communities they deal with. Galla's report deals with both heritage curricula programs and in-house training. His several recommendations remain current and need to be more systematically applied if the fundamental barrier of cultural insensitivity is to be broken down.
8. Preservation
Preservation of the collections which are the material evidence of Australia's cultural diversity will remain a major problem unless each of the specific issues dealt with in this paper are addressed. Many of the issues touched on in this paper are of course integral to the management of movable cultural heritage across the spectrum but have a special application in the area of cultural diversity.
Problems of funding have been referred to already, but must be emphasised again, recognising that many materials which are of importance will be held in community ownership. Oral history programs, important as the means by which living heritage and oral traditions including the performance of music may be captured, require special funding together with the application of defined archival and technical standards. Adherence to these standards should be made a condition of the granting of funds to individuals and projects.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The subject of cultural diversity is both subtle and complex. In this paper, and consistent with the specific interest of the Heritage Collections Committee, cultural diversity has been considered in the context of Australia's ethnic diversity but excluding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues which are the subject of a separate discussion paper. The point should also be made that cultural diversity has a range of meanings and applications beyond the particular test of ethnicity and that these are also of importance. It is clear however that they fall outside the scope of this paper.
Although a great deal has been written in about the failure of Australian collecting institutions to reflect seriously and consistently in their programs the cultural diversity of Australian society, I believe that greater recognition is due to a wide and in some cases impressive grappling with this issue. The point is made that while some institutions have paid lip service to the topic, a number of others have developed substantial programs which serve as national models of what can be achieved. At the same time, it is clear that even where there has been a major investment of energy and resources, the most committed institutions and personnel report on the pressures which flow from limited resources for work which represents a major new direction
I believe that in consolidating the efforts and achievements of recent years, there would be value in developing a conspectus of projects and programs to gain a clearer sense of strengths and weaknesses. This needs to be done in advance of a consideration of possible funding programs since eventually, funding should be tied to projects and to agreed levels of performance.
In the reading carried out in the preparation of this paper, I was reminded that there have been, since the late 1980's, a number of formal recommendations for action in various areas relating to the implementation of programs to reflect Australia's cultural diversity. It is my impression that in a number of areas there have been some significant gains but that there remain some conspicuous weaknesses.
Recommendation 1
I would recommend that some research effort should be devoted to a review and consolidation of the various recommendations of recent years (New Responsibilities, A Plan for Cultural Heritage Institutions..., Galla etc.) to determine precisely what has been achieved and where further effort must be made.
Recommendation 2
In order to gain some understanding of the impediments to success, it would be useful if the Cultural Ministers Council would consider undertaking some case study analysis of projects/programs to develop a better understanding of the issues which contribute to success/failure.
Recommendation 3
Planning and directions for activity require the development/negotiation of realistic time frames and the development of performance measures.
Recommendation 4
Funding remains a critical issue. There needs to be careful consideration given to the funding implications of programs to support cultural diversity in Australia. Money needs to be properly targeted to ensure the delivery of defined programs/projects. Support programs which have already proved their worth (such as Community Heritage Grants program) should be retained and, presumably, funded to enable the provision of more effective/comprehensive support.
Recommendation 5
Support needs to be provided to develop/extend programs for cross-cultural awareness in collecting institutions and in the bureacracy where policy is determined. It is also important that the education and training programs for those intending to work in collecting and cultural heritage institutions should include cross-cultural training with specific reference to its application in the work of museums, libraries, archives and art museums.
Recommendation 6
Consideration should be given to the composition of boards and governing councils in order to better reflect Australia's cultural and ethnic diversity (this issue is important also in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples). Although this is sometimes treated as a contentious topic on the grounds that it is not in the best interests of governance to select persons on the basis of their representation of a particular constituency, it is suggested that the question needs to be examined and carefully evaluated. Under present arrangements, it becomes too easy to justify exclusions from boards and governing councils. Governments can encourage much stronger and more committed compliance with their own programs through the restructuring of boards/governing councils to reflect cultural diversity.

Notes
Note: In addition to the reading of a number of published items or the texts of papers presented at conferences, the author consulted a number of individuals who have been active in the development and administration of programs to represent Australia's cultural diversity. Their prompt, enthusiastic and helpful response is warmly acknowledged. Those consulted were the following: Jim Andrighetti (State Library of New South Wales), Margy Burn (State Library of New South Wales), Mark Cranfield (National Library of Australia), Ilma Martinuzzi O'Brien (Victoria University of Technology) Dianne Reilly (State Library of Victoria) and Viv Szekeres (Migration Museum, Adelaide S.A.). 1. Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories, A Plan for Cultural Heritage Institutions to Reflect Australia's Cultural Diversity, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1991 p.3. 2. Office of Multicultural Affairs, The Challenge of Diversity. Policy Options for a Multicultural Australia edited by James Jupp, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989 p.iii. 3. Ibid. 4. Museums in Australia 1975, Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections including the Report of the Planning Committee on the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1975 p.15. 5. See Zubryzcki, Jerzy, Ethnic Heritage. An Essay in Museology, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, 1992 and Cook, Glen and Jerzy Zubryzycki, Migrant Heritage. A guide to the collections, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, 1992. 6. Robert Edwards, Museum Policy and Development in South Australia. Final Report, 1981.p.xxviii. 7. New Responsibilities. Documenting Multicultural Australia. A record of the conference for Museums, Libraries, Archives and Historical Collections. Edited by Margaret Birtley and Patricia McQueen, Melbourne, Museums Association of Australia Inc. (Victorian Branch) and The Library Council of Victoria, 1989. 8. Ibid. pp. 140-148. 9. A Plan for Cultural Heritage Institutions to reflect Australia's Cultural Diversity. 10. Viv Szekeres, 'Resisting Change: Museums and the Politics of Cultural Diversity'. Paper presented to the CAMA Conference, Melbourne 1992, p.8 11. Kate Walsh, 'The Challenge of Diversity'. Paper presented to the 5th National Folklife conference, Traditions, Transitions, Visions: Folklife in Multicultural Australia. Melbourne, 6-8 November, 1992. 12. Griffiths, Tom 'Investing in the State: Victoria's Italians', New Responsibilities, p.66. 13. Szekeres, op. cit. p.1 14. New Responsibilities, p.142-143. 15. Szekeres, op. cit. p.6. 16. Quoted in Thompson, John 'Creative Nation: Cultural Diversity' in National Library of Australia News, Vol.VI No. 3 December 1995 p. 20 17. Andrighetti, Jim 'Patrimony on Parade. The Collection, Preservation and Exhibition of the Italo-Australian Documentary Heritage at the State Library of New South Wales' in Italian Historical Society Journal, Vol. 4 No. 1, Jan.-June 1996 p.8. 18. Galla, Amareswar, Heritage Training as Access: Guidelines for the Development of Heritage Curricula and Cultural Diversity, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service for the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 1993