I recently got the chance to have a look around the new Museum of Australian Democracy, which is at Old Parliament House in Canberra. The Museum uses a lot of new technology and designs in an attempt to make the experience more engaging for people, including children.
The Museum complements the building it’s housed in, with many parts of the Old House now being displayed in ways which reflect some of the usage and character of the times. In my view, there is a bit too much emphasis on the Executive in our democracy rather than the Parliament, including the Senate, but I am probably a bit biased on that matter.
Much like democracy itself, the Museum is still a work in progress, with new exhibitions currently being constructed, but it’s certainly worth a visit if you happen to be in Canberra.
There is lots of commentary at the moment about British democracy being in crisis, with serious talk being given to removing the Speaker of the House of Commons and expelling members of the House of Lords – actions which last happened over 300 years ago.
The coinciding of the political crisis in Britain with the opening of the Museum of Democracy in Australia provoked some interesting reflections on the UK’s Open Democracy website, drawing on a speech made at the opening by Senator John Faulkner
The new Museum is housed in Old Parliament House in Canberra, which had always been intended as a temporary home for Australia’s Federal Parliament. More importantly, the period in which it hosted parliamentarians, 1927-1988, was almost precisely that in which the country gradually secured full independence from its imperial masters. If anything is being consigned to history by the new museum, therefore, it is the specifically British legacy of democracy in Australia. What a delightful opportunity to demonstrate, even if only implicitly, that the country has departed from the antiquarian Anglo-Saxon democratic arrangements with which it was bequeathed.
Here, Faulkner is on far safer ground, once his crucial, but coded, recognition of the shameful treatment of the aboriginal people has been granted. Australian democracy isn’t perfect, because democracy never is. But Australians do have something to shout about, and Faulkner can take confidence in claiming precisely that: ‘Australians’ commitment to democracy is deep, longstanding, and even radical’, he said. ‘We have been world leaders in democratic innovations…Australia’s temperament is instinctively democratic, egalitarian – and pragmatic’. Can we seriously imagine any British politicians making claims like these, not just at the moment, but at any time in the past 15 years?
