Corporate Plans are submitted annually by departments and agencies in accordance with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (PGPA) Act 2013. We at Defending Country have been waiting for this new Corporate Plan 2024-2028 (2024-2025 update) to land on the War Memorial's website. And now it's there, 18 pages, beautifully illustrated, with lots of corporate-speak language, as is usually the way with such publications, but a couple of puzzles as well.
This Corporate Plan and the other two documents discussed below are pdfs hanging off the War Memorial's Corporate Documents website page. While the Memorial usually spells out dates in full in these documents e.g. 2024-2028, we'll settle for shorthand e.g. 24-28.
It's only words ...
We were keen to see if an inconsistency in language that we had detected previously between the Memorial's Corporate Plan 23-27 and its Strategic Plan 23-28 persisted. It does.
Here is Corporate Plan 24-28 under the heading 'Purpose' (page 4): 'To commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war or on operational service and those who have served our nation in times of conflict'. That's just as it was in Corporate Plan 23-27 under the same heading 'Purpose' (page 5): 'To commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war or on operational service and those who have served our nation in times of conflict'.
But here are the words under 'Our Purpose' in Strategic Plan 23-28 (page 6): 'To commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war or on operational service and those who have served our nation'. (Strategic Plans are not a requirement of the PGPA Act.)
Note the difference: 'in times of conflict' in the two editions of the Corporate Plan; 'in times of conflict' missing from the Strategic Plan. Under the same 'Purpose' heading. Inconsistency.
That continuing inconsistency is either carelessness or something else. A document we obtained under FOI (Ref. No. 2023-24-10) contains this sentence at page 4, in between massive redactions: 'The Corporate Plan 2024-2025 will be amended to reflect the strategic pillars and priorities contained in the Strategic Plan'. The sentence appeared in a paper put to the Memorial's Council on 17 March 2023 for it to endorse Strategic Plan 23-28 (which it did).
We'll come back to that projected amendment in Part 2 of this brief series. Meanwhile, neither that sentence nor the few unredacted bits of the FOI document reveal anything about the inconsistency that interests us, the one between the 'Purpose' clauses. Perhaps the answer lurks under the redactions.
The published Strategic Plan 23-28 is dated 28 April 2023. Looking just at its 'Our Purpose' clause - the one where there is no mention of 'times of conflict' - we can legitimately ask whether this clause as worded means the Memorial has a plan to extend its area of interest to people 'who have served our nation', but not in times of conflict. This might cover ambulance officers, doctors and nurses, firefighters, police, schoolteachers, or even school-crossing supervisors.
Uncertainty remains, however, because that extended coverage is not the import of 'Purpose' in Corporate Plan 24-28 (dated 2024, perhaps August). On the other hand, if the Strategic Plan is the authoritative document, perhaps we can look forward to recognition and commemoration at the Memorial of the worthy service of amboes, firies and lollipop people.
If there's a reason for the continuing inconsistency, perhaps someone at the Memorial could tell us what it is. We'll print whatever is provided, within the terms of our Moderation Policy.
In Part 2 of this series, we'll look at what Corporate Plan 24-28 and Strategic Plan 23-28 say about First Nations people and the Australian (Frontier) Wars.
There's more
Looking at the rest of Corporate Plan 24-28, the Memorial's current Development Project is mentioned frequently (pages 5, 7 and 15), there is a useful breakdown of the Memorial's finances (87 per cent from government, 13 per cent from 'other sources') on page 8, and a list of the Memorial's Plans, Programs and Strategies - 13 of them (not including the Corporate or Strategic Plans) - on page 14.
And on page 7 there's this: 'Ongoing operational funding will be sought to support expanded gallery space from the end of phase one (2025), and as the Memorial building refurbishment, exhibitions and Memorial grounds are finalised toward the end of phase two (2028)'. This need for more funds was always in the small print of the Memorial's scads of poorly indexed paperwork on the Big Build, so it's no surprise to see it still there. Vanity projects are as open-ended, funding wise, as any other project.
Finally, for connoisseurs of syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences), look on page 3, 'Statement of Preparation', of Corporate Plan 24-28 for three shoddily-constructed sentences. We hope the Memorial's builders build better than its writers write.
Picture credit: Canberra, ACT. c. 1941. The completed Australian War Memorial, looking towards its northern facade from a slope on Mount Ainslie (AWM).
Part 2 of this series: Don't mention the war.
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