It was a sum of money so vast, and the figure repeated so many times, that it became almost abstract: $498 million to be spent on expansions to one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations.
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The money will be used to demolish and rebuild Anzac Hall, expand exhibition spaces and create a new entryway, among various other innovations.
Director Brendan Nelson said the expansion project was designed to honour modern veterans and represent “the Invictus generation”, rather than just dwelling on past wars.
And he was “completely unapologetic” about the vast disparity in government funding currently being received by Canberra’s other national cultural institutions.
Standing in the forecourt of Parliament House - a building that, incidentally, cost $1 billion to build - Dr Nelson maintained that the memorial faced “exactly the same challenges of managing and maintaining and supporting our activities as every other cultural organisation”.
“There is one national institution in this country that reveals more than anything else our character as a people, our soul, and the price paid for the freedoms that we enjoy,” he said.
“I am an advocate for the Australian War Memorial, and as far as the decisions that are made by governments in relation to the other institutions, that is a matter for those governments.”
Memorial chairman and billionaire businessman Kerry Stokes - a major donor to many of country’s cultural institutions - also defended the size of the funding, saying Australia’s collecting institutions are better off than elsewhere in the world.
“They're looked after better in this country than any other country,” he said.
“There's always a demand for more funds than there are available. Goodness, wouldn't it be nice if we could satisfy expectation and every desire? We can't, priorities have to be made. The priority at the moment is for the war memorial.
It's not to the exclusion of other things - [other institutions] should put their cases. The amount of money that the federal government supports for arts and institutions is incredible. Most countries would be proud to have this.”
Thursday’s funding announcement comes just six months after another Australian war memorial, the $100 million Sir John Monash Centre, was opened in Villers-Bretonneux in France.
Meanwhile, back in Canberra, a recent parliamentary inquiry was told that Australia's national institutions, many housed in the national capital, couldn’t sustain further funding cuts and continue to serve the purpose for which they were created.
This applies to both the services they provide - building national collections, maintaining material history and housing our memories, all, arguably, the same functions as the Australian War Memorial - and the buildings in which they carry out their legislative functions.
The National Gallery of Australia - home of the national art collection - recently received $21.5 million in government funding to undertake much-needed repairs on its leaking roof, and upgrades on its climate control, fire safety and security infrastructure.
Next door, the National Portrait Gallery will soon close for six months while major repairs - as yet uncosted - are carried out on the $87 million, 10-year-old building.
In the last federal budget, the National Archives of Australia - which does not have a purpose-built building - took a funding cut of $1.8 million from its budget over the next five years, while the National Library of Australia lost 12 staff positions, and has been steadily cutting public programs and services as its budgets tighten.
But archives director David Fricker, who has been vocal in the past about the effect the efficiency dividend has had on the archives’ core functions, said Thursday's announcement should be a cause for celebration.
“Honestly, this big commitment from government highlights how important national memory is, as Australia looks to its future both domestically and internationally,” he said.
Canberra Labor MP Andrew Leigh was also unwilling to dwell on the lopsided funding arrangements for Canberra’s tourist attractions, reiterating that the war memorial expansion project had the support of both sides of government.
“I think we should be welcoming the investment to Canberra. It's our number one tourist attraction and so more money for the war memorial clearly will fuel tourism to Canberra, and hopefully that will have a spillover benefit for the many other wonderful Canberra attractions,” he said.
