Submission to the Senate’s inquiry into opportunities for strengthening Australia’s relations with the Republic of France. Opportunities to build on shared historical and cultural values and promote tourism, with specific reference to Commonwealth War Graves, cultural exchanges and people-to-people ties

Australian taxpayers have contributed a vast amount of tax dollars to commemorating Australia’s shared military history with France. While culturally and historically important for some Australians, these projects are failing to effectively build people-to-people ties between our two nations. As a public diplomacy activity, Australia is not getting ‘bang for its buck’ because the type of Australian military history that is currently being presented to the French at Australian battlefield sites in France fails to capture the interest of this French audience.

This submission sets out the limits of DVA’s current approach to commemorating military history as a vehicle for promoting cultural exchange, people-to-people ties and tourism amongst French people. Instead it advocates for the development of a new narrative of French-Australian history, developed by applying best practice historical techniques, including a process of shared history (Histoire partagée). It suggests that further taxpayer funds would be better directed to promoting other aspects of Australian cultural and historical life in order to deliver on the objective of fostering deeper interpersonal links.