David Fricker

David Fricker is Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, a position he has held since 2012. His strategic focus has been on the whole-of-government transition to ‘digital continuity’ in data management; expansion of preservation capability for paper, audiovisual, and digital records; acceleration of the declassification of sensitive archival documents; and the exploitation of emerging technology to enhance the public’s access to archival resources. Mr Fricker was appointed President of the International Council on Archives in 2014. In 2015 he was appointed by the Director-General UNESCO to the position of Vice-President of the UNESCO Memory of the World International Advisory Committee.

'The National Archives responds to Jenny Hocking’s article on the "Palace letters"' by David Fricker

May 2020, no. 421 • 27 April 2020

I read with interest Professor Jenny Hocking’s article ‘At Her Majesty’s Pleasure: Sir John Kerr and the royal dismissal secrets’ regarding the release of the ‘Palace letters’, the correspondence between Governor-General Sir John Kerr and Queen Elizabeth, covering the period of the dismissal of the Whitlam government (ABR, April 2020). There is no doubt that central to the ‘Palace l ... (read more)