Australia's response to ratifying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage has been cautious. Its original refusal to ratify the Convention appeared to soften with a change of national government in 2007, but in 2012 there is still no sign that Australia will become a party to the Convention.

There has been a closed Federal government enquiry into ratification but no information relating to it has been publicly released (Cassidy 2010). The Federal focus is on issues relating to Australia's Indigenous populations and not the many immigrant community cultures whose heritage could also be covered under the Convention. Several organisations which made submissions to the preliminary enquiry have posted them on the internet, and these do discuss the Convention's importance to immigrant communities as well as Indigenous Australia. Views differ on whether Australia should ratify the Convention. This chapter summarises the processes undertaken so far and the limited publicly available views of parties who have expressed interest in it. It also outlines the range of connected policies and programmes operating within Australia.

AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL CONTEXT

Australia has a Federal system of government, in which the Federal Constitution defines the powers of the national government (also called the Australian, Commonwealth or Federal government). State governments hold the residual powers. Section 51 (xxix) of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (Attorney-General's Department 2003) gives the national parliament power to make laws with respect to external affairs, and under this power the Australian government ratifies international conventions.