On the 30th Sept 2022 President Joe Biden signed "Executive Order on Promoting the Arts, the Humanities, and Museum and Library Services".

Section 1 states the policy for the US Administration. Key excepts include:

• The arts, the humanities, and museum and library services are essential to the well-being, health, vitality, and democracy of our Nation.
• They inspire us; provide livelihoods; sustain, anchor, and bring cohesion within diverse communities across our Nation; stimulate creativity and innovation; help us understand and communicate our values as a people; compel us to wrestle with our history and enable us to imagine our future; invigorate and strengthen our democracy; and point the way toward progress.
• We will strengthen [our] creative and cultural economy, including by enhancing and expanding opportunities for artists, humanities scholars, students, educators, and cultural heritage practitioners, as well as the museums, libraries, archives, historic sites, colleges and universities, and other institutions that support their work.
• The arts, the humanities, and museum and library services will be integrated into strategies, policies, and programs that advance the economic development, well-being, and resilience of all communities, especially those that have historically been underserved.  The arts, the humanities, and museum and library services will be promoted and expanded to strengthen public, physical, and mental health; wellness; and healing, including within "military and veteran communities". 

This is an incredible endorsement of the value of museums and libraries within liberal democracies. It also emphasises the broad value significance of these institutions for military and veteran communities.

The Australian Labor Party (ALP), in 2016, was ahead of the game in its support of arts and culture for veterans putting forward a policy to the Australian electorate of establishing a veterans arts and cultural institution within a heritage property in Melbourne. That's right, 310 St Kilda Rd. This policy was endorsed numerous times in opposition.

In recent weeks the ALP has done an 'About Face' on this policy choosing instead to prioritise meeting rooms over cultural engagement.

We ask that you raise your voice and demand of the ALP that it honours its promise to the veteran community by getting behind the proposal supported by so many in the Australian community.