Photograph: Seven Network
Thirty-five years ago, when Jack Karlson was hauled into a police car outside a Chinese restaurant in Queensland, he couldn’t have known his bombastic speech would be watched by millions around the world, become a meme and, now, be preserved in Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive.
Karlson’s declaration – “Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest! … What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?” – is one of nine pieces of audio that have been added to the NFSA’s Sounds of Australia collection this year, along with a pedestrian crossing signal and Missy Higgins’ 2004 hit Scar.
Established almost two decades ago by the NFSA, the Sounds of Australia is a collection of sound recordings that reflect the historical, cultural and aesthetic significance of the country.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailThe recordings, which are nominated by the public and must be more than a decade old, are voted into the collection by a panel of NFSA sound experts each year.
Karlson, a small-time criminal who was known to work under various aliases, achieved global internet stardom when a 1991 7NEWS report of his arrest went viral on YouTube. The one-minute exchange included Karlson shouting “Get your hand off my penis!” before complimenting one officer on his headlock technique.
Marcia Hines’ 1977 dance track You is the oldest addition to the 2026 list. The newest is domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty’s 2015 Australian of the Year award acceptance speech, which was dedicated to her 11-year-old son, Luke, who was murdered by his father.
Batty’s speech, alongside Karlson’s, is one of the few non-music audio additions to make the collection.
The ABC Kimberley 2007 radio broadcast of the federal court’s native title determination at Noonkanbah Station has also been preserved, as has the PB/5 pedestrian crossing signal, which was sampled in Billie Eilish’s 2019 dance-pop track Bad Guy.
Joe Dolce’s multimillion-selling comedy song Shaddap You Face from 1981 also made the cut, as well as the 1990 Tabaran music video by Not Drowning, Waving and the Musicians of Rabaul featuring Telek. The 2001 Reading Writing hotline jingle and the Missy Higgins track complete the list.
Scar hit the No 1 spot in the Aria singles chart when first released and was recently voted No 4 in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of Australian Songs in 2025.
“Our job is to collect content that resonates with all Australians and everyone has such different reference points,” the NFSA chief curator, Meagan Loader, told Guardian Australia.
“We ask the public to nominate sounds every year and we always get such a wild diversity,” she said. “There are so many different perspectives and identities that are wrapped up in being an Australian, and we do try and reflect that diversity of experience in our collection.”
More than 300,000 audio items are now housed in the National Film and Sound Archive, with one-third of the collection classified as at-risk and preserved through digitisation.
