Page 120 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 May 1989
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in inner city areas. They are susceptible to the temptation of redevelopment for such kinds of construction.
The decision to issue the demolition permit was taken by the Government sitting opposite me. According to the media release that it issued at the time, it was taken for two reasons: the first was that the ACT Heritage Committee - a body set up to advise originally the Federal Government and now the ACT Government on heritage classifications and questions - recommended, by a vote of four votes to two, that the building not be granted any special protection.
The second reason alluded to in the press release was that the owners had complied with the law, as it stands, which entitled them to put their land to use as permitted by the law. I want to put on record, Mr Speaker, that the Opposition does not dispute that decision, although it may have relied more heavily perhaps on the former reason, which is the Heritage Committee recommendations, than the latter reason, which is the rights of the owners to use the property as they saw fit.
The Opposition does not want to attack the Government on that decision but wishes to register its profound concern on two scores. The first is that the law in the Territory should have been allowed to remain in this unsatisfactory state for so long. It is a reflection on the attitude of successive Federal governments which saw Canberra primarily as a national capital and only secondarily, if at all, as a community in its own right. The second is that the laws to protect assets of value to the local community as opposed to national assets or national treasures should have been overlooked.
Canberra is a young city; it is much younger than any of the State capitals, for example. It does not have buildings of the same age as some other cities in Australia. That of course is not the point. The point is that Canberra has buildings and other structures which are unique to our city and special to the history of our development. It shows us, in the words of one commentator, what we were once like.
I think it is worth quoting, Mr Speaker, from the comments of Mr Ken Taylor, the president of the ACT section of the National Trust of Australia, in speaking about the proposal to redevelop 37 Telopea Park West. The point he made in the course of those comments, as quoted in the "Canberra Times" of 16 May, was that there is value in preserving individual buildings, individual structures, and also in preserving precincts and larger scale heritage assets as a way of seeing buildings and structures in their context. I quote from the comments he made, according to the "Canberra Times":
This style of planning -
he is referring to the early federal capital style -
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