Page 207 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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CONSERVATION, HERITAGE AND ENVIRONMENT -
STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Tuggeranong Homestead and its Site
Debate resumed from 15 December 1992, on motion by Mr Moore:
That the report be noted.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.08): The debate, although a bit heated over the last few minutes, in fact does deal with a very good report of this Assembly. The point is not whether it is a good report; it is what the Government is going to do with it. That was the basis of that debate. I have to say that most reports that come to the Assembly from committees are very good reports; they have a lot of thought behind them and they propose some things to the Government that could be done and that have value.
But we now come to another report, and I have to say that I do not understand what the purpose of this inquiry was because there is no outcome from it. One has to conclude, I think, that Mr Moore dashed down to Tuggeranong to establish his name in an area where it had not previously been heard of. He discovered that he was in the middle of a thicket of black snakes - or maybe they were brown - and then he tried to find the quickest way out of the problem that he could. This report does not raise any new issues; it does not suggest any solutions; it does not even clarify any of the thinking. This report simply says to the Government, "At the end of the day, you have to do something about it".
Let us take a couple of the issues. The report itself, Mr Moore's report, says at the top of page 3, "The Issues". The first issue is the value of the site itself - its heritage value. He says that the homestead site is identified by the Australian Heritage Commission as an historic site and it is on the register of the National Estate, but neither Mr Moore nor anybody else has yet found out what the site consists of. For heaven's sake, if Mr Moore is going to go down there and do a serious inquiry about this homestead, at least he might have defined the area of land that he is talking about, but he has not. It is still just as wide open now as it was before his committee blundered into it.
Mr Moore: That is right.
MR KAINE: Your own conclusions, Mr Moore, say that you recommend that the Government should assess the heritage significance of the homestead building in its present state and determine what period of history it should represent, but you have not defined the area. You say that the Heritage Commission itself is still looking at that. Nobody has yet defined the site that we are talking about.
Mr Moore: It is on page 15, is it not?
MR KAINE: We will come to page 15 in a minute. So what was Mr Moore's purpose if he was not at least going to define the site and the facilities down there that this committee considered to be of some heritage value? When you read on, he is not even sure whether the buildings have any heritage value.
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