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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3549 ..

(iii) Native title claimants and aspirants;

(iv) Representative Aboriginal Organisations;

(v) Signatories to the Namadgi Agreement; and

(vi) Interested individuals;

(d) resolves not to proceed with discussion of the Bill until the Minister has conducted the abovementioned consultation and has reported back to the Legislative Assembly; and

(2) when the Minister has reported back to the Assembly, the question before the Assembly on the Bill shall be ‘that this Bill be agreed to in principle’.”.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Arts and Heritage, and Acting Minister for Health) (5.09): I do not think there has been any bill in this Assembly that has been more thoroughly discussed than this one. As I recall, Mrs Dunne said that this began at the beginning of the term of the previous government; so this has been discussed for six to seven years. In that time the discussion has been endless. There has been enormous negotiation and cooperation.

I understand this is going to be adjourned to the next day of sitting. If that is the case, I will come back with a full chapter and verse on that consultation. On the basis that this is being adjourned to the next day of sitting, I will come back with the refutation of what has been said. I am really disappointed. I have been pushing it, but I thought we were heading into a harmonious and good outcome on this. In the last day it seems to have blown up. I am not sure whether some people out there are trying to stir it up a bit or not, and invent some problem. But if you allow me that week or so to come back at the next day of sitting, I will settle for that.

MS TUCKER (5.10): This Heritage Bill has been in development for at least five years. It has been variously criticised as an interference in the integrated planning approach of the land act, which will slow down and make development uncertain; as abandonment of any real commitment to heritage, especially indigenous heritage; and as a clumsy system which puts too much influence in the hands of self-appointed experts. It has also been promoted as a contemporary heritage regime, consistent with others across Australia, which will at long last allow for the backlog of thousands of known places and objects to be brought into the heritage register.

I will be supporting this bill, as I have come to the view that it will be more practical and effective, some philosophical concerns notwithstanding. A key shift, as I see it, is to take the heritage listing process out of the land act, which seems to encompass a glacial ministerial approval, and territory plan variation process and give it a regime of its own, with close links into ACTPLA’s development approval process but with a nomination and registration process in the hands of the heritage council.

I acknowledge that there is a little less certainty in this new arrangement than in the current one in which any heritage registration is, by definition, a part of the territory plan and fixed in law. The new regime, however, provides for more specific offences with regard to dealing with heritage places and objects, with penalties ranging from a failure to report the discovery of a place or object to damaging or diminishing the heritage significance.

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