Page 4218 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 21 September 2010
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Heritage Act which shows that the ACT needs to improve our systems for protecting and promoting our heritage. The review is long overdue, because we have been hearing of considerable issues regarding heritage management in the ACT for some time now. It is surely an embarrassment to the government that we have a 10-year backlog in processing heritage applications.
As development is proceeding apace, it is vitally important that we improve these processes so that applications and protection procedures are put in place long before the development applications are upon us. We have had a few recent examples. I just referred to McGregor Hall, but Griffith oval is another one. The two have come fairly close together.
In relation to the particular recommendations, the Greens believe that we need to provide enough resources to deal with the 211 properties which are stuck in the backlog waiting to be heritage listed or, of course, possibly not listed. The National Trust’s Hill Station homestead has been waiting to be registered for 12 years and Tharwa for eight years. This is a very large, ridiculous backlog. The Greens support the recommendation to develop a nomination management process and guidelines.
We strongly support the key recommendation that the ACT needs to take a proactive approach to heritage rather than a reactive one. We need a long-term strategic program to identify the gaps in our heritage register and to encourage nominations so that heritage is recognised from the outset. We hope that the government will move to implement this recommendation. I think everyone here in the Assembly is aware of the community concern about their suburbs changing. A plan to engage with the community and decide with the community what parts of our heritage we as a community decide we want to protect is long overdue.
We are also concerned by the report’s finding that there is a lack of understanding about heritage both across government departments and in the wider community. We need to do more to make the ACT heritage process more transparent so the community and government departments understand the system that they have to work with. One area that we clearly need to improve is the heritage database. Duncan Marshall, the review’s author, has deemed it to be a very much inferior platform to inform, educate, promote and celebrate ACT heritage. The Greens would welcome the upgrade of this database and the introduction of a new heritage website so that the community can engage with the great heritage the ACT has in fact got to offer.
The review has identified compliance and enforcement as one of the key weaknesses of the Heritage Act. We support the recommendations to strengthen this enforcement by employing staff and conducting audits. I would also like to draw attention to the key point made in the review that registration is fundamentally a recognition of heritage value. As such, we support the recommendation by the minister that the minister not be granted a call-in power or veto to decide if a place has heritage value. That is a decision that should be made by the heritage experts, as it is at present.
While on the subject of heritage, I would also like to draw attention to the subject of the Yarralumla brickworks. The need for decisions to preserve the heritage of the ACT, such as the Yarralumla brickworks, should be made on the basis of the worth of
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