Page 1206 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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process, provide protection of Aboriginal artefacts and moveable items which have heritage significance. As I have pointed out, this unfortunately will not be the case. Although I believe the Government's intentions in this regard to be genuine, its ill-conceived legislation will not have this effect.
In Heritage Week I believe it is important that we give high priority to the protection of the oldest heritage in Australia - Aboriginal heritage. I urge the Government to take my comments into account before proceeding further with its heritage legislation. I believe there is an opportunity for the ACT to take the lead in Australia in protection of Aboriginal sites and artefacts. As Dr Graham Ward, whom I spoke to, said, it has not been done elsewhere in Australia and we could be the leaders in this way of doing it. We could show the rest of Australia how to have a separate heritage Bill for Aboriginal heritage and artefacts and not just lump them in with another Bill.
As for Mr Duby's Calthorpes' House, let Mr Duby get it straight. Mr Duby finds it very hard to get anything straight - we all know that - but Calthorpes' House, I might tell you, was never on the agenda to be pulled down or sold. The point was that we wanted it to be open to the general public every day of the week and not to be there just for special people.
Mr Jensen: It would not have lasted very long, Ellnor. That shows how much you know about conservation.
MRS GRASSBY: Friends of mine who rang up and wanted to take their family through Calthorpes' House found that they would not be able to do it. Have you finished, Mr Jensen, or do I have to keep yelling over the top of you? They found that they would not be able to do it unless they made an appointment and the appointment was three to four weeks away. So I said, "Either it gets opened up or it does not belong to the public. Something has to be done about it". Let us get that straight, Mr Duby.
As for the Residents Rally talking about the Telopea Park house, the decision was made by another government. They were quite prepared to cause people terrible distress and have them thrown out on the street and not know where they were going. We felt very sympathetic to this family and we felt very sorry that the decision had been made. Rather than put these people through any more trauma than they had already been put through - members of the Residents Rally were quite happy to lie down in front of a bulldozer but they did not give a dash about these poor old people - we decided, as the decision had been made by another government and had caused such distress, to stop the distress. The Residents Rally did not give a damn about the distress of those poor people. They did not really give a damn about anybody, as they really only care about themselves. They are the NIMBYs of Canberra - "not in my backyard, no!".
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