Page 5556 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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is important for this opportunity to be given to people other than the lessee. I can assure members that, in my experience and to my knowledge - and I am speaking specifically in relation to Aboriginal sites - in Victoria in the past there have been occasions when Aboriginal sites have been identified and very quickly bulldozed and destroyed by the farmer in question. As soon as it has been identified, down she goes, and that is it - thousands of years of history is lost in the blink of an eyelid.
In these sorts of circumstances, we are talking about heritage, and particularly places - it could be a geological place; it could be a natural place. If we look at the criteria that we will pass very shortly when we get to the schedules, we see that one of the criteria for the assessment of places for their heritage significance is:
a place which is a significant habitat or locality for the life cycle of native species; for rare, endangered or uncommon species; for species at the limits of their natural range; or for district occurrences of species;
What we are really talking about here, I would suggest, is an opportunity for an organisation such as COG, the Canberra Ornithologist Group, to indicate that it has located the habitat for a particular rare bird. That may be located on someone else's property; but it is, I would suggest, very important to the heritage. I would dare suggest that we have a responsibility to ensure that, if at all possible, we retain the habitat for that particular bird - because of the very fact of its being endangered - and there should be an opportunity for a responsible organisation such as that to at least seek to ensure that the future of an endangered species like that is retained.
There are a number of other endangered species around the ACT which I think we have to remember - the legless lizard, the moth, synemon plana.
Mr Berry: The Residents Rally.
MR JENSEN: No, Mr Berry, no way. We will be out there fighting and, I can assure you, we will be back here next year. There are a number of these sorts of species and it is very important for them to be maintained. Not just the lessee, but also others with an appropriate knowledge, interest and responsibility, should have at least the opportunity, which they do not have at the moment, to seek to have an item registered on the heritage register.
We would not suggest that every site, without question, should be preserved. It is a bit like heritage in our cities. We are not saying that every house built in 1926 in the ACT should be maintained because it is a heritage building. In relation to the built environment, we are
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