Page 56 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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acknowledge the contribution made by the Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead, and Lyn Forceville in particular, who have a very personal and emotional interest in this project. I am sure that they will be some of the people who will be disappointed with the results; but I hope that they will accept the rationale that the committee used in arriving at its conclusions.
There are many competing interests in a proposal such as this. One of the major problems confronting the committee was that, although the Tuggeranong Homestead has long historical and heritage associations, there is not a great deal of it that remains. We are talking about 31 hectares of land. We are talking about buildings very few of which date back to the early days of this property. For example, there are shearing sheds that have historical connotations, but they do not go back to the early days of this property. In fact, in historical terms, they are relatively recent buildings. Nevertheless, we have attempted to retain them because, even if they do not represent the history of this property back to the 1800s, they do represent a particular stage in the evolution of rural life in this country 50, 60, 80 and 100 years ago.
We were not insensitive to the issues that this proposal presented. I believe that the members of the committee conscientiously and honestly addressed these issues and we have come up with what we believe to be a reasonable outcome - a proposal that will preserve this property for the community, that will allow the preservation of the historical and heritage aspects of the property, and that will allow sensitive development to go along with it. That sensitive development we saw as being a means of financing the preservation of those historical and heritage aspects of the property. We could see no way in which the community, the Government, could finance the maintenance of this property in its present state. The cost was more than the community could be expected to adopt, more than the Government could accommodate in any reasonable sense in any budget in the foreseeable future.
Under those circumstances, what does one do? I accept that some sensitive development down there is the solution to the problem; but the residential development we have proposed is residential development that will be compatible with the preservation of that site. This will be a new experiment - I think, an interesting and exciting experiment - in maintaining a community asset and allowing people to live in a living, breathing community farm. They will not be normal residential units. If our view is put into effect, they will not be residential houses that you would find in any other suburb in the ACT. They will be a new kind of residential unit that will blend in with the historical and heritage aspects of this property. The people who live there will move in knowing that this is a special property. They will have an unusual and different relationship to their environment from that of people moving into a normal suburb.
I hope that the Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead, and the junior minders, who made presentations to the committee, will understand and appreciate that we have not written off their views. We have taken them very seriously. We were concerned with ways of reconciling the various interests and yet maintaining this property. Assuming that the Government picks this up and implements it - I am sure that they will; I do not think the members of the Government are insensitive to these issues - we have the opportunity to engage in a unique experiment in suburban living. People will be able to look over their
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