Page 58 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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must be a more measured approach to those recommendations of the Conservation, Heritage and Environment Committee which would result in the carving up of the totality of the present site. Indeed, I asked the question: Is it sufficient just to preserve buildings without any relationship to the surrounding area? I spoke of the integrity of a historic site and expressed the view that the functions that are represented by the buildings are only part of the overall picture that heritage preservation seeks to convey.
In my judgment, the Planning Committee's report on the draft variation for the Tuggeranong Homestead site does take the whole of the site into consideration with regard to its future, and I can live with the result. Indeed, in February 1993 and again in August 1993 I reminded the Assembly of the groups which made representations to the Conservation, Heritage and Environment Committee and whose representatives wrote to the Chief Minister, Ms Follett, about the need to recognise the whole of the site as having significance. Those groups were the Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead, the Tuggeranong Community Council, the Tuggeranong Community Arts Association, the Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra, the Heritage Council and the National Trust. I overlooked mentioning the National Trust's view with respect to the site during the debate in August 1993, and I received a letter from them some weeks later reminding me of their position. I apologise to the National Trust for not acknowledging their view with respect to the site on that occasion.
I would now like to address the detail of the committee's recommendations outlined in the report. I will not address all of them because I believe that both Mr Lamont and Mr Kaine have articulated the thrust of the recommendations in the Assembly very well. Before I do that, though, I would like to comment on the process of the Planning Committee's inquiry, which is outlined on page 5 of the committee's report. The Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning formally referred the draft variation to our committee on 19 October 1993. We met soon afterwards, on 22 October 1993, and decided to call for public comment by the placement of advertisements in the local press. The advertisements appeared in the Canberra Times on Saturday, 23 October, the Chronicle on Tuesday, 26 October, and the Valley View on Wednesday, 27 October. The committee also resolved to hold public hearings on the draft variation. We held two public hearings, the first on Friday, 26 November, and the second on Friday, 3 December 1993.
The first set of public hearings took place in the students common room of Lake Tuggeranong College and marks only the second time that a committee of the ACT Legislative Assembly has formally met outside the ACT Legislative Assembly building in Civic. I, along with other committee members, express my appreciation to the students and staff of the college for facilitating the hearings that day. At the public hearings in Tuggeranong, we took evidence from a representative of the current lessee of the Tuggeranong Homestead site and representatives of Permaculture ACT, the Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead, and the Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra. We also heard from a member of the public and from officers from the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning.
In addition, as Mr Lamont has outlined, we met with eight schoolchildren from a Year 4-5 class at Theodore Primary School, known as the Mini-Minders. The children handed over a model of the homestead site they had made, together with numerous letters calling for the preservation of the site. At the second public hearing, we continued to hear representatives of MOTH, along with
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