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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 590 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The committee said that the Yarramundi site was not as central as Acton and would not be able to attract as many visitors; yet in other parts of their report they acknowledge that the museum will be a drawcard in its own right regardless of where it is. In addition, when you compare the distance between Acton and Yarramundi with the overall size of Canberra and the distances to other major tourist attractions, Yarramundi is really not that far out of the way. The committee also appeared to use the ability of the museum to attract corporate sponsorship as a main criterion for determining the site; yet, in other parts of the report, it acknowledged that corporate sponsorship would not provide a major source of revenue for the museum. Besides, is not the museum supposed to be a place for the Australian people and not just a glorified advertising hoarding?

There are also questions about the geophysical suitability of the Acton site - for example, its exposure to potential flooding. The Yarramundi site does have the limitation that there are significant areas of native grassland on the site, but I understand that the site is big enough to allow buildings to be sited away from ecologically sensitive areas. The ability of the site to accommodate the future expansion of the museum and also to reflect the unique character and openness of the Australian landscape and its Aboriginal heritage was a major criterion in earlier museum siting studies. Yarramundi was shown to be ideal from this perspective. The Acton site, on the other hand, is quite constrained and reflects very much a European heritage. It seems to me, however, that the Federal Government is only offering a choice of either a second-class museum site at Acton or nothing at all. Surely this Assembly should stand up to this blackmail.

Another issue of great concern to me is the impact of the demolition on the hospice. The last thing the residents of the hospice need in their last days is to have a construction site next-door to them, with all the attendant noise and dust. The Government seems to be rushing ahead with this demolition without any plans in place for addressing those special needs. There is also the question of the long-term future of the hospice. The ACT Government has agreed to give away the hospice site to the Commonwealth, despite the $3m spent in setting up the hospice, but the hospice will be allowed to continue operating until June 1999. What happens after that? It is very unlikely that the Commonwealth Government would want to keep a hospice on national land at Acton Peninsula. So, will a future ACT government have to pick up the cost of building another hospice somewhere else in Canberra?

Even if the museum were definitely going ahead on Acton, there should still be an assessment of whether any of the existing buildings could be removed and reused as part of the museum and the AIATIS complex. There seems to be a prevailing view in Canberra that once a building is 50 years old, or even 30 years old, it is no longer useful. There is a propensity to solve problems with old buildings by just demolishing them and starting again. However, this approach flies in the face of widespread experience in other cities around the world that old buildings can be successfully recycled into new uses. From an environmental perspective, old buildings contain considerable embodied energy and materials that should not be wasted without very good reason. In fact, given experience with demolition jobs in Canberra, the remains of the Royal Canberra Hospital will probably end up in an unofficial ACT dump out past Hall or in the unofficial ACT dump next to Palmerston, with very little of the building materials actually recycled.

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