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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 1941 ..

of heritage legislation in many other jurisdictions. The input of Mr James has helped ensure that the legislation today is equal to the best national practice.

The reason we are pursuing reform in this area is that the present process of registering a place or object is both extremely complex and resource intensive. It can literally take years to finalise the heritage legislation. I lay the blame firmly where it belongs—with a former minister in this house. That was me in an earlier incarnation. A most complex bill was introduced at that time. It is nice that the wheel has turned.

Mr Corbell: I’ll bet the crossbenchers had something to do with it.

MR WOOD: There was a lot of meddling, I will admit. The present system requires registration to be processed by both the Heritage Council secretariat and ACTPLA and involves three stages of registration—nomination, interim and full registration. This process also includes two rounds of drafting and two rounds of formal public consultation and review, as well as the right of appeal through the AAT. It then goes through a stage of further consultation and review by the executive and by an Assembly committee prior to final tabling here.

As a result of this cumbersome and drawn out process, only 71 places have been fully registered in the ACT in the past 13 years. A cursory examination of the present backlog will reveal that there are approximately 25 historic and 250 Aboriginal interim heritage place register entries awaiting process by ACTPLA, as well as 300 historic nominations and 2,500 known Aboriginal places awaiting assessment and decision by the Heritage Council. This represents an accumulated and unacceptable backlog going back many years. The system is in desperate need of reform.

The consultation on the exposure draft endorsed this view, with widespread agreement that the ACT currently has an outdated heritage system, with uncertainty and extreme delays created by duplicative and inefficient processes. There was a strong view that it had to be fixed and that the best solution was to give the Heritage Council the decisive role in heritage registrations, with a single, as opposed to multiple, review of the council’s registration decisions.

There were questions asked during the consultation process about whether heritage registration was a technical or a scientific decision, more akin to declaring an endangered species or a significant tree rather than a policy issue. Accordingly, was it necessary to have every individual registration referred by ACTPLA to the Assembly for further review, particularly as it added greatly to the length of time needed to get heritage places fully registered? There was also a strong view that, if faster processes could be achieved, the registration of Aboriginal places and objects should be incorporated in the general registration process, while continuing to respect the right of Aboriginal people to determine and safeguard information about their heritage, rather than having separate processes with unachievable statutory time limits on registering sites.

The new system proposed in this bill is far simpler, is far more transparent and is a contemporary process. The process would allow the appropriate expert body, the Heritage Council, to make the final decision after wide consultation. This would include members of the Assembly and referral to the minister for heritage. Despite this simpler process, a formal protection is built in, as all registration decisions by the Heritage

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