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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 1942 ..

Council may be appealed to the AAT. This streamlined process will provide greater certainty for the community, property owners and developers about which places are on the register, rather than the current uncertainty caused by large backlogs and bottlenecks at a number of stages in the process.

The process for individual heritage registrations should be an application of heritage policy as opposed to the creation of policy. That is the principle applied by other jurisdictions and it will be applied here. At present, ours is the only jurisdiction that requires scrutiny of every individual registration by its parliament. The exposure draft suggested that the Assembly be the review mechanism for registrations, thus removing the right to take a decision to the AAT.

The consultation process, particularly industry and legal stakeholders, found this to be a poor process and a denial of natural justice. Accordingly, it has been changed in this final bill, with the review powers of the AAT restored and the removal of the requirement to send every registration to the Assembly.

The bill provides for more robust decision making by equalising appropriate business and community expertise. While the majority of the Heritage Council will remain weighted towards heritage experts, it will be strengthened by including representatives from the property sector and other relevant community groups.

In addition, the bill shifts the responsibility for maintaining the heritage register from ACTPLA to the Heritage Council secretariat. This reform will overcome the complex and confusing situation we are currently faced with, which requires the Heritage Council secretariat to maintain records of nominations, interim registrations and full versions of final registrations while also requiring ACTPLA to maintain data on fully registered places. The secretariat will provide ACTPLA with up-to-date information and electronic access to the register so that it continues to be readily available and can be linked to the territory plan. An added benefit of this reform is that it will allow for more effective use of the register by the public and for heritage promotion, education and tourism programs.

While this bill does remove the Assembly as the house of review, the Heritage Council will specifically notify Assembly members of the proposed registrations during the consultation process. While no longer required to review every registration, the Assembly will instead focus on reviewing heritage policy for the protection and management of registered places.

Assembly members will also be able to trigger urgent assessments of heritage places and objects likely to be affected by imminent development. The Assembly will also maintain its role in overseeing appointments to the Heritage Council and in reviewing the council’s annual report, as well as expenditure on heritage policies and programs. This refocusing of the role of the Assembly will not only provide a more streamlined and effective system, but also bring the ACT into line with contemporary practice elsewhere.

Under this system, there will be no longer a necessity to produce specific requirements to accompany a registration. Rather, in the ACT the significance of the place is to be considered separately from future use and management of the place. This distinction is well recognised throughout Australia as being crucial to the proper consideration of the heritage values of a place or object. At a later time, should there be a requirement for

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