Page 3288 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 September 2014
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management of Aboriginal sites. I would also like to mention my hopes that these processes are sufficient not only to offer protection up-front but also to offer clear and sure penalties and consequences for when those protections fail, and that the local community will have avenues for recourse in instances where sites or artefacts are damaged.
My only other comment in this area is that I think that in future it would also be appropriate that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body be consulted on relevant legislation such as this bill.
I have spoken already of the call-in power, but one of the most significant changes that this legislation had proposed was a call-in power for the minister to decide whether something has heritage value or not. This is not something that the Greens believe that the minister should decide. There is an independent body, the Heritage Council, which determines the heritage values of nominations. If there is a political or economic imperative to override this value, this should be a separate decision, rather than our creating a way to undermine the assessment process.
The Burra charter sets out very clearly that the only consideration when assessing the heritage recognition or listing of a place or object should be the heritage value. This should be done solely by the experts. By giving a listing power to a minister, it is immediately at odds with accepted best practice and the Burra charter.
Decisions about what happens to the heritage place or object after it is listed are a separate question. It may be that the decision is made to destroy the heritage value of the place or object. If that is the case, the decision should be made with all the information available and acknowledging that we are deciding to destroy the heritage value. There is no integrity in the very underhanded way of not recognising that a site or place had the heritage value in the first place.
It was certainly a key point made in the Marshall review that registration is fundamentally recognition of heritage value. As such, we support his recommendation that the minister not be granted a call-in power or veto to decide if a place has heritage value. That decision is best left in the hands of the experts. This, together with the removal of repeal rights for third parties, which I will come to, would have been a bad combination.
I would like to turn to overlaps with the Nature Conservation Act. This bill improves intersections with other overlapping legislation such as the Nature Conservation Act and the Tree Protection Act.
In the case of the Nature Conservation Act, this means that areas that are already declared protected under the Nature Conservation Act, and are only protected for their natural heritage significance of flora and fauna, will not be able to be placed on the heritage register—although if an area also has cultural heritage, the site may be protected under both nature conservation and heritage legislation.
The Greens would like to see better alignment, where practical, of ACT, National Capital Authority and commonwealth heritage protection laws to overcome the present complexity of jurisdictional responsibilities in the ACT.
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