Page 653 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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Cemeteries report that, by the time you get to 20 years—actually, even five years, but certainly 20 or 25 years—after a burial, most burial sites do not have any visitors anymore. The family has, literally in many cases, moved on.
The other issue with perpetual tenure is that potentially the cemeteries become bigger than they would otherwise be. This calls to mind the issue when the government, a while ago, tried to extend the size of the Woden cemetery. In some ways it was a great thing to do, except for the fact that it is in the middle of Woden, which is a rapidly growing area that needs its green and recreational space.
Minister Steel reported in his speech that the government undertook consultation on renewable tenure, and 60 per cent of Canberrans were opposed to it. Understandably, the government is not proceeding with it at this time. Instead the government will be allowing a publicly operated crematorium to start soon, which it expects will meet the needs of the community, who increasingly are preferring cremation. As Ms Lawder said, the figure is about 70 per cent. As she also said at some length, the publicly owned crematorium will provide much-needed income to the ACT cemeteries authority, as cremations are more profitable than burials. They have the ongoing perpetual liability for site maintenance.
While I probably do not share all of Ms Lawder’s concerns, I share her general concern that opening a crematorium opposite the existing one is probably not the best way to solve the long-term problem. This bill has not addressed the long-term problems. It has a short-term fix. It is not taking things backwards. Creating one trust for the cemeteries authority is certainly a step forward because the situation before was incredibly messy and hard to understand. In terms of how to manage cemeteries, providing cross-subsidisation from a crematorium is not the long-run option when you have a perpetual liability for management and maintenance.
Another option suggested by the ACT cemeteries authority was to allow them to have more flexible investment rules. They have a perpetual liability—forever, or very long term—and there is a very restricted list of things that they can invest in. In today’s very low interest environment, this makes their task very hard. It was quite a different task when you could easily get six, seven or eight per cent interest rates; you can now only get a bit over one per cent. Their task is a lot harder.
The other thing that should be considered is bringing the management of cemeteries into the ACT government as a business unit. If you think about something that has a perpetual liability, it sounds like it should be managed by a government unit, doesn’t it? Who else will feel that they can take that on? In fact, with a lot of the financial management, certainly when I was on the cemeteries board, it was actually done by the ACT government. It also made a lot of sense to do that.
The other objectives of the new bill are human and community based, to wit: recognising the rights of people to dignified and respectful treatment of their human remains and the remains of their loved ones; and respecting diverse burial, cremation and interment practices; and respecting the cultural practices and religious beliefs of people.
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