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PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION

INQUIRY INTO THE CONSERVATION OF AUSTRALIA'S HISTORIC BUILT HERITAGE PLACES

DR N.  BYRON, Presiding Commissioner, 
MR T. HINTON, Commissioner

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT HOBART ON FRIDAY, 12 AUGUST 2005, AT 9 AM

Continued from 8/8/05 in Melbourne
DR BYRON:   Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you all very much for coming.  Welcome to the public hearings of the Productivity Commission's national inquiry into the conservation of Australia's historic heritage places.  My name is Neil Byron.  I have been appointed the Presiding Commissioner for this inquiry and my colleague and fellow Commissioner is Tony Hinton.  I'd like to start by formally thanking the Hobart City Council for making this beautiful and very appropriate venue available for this hearing.  It's a very suitable place to be discussing today's topic.  This inquiry began with a reference from the Australian Government to the Productivity Commission to investigate the policy framework and the incentives for conservation of Australia's built historic heritage places.  We've had very valuable meetings and visits in all parts of Australia with all sorts of interested parties - state government and local government, businesses, individual owners of historic properties, citizens groups, et cetera.  We have conducted public hearings in Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne and by video-link with Darwin and next week we will be in Canberra and Sydney.  

	We're aiming to produce a draft report for public comment abut the end of November or early December and then we'll have a second round of public hearings to get feedback after people have had the opportunity to digest our draft report and our draft recommendations.  We always try and make these public hearings as informal as we can.  Those giving evidence are no longer required to take an oath, for example, but the Productivity Commission Act does require that people should "be truthful" in making their evidence to the Commission's hearings.  The transcripts will be available on our web site and a hard copy on request from the Commission as soon as possible after they've been checked for accuracy of transcription.  We have now received, I think, over 140 submissions to this inquiry.  A week ago it was probably less than half that.  So the information continues to pour in.

	To comply with the Australian Government's occupational health and safety requirements I have to tell you that in the very unlikely event of any incident the fire escape is straight down the steps outside the door here, and for housekeeping I should say that the public conveniences are on the ground floor underneath the stairs.  But I think that's enough housekeeping.  Without any ado I'd like to welcome first up today the representatives from the Tasmanian Government.  Thank you very much for coming.  Thankhings involved in the place.  Home Hill in Devonport is a good example.  It's a standing museum to the Lyons family, and it's still got the possessions.  So as you move through the house, you get a real sense and feel for how they operated.

	An increased focus on strategy and priority as well as an increased mandate for accountability in terms of producing outcomes has also been apparent in recent times.  Development pressures, the economic environment, the emerging trend of establishing thresholds for assessment and management of historic heritage across the three tiers of government all influence the conservation of historic heritage.  The final point on emerging trends is adaptive reuse.  We think that's important.  It provides many environmental benefits that lessen the impact on the environment and limits the need to draw on new resources and building materials.  It can help to reduce the cost of new development, enhance heritage values, provide a direct benefit to the environment, relieve the burden on the public purse, and on it goes.   So adaptive reuse we see is a big part of the future solution for how we go about conserving.

	Finally possible program policy approaches.  As I've repeatedly said, there's a need to recognise constitutional and financial realities and the responsibilities relating to the tiered approach to heritage listing.  Ways in which the community can contribute to conservation warrants further consideration, including innovative approaches to address market failure and serious consideration of incentives with fiscal recognition of the value and cost of heritage; a need to move away from the emphasis from old home and give more emphasis to places and landscape, and that comes back to the total context I talked about.

	Just in conclusion, the Tasmanian experience is one where heritage, tourism, local government, et cetera, are making huge leading strides forward in the ways we can work together in partnership to develop integrated and innovative solution systems and approaches.  What we're doing this year for the remainder of this year with the state and local level presents a real opportunity I think to get it right with respect to the national level and how we all integrate and get that greater cohesion through all three systems.  Thank you.

DR BYRON:   Thank you very much.  That's been an excellent summary of a very useful document.  I'm reassured that we're thinking along very similar lines.  I don't know whether it's a question or not, but one of the things that I got out of both your comments and the written submission is the emphasis on clearly articulating the linkages, if I can say, vertically – world heritage, national, state, local.  I guess you could go down to family or whatever, but getting that sort of vertical structure right, getting the horizontal linkages right between what the governments do and how that relates to non-government and private and corporate and churches and so on, and then the third dimension that you raise is between built and historic heritage and natural heritage and indigenous.

	So am I right in thinking that your approach here in Tasmania is thinking about integration in that third sense because the Australian Heritage Council made that point to us last week, that they were saying the distinction between historical, cultural, natural and indigenous heritage was in some ways artificial, putting things into silos that they didn't need to be.

MR GADD:   No.  That's very much been our approach.  If you look at the formation of this department, we brought all those elements together combined with tourism and the arts as well which, if you think about it, is very much the brand that we've tried to create that is Tasmania.  We've actually - in a sense we've actually separated indigenous heritage from cultural heritage in the last two years, but they're still under the same department, but they were once in the same unit.  So we've given them distinct identities, and we've put an emphasis on Heritage Tasmania with that new branding of Heritage Tasmania, and we'll do similar with indigenous heritage.

	I didn't mention, but we're also in the throes of a major reform of our indigenous heritage and also a review of that act as well.  So the synergies will be there and we'll bring them together and we'll try and get the linkages with the planning system as we go forward as well.  So the simple answer is, yes, that's very much what we're trying to achieve.

DR BYRON:   I've never looked at indigenous heritage and we're not looking at that in this inquiry, but it seems to me that there are lots of parallels between historic heritage and natural heritage in terms of the types of issues and the types of institutions that are set up to deal with it.

MR GADD:   We had a classic example in this state where they both interlocked beautifully, and that's Recherche Bay where we had the French explorers who made wonderful botanical collections, but they also had the first major interaction with the indigenous community and actually recorded it.  So that's a beautiful example of how they intertwine, they interlock down there on the south-east peninsula.

DR BYRON:   Yes, and trying to deal with half of that problem in isolation isn't going to work.

MR GADD:   You can't do it, and pretty much anything we do with respect to heritage, there's usually an Aboriginal heritage component or relativity somewhere involved.

DR BYRON:   You mentioned in the submission and in your comments there that a lot of built heritage places are in private ownership, particularly if you include institutions like churches and that and banks as part of the private sector, and they've been retained and maintained by people who own them because they thought it was worth doing because they were using those buildings, and they perhaps continue to adapt those buildings over time.  But it was basically - I'm trying to sort of build up a conceptual model of why buildings are kept and then why they suddenly stop being kept.

So if the owner, whether it's a church or a farmer or a company, comes to the point where the costs of maintaining the building are getting higher and higher or the building no longer provides the sort of services they need - you know, it's not up to modern standards, et cetera, they get to the point and say, "It's not worth my while to continue to maintain this place."  They might sell it to somebody else if it wants to.  They might decide that it should be demolished for something else.  You could put better use on that land, et cetera, and that creates the tension between the public interest and the private interest.

	There's an implication that because previous generations have maintained a building, we're obliged to.  It's sort of a philosophical question, but a different interpretation would be each generation has used the building and changed it.  This could be - probably not this one, but some buildings over there that might be the fourth or fifth building on that same block of land over the last 200 years.

MR GADD:   But nonetheless they probably still represent some point in history or some significance to some part of the community in that point.

DR BYRON:   To try and come to a question, what proportion of the places need to be sort of snap frozen in time as a time capsule, and what proportion of places might continue to adapt and evolve as they have up to now?

MR GADD:   I'm not sure I can put a percentage on that, and there would be both.  Certainly everything you say is right, and the other thing is legislative and statutory requirements.  Just recently in this state we've had a Building Act and Building Code introduced which along with OH and S and all the other things - disability access and things we've seen over the years - can have major implications again.  In terms of percentage, I’m not sure.  We have a range of both.  But I guess I go back to the comments before where we haven't had that development pressure for the last three decades.  So in a sense, a lot of what's here is actually beautifully preserved, more often than not in an original state.

DR BYRON:   Because it's still being used.

MR GADD:   Because it was either still being used or it was walked away from at some point in time and just left, and then there's a range of adaptive reuse sort of options; things like some of our old mills and things.  Good examples are along the Derwent River up towards the valley where they've been readapted into B and B's and private homes and things like that.  I don't know if you can add anything in terms of the actual numbers.

MR ROMEY:   I couldn't do that but I could quote an example of the dynamics of that process.  Recently I was at a site on the Tasman Peninsula which was the former surgeon's house associated with the Saltwater River Probation Station, convict probation station.  It was built in the 1840s and the reasons it was there was that the Port Arthur Authority does commit a lot of especially in-kind resources and expertise to assisting private owners with some of these places to conserve them.  What had happened with this particular place was that it had been - it hadn't changed hands very often since the 1840s, and by and large, the families that had owned the house never had the money to do much with it.

	So what's happened recently is that it's been sold to a family from Sydney, who saw it advertised in the Australian in a colour magazine, for an incredible price compared to Sydney real estate, and we're very fortunate in that this particular family bought the place knowing it was what they wanted.  They wanted an historic house with views to die for, and they knew more or less what they were taking on.  We're now in the process or the family and their builder with our assistance is working on that house and stripping away some - mainly doing a lot of structural repairs on it, stripping away some of the accretions.  

	In the front wall there had been a window which was bricked up.  When we removed the plaster which a lot of it was falling off anyway, the window frame is still there because it was easier just to brick up the window for whatever reason than to spend extra money and pull the window frame out and use more bricks and whatever.  So we have a dynamic there where conservation has been an unconscious kind of process largely driven by lack of funds.  The critical moment came in that particular process when the property was sold after being in the same family for many years to somebody who knew what they were taking on and they want to do the right thing.

	So they got a grant with our assistance from the federal government through the Cultural Heritage Grants Program and that house has now been adapted in the sense - even though it was a house before, it was unliveable - as contemporary residence, but all parties involved are very confident that in that process, the values that you would attribute to that place as meriting its conservation will be maintained.  So I use that case study to indicate a fairly radical shift in the way that building is being used and regarded.  I think it's fair to say the current owners probably value it as a heritage item more than previous owners, but fortunately previous owners didn't have the money to destroy the values that we are now so concerned with.  This kind of thing is happening a lot.  So as one dynamic disappears, another hopefully in many cases productive and constructive process takes over.

MR GADD:   I think part of the answer is in how we differentiate between local and state and national significance in that maybe just to be a fine example of a piece of architecture at a certain point of time is a significant issue at a local level, but perhaps it needs that broader context, that connection with history, that connection with some prominent person or some community aspect that moves it to the next level, and I see that as part of the solution as to how we differentiate.  A lot of what we've probably got in this stage, whilst it's significantly heritage, would probably on that basis fall to the local level which would enable us to really concentrate on those core assets at a state level and more so as you move up to national world heritage.

MR HINTON:   Thanks, Neil.  I add my thanks to Neil's thanks for participation by the Tasmania government in our inquiry.  Thank you very much for your participation today and your written submission.  It's important to get that sort of state government perspective on these issues, given the vital role that states play.  I have sort of a range of questions, some very broad - almost helicopter-like view - others down quite detailed.  So I'm going to try and start off with some of the broader issues.  

	The first one is really one of looking at where to in the sense that - or how to go where we want to go to in the sense that there are a lot of proposals around in different jurisdictions and certainly our report will have a number of recommendations, but because there are three tiers of government involved here, there is a fundamental question about how to progress these sorts of recommendations.  I'd welcome the Tasmanian government's perspective on that.  I have in mind for example is there a need to have a COAG meeting.  Is there a need to have an inter-governmental agreement across six states, two territories and the Australian government that might progress these sorts of things that Neil and I have been talking about around Australia with both private sector, public sector entities.  Do you have a Tasmanian government perspective on that sort of helicopter look?

MR GADD:   I think the short answer is yes, but from a Tasmanian perspective, we'd be quite happy to go the bilateral path as well if it meant we could get greater cohesion into the system now rather than wait for all of our other state colleagues to reach agreement.  I'm not suggesting that that wouldn't be possible, but as I said, the timing here is such that we're about to review the whole sector or are in the throes of reviewing the whole sector.  The national system happened at a great time and we were quite excited about that. We were a bit disappointed because it's a tad ill‑defined as we sit here today, and we'd like to see that sorted out as we go forward so that we can go down our legislation and our planning systems here to go forward.  So I think ultimately, yes, it's got to be a COAG or an IGA, but it could be as simple as a bilateral and a pilot with an innovative, creative little state like Tassie.

MR HINTON:   I'm going to come onto that in a minute, but presumably if there is to be an integrated system with three levels of government, prima facie that suggests to me some sort of system that is consistent across Australia but that then points you towards an IGA-COAG mechanism rather than bilateral, and I can see your body language around the table as sort of endorsing that point.

But a related issue is one of - and this one is a reaction of mine to your comment about 5 and a half thousand state and local items on your list; another further I think 2 and a half thousand under review - but of course you have 3 per cent of the population.  Those numbers are very large relative to Australia, relative to your 3 per cent of the population, is my point.  Is there a Grants Commission issue here or is that too lateral thinking on this, coming from a Tasmanian government perspective?  

MR GADD:   Well, I mean, there's a funding issue.  Whether the Grants Commission is the solution or not, I'm not sure.  I mean, it's difficult to say. 

DR BYRON:   That was one of the things that I was going to ask about too.  I think everybody we have spoken to has made the point that maintaining historic buildings can be quite expensive.  There are costs.  We can try and minimise the costs but there's no escaping that we're talking serious costs.  Somebody is going to have to pay.  You made the point very articulately that there's a lot of local government areas within Tasmania who can't afford to pay to maintain all the heritage assets in their space.  I think that's true all over Australia.  You know, the Tasmanian government has got a disproportionately large amount of Australia's colonial historical heritage, more generally, and a small percentage of the population.

	So should we be looking for some - not necessarily a formula - but at least in concept, a way of working out who pays for what?  So in a certain extent, you know, I go and look at sites like Port Arthur.  You can say they are clearly of Australian significance.  There are probably a number of others which I shouldn't attempt to name.  But that's one mechanism where the Australian taxpayer clearly has a responsibility of things which are recognised as being significant to all Australians.  You know, a nice little cottage over in Sandy Bay might be very locally significant but it's hard to make a case that taxpayers in Queensland or WA should contribute to that.  

MR GADD:   Particularly in Port Arthur where it's a reasonable economic driver for the whole community down there now - yes.  Look, it does boil down to essentially that.  But, I mean, I'm reluctant to say grants is the answer because the experience in this state is that there is a certain bucket of money to go round and when we get a win in one area it tends to cost us in another.  So I'm hesitating to go down that path because that's really a matter for the central Premier and Cabinet and Treasury agencies to sort of negotiate through with the Commonwealth.  But, yes, look, the bottom line is we are carrying a disproportionate share of the burden and that applies at the state, local and regional level in some instances and that's why I argue that whatever funding model - if we're going to consider funding, then it can't be the standard Commonwealth-state dollar-for-dollar agreement because it's just not going to work.  That's not going to hit the mark.  It needs to be targeted.  It needs to be a bit more strategic and it needs to be flexible enough to deal with those specific little issues on the regional community level.  

DR BYRON:   The other funding issue that I think is in a way related to that - you say in the submission about the amount of funding that the state government has put into Port Arthur.  I think in all jurisdictions at all three levels, there is the same question of when you've got a finite bucket of money, how much do you put into the icon sites as opposed to the grassroots, you know, which ‑ ‑ ‑

MR GADD:   It's a constant dilemma and Port Arthur is a good example again, that I guess the politics of the time post the massacre put Port Arthur in good stead in terms of government funding.  So there was a recognition that there needed to be an investment in that site.  Now, what happened after that first five-year investment is that the results were exponential.  We know the benefits were enormous.  We had this economist that showed us that, like you'd never known before, that there was a real economic spin-off from Port Arthur.  So the government immediately recommitted to a similar five-year funding, recognising the progress that had been made.  In a sense that $10 million was more than we spent on the rest of the state's heritage in total.

DR BYRON:   And it's very hard to decide whether you should put even more into Port Arthur or whether you should have actually only put 7 and put the other 3 million somewhere else, or into some second site which could also have flourished in that way.  So a really difficult decision.

MR GADD:   Yes.  If we get that tiered structure right, then it gives you a basis to differentiate and if you can build some incentives - I mean, you know, with grants schemes and things you can really get some great outcomes in terms of dollar outcomes for every dollar you invest in grants.  So when you come down to the local level of significance there is perhaps more of a call for rebates or tax incentives or something that empower the local community or the local owner to take responsibility.  Whereas, as you move up the chain, then it becomes more rather a state or government responsibility when you start to deal with the icons.  It's easier for governments in a place like Port Arthur to demonstrate those other benefits back to the community so it's probably more appropriate that we do focus there.

DR BYRON:   But at the local level you can get an awful lot of bang for the bucks for a $5000 grant.  It encourages the private owner to do $50,000 of their own work - that leverage or catalytic function.  So it's very hard to say overall, if you think it's the whole state's heritage assets - you know, how much do you spread around in little lots and how much do you focus on one great icon?  I mean, it's a real dilemma.  I don't know the answer.

MR GADD:   Yes, I honestly don't and, you know, as you say, it's been a balancing act here with the Port Arthur example.  But, I mean, what is clear is we need to do more.  From a community and a tourism sense these assets are more and more valued.  They are increasingly valued as we go forward and people are starting to seek them out.  But it's not just the houses.  It's the landscapes and it's the streetscapes and it's all of that.  We're only just starting to realise how important they are to the economy and, as I said, to the health and wellbeing of the community.  I don't know what the answer is and whether that was the essential dilemma - I mean, more money, ultimately.   

MR ROMEY:   If I could just touch on the Port Arthur example for a moment.  I mean, it's ultimately a political decision, where the government puts whatever money it's prepared to set aside for conservation.  But I know that from our perspective we know that the government regards its funding to Port Arthur as an investment.  You know, I assume there's a measure of altruism there but Port Arthur is a fairly - well, you can't say fairly unique - it is a unique example in Tasmania or in Australia really.  So the Tasmanian government sees its proper conservation as an essential investment to ensure that the value of Port Arthur to the Tasmanian economy and to the Tasmanian psyche is sustained at a higher level - and there's all sorts of economic and social spin-offs from that.

	I think there's a measure also of making sure that you have a case study that's been managed at a high level that sets a benchmark for other places to aspire to, even though they may not have the funding to do the job in the same way - and there are visitor expectations.  For the last five years we've had a steadily increasing number of visitors coming to Port Arthur.  We think that part of the reason they are coming is not only because they want to learn more about history, but they want to see conservation being practised at a higher level and that takes money.  So there's those expectations that have to be met.

	Between I think about 1985 and the year 2000 Port Arthur, with due respect to the governments of the time, ran on a subsistence funding regime and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that there was a net deterioration in the quality of the visitor experience and the management of the bricks and mortar that couldn't continue without affecting the value of the asset.  

MR HINTON:   I'd like to explore a bit more - perhaps in more detail - your comments both here this morning and also in your written submission in a number of places, about listing.  You identify at least two problems.  One is the need for a better integrated approach that differentiates and allocates responsibility between the three tiers of government - national, state and local.  But you also, on page 26, talk about:

Improved mechanisms for establishing priorities for heritage significance are also desirable, particularly in Tasmania where there is so much built and other heritage.

	That seems to me to be criteria for judging significance.  Can you give me a better feel for what you have in mind as to what might be desirable improvements?  Don't say more funding - if you had more funding you'd do it better.  What I'm really after:  if you had more funding, how would you go about spending it to achieve those two objectives - a better integration with regard to the three levels and then a better system of setting priorities as to what is significant?  Can you give me a feel for ideas for moving forward?

MR GADD:   I guess because we do have so much heritage in this state we tend to have a lot of repetition on the register.  We tend to have a lot of great examples of the same sorts of things.  So it comes back to what I say about, you know, well, at least it's in a greater context like you've got a whole suburban street or a whole block or a whole area, you know, that's very similar and then therefore it's of more significance.  I mean, how many examples of these things do we need to preserve at any point in time?

	So I think to me it's about getting a system, a filter, a framework, whatever it is, whereby, you know, we recognise that for certain characteristics it's locally significant, but when we hit a couple of triggers, then perhaps it branches up into more of a state significance or broader community or perhaps, you know, joint community sort of arrangement.  So you've got a system that recognises the context in which these places exist basically and, you know, maybe it's a broader context.  Maybe it's a landscape.  Maybe it's a town like Richmond.  Maybe it's Sullivans Cove sort of water authority or maybe it's just one building.  You'll correct me if I get this wrong, but I think it's Queen Anne, Federation or something is the predominant sort of architecture that we see around sort of inner suburban Hobart.  I mean, there are lots and lots and lots of those places on a register, but yet our ability to protect and manage all of them is ‑ ‑ ‑ 

MR HINTON:   You're giving me the impression that your concept is sort of bottoms up approach as opposed to a top down approach.  

MR GADD:   It's got to be both.

MR HINTON:   Got to be both, okay.

MR GADD:   Because at the same time we've got world heritage in this state which is world recognised and also then it gets a bit grey when we get into the national sphere because it's a tad ill-defined at the moment.  But there's no doubt that some of these properties have relevance on a national scale, like Home Hill, for example, which was the home of the only ever premier and prime minister; who did both.

MR HINTON:   I think the Australian government's approach is to add to the national list - that is, list of national significance - putting aside the Commonwealth's own properties.  They have only got a few at the moment - two handfuls - but they have in mind many more.  But they are only doing it in consultation with the states and territories and I assume that's the approach that Tasmania would strongly endorse.

MR GADD:   And we do.  The problem for us is what's not certain is the implications of those listings and then where the subsequent responsibilities for management and conservation lie.  You would appreciate there is a reluctance to just forgo all responsibility at a state level just because we agree something should be national significance.  So that's sort of where the tension is at the moment.  But the principle we support, yes.  But what we would like is clearly definition before we proceed.

MR HINTON:   We are getting the impression, rightly or wrongly, that that differentiation is just working reasonably well although it's got a long way to go - that is, identifying national and how it might be funded doesn't seem to be a potential significant difficulty, in that they are easily identified than others.  They are therefore more urgently in need of funding in the sense that there is no way we can afford to lose them.  The priority is very high.  Then the difficulty we've got at a state level, particularly in Tasmania, there seems to be little differentiation to that which is state significant and that which is locally significant.

MR GADD:   That's correct.  

MR HINTON:   Relative to many other states.  That differentiation can be very important for implications for funding.  So if I understand you correctly, the move to review the Historical Cultural Heritage Act will have as one of its key drivers is that differentiation.

MR GADD:   Exactly.  Alongside that we'll be looking at what resourcing implications that has for local government and what sort of package we need to bring to the table in order to achieve that as well.  That's very much the focus.  That's why I say the opportunity is there.

MR HINTON:   Can you give me a feel for - and I appreciate it's not until early next year we're going to get the revised act - the sorts of ideas that you might have in mind to handle that differentiation between state and local?

MR GADD:   Well, I mean, we've just gone through an extensive consultation process and we're in the process of bringing that all together.  But if you look across this state, some councils like Hobart City Council are quite well advanced.  They have their own heritage adviser.  We have others that aren't there.  So the first stage of the process - and I think we talk about it in here - is to complete these heritage surveys across all municipalities, so we actually understand what's there and who's got what.  That's happening now with funding.  We're doing that through our partnership process whereby the state enters into partnerships with various local governments.  

	As part of the act, if we're to try and enshrine local heritage schedules into the local planning system, then I recognise that for a council like Hobart that's not such a big ask, but for a council at the back of the west coast somewhere, that means we're going to have to make available the resources and the skills and to some degree hold their hand through the process.  The resourcing side of this is the hard ask and I'm working up an ask to go through the budget process this year.  It's no simple solution.  It's not just a case of employing a heritage adviser for each council.  In some cases there might be co-funding heritage advisers with a council; it might be supplying a heritage adviser from a pool to a range of councils; in some instances it might mean we've got to actually put a project team in and then get them up and running.  At the same time we've got a review of our land use and planning appeals system happening.  So the timing is good to make sure what happens at that level is also reflected in the Heritage Act, and also through the local planning system.

MR HINTON:   But taking that to the next step, if you've got the listing, you've done the survey and those schedules are then addended to the planning requirements of each local government area, there's still a system needed, how that actually gets applied on the ground in terms of development applications, for example.

MR GADD:   The local government is the front line and they're always going to see it - I would expect that maybe the Heritage Council at the state level would potentially also have a role in dealing with some of those local issues where they're not straightforward or they're not easily dealt with through those local planning schedules.

MR HINTON:   Not wanting to focus overly on that particular level of real life application, is there an inherent tension between making decisions at the local level relative to say a statewide approach to a particular policy objective, in this case heritage conservation?  We have in some states some councils that are very pro development, that is their three priorities are jobs, jobs, jobs.  You raise questions of heritage conservation as an objective, they say, "Well, our constituents aren't interested, therefore they're not going to spend resources."  But if there is a state government policy that the heritage objective is important, that would seem prima facie to suggest some constraints, controls or guidelines or parameters imposed on local governments to help pursue their heritage objective.  Has Tasmania come to grips with ‑ ‑ ‑

MR GADD:   Yes.

MR HINTON:   That was a rather oversimplification, but has Tasmania come to grips with that tension?

MR GADD:   Yes, we have and I'm reluctant to say that we're going to impose those on local government because our next step in the process is now go and consult with local government and flesh out what some of these resourcing issues are going to be.  In an ideal world, you know - and I'm not that idealistic - we'll get broad agreement and I'll be able to get a funding package out that addresses everybody's needs and that we will accept that this is a big part of Tasmania's future and everyone will pick up the responsibility and go with it.  But I fully expect that there could be a five to 10‑year strategy.

DR BYRON:   On the question of lists, do you think there's a confusion out there in the public - I was looking at some of the places that are on the State Heritage Register and they're also on the register of the National Estate.  They're also classified by the National Trust of Tasmania.  Do you think people out there get confused by three different lists?  I mean, we know there are other lists as well.

MR GADD:   Well, I do, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do.  Unfortunately that's a historical hangover which we also hope to address as part of this review as well.  Without pre-empting what might happen with the National Trust I would probably strongly argue personally that there's no need potentially for that list to exist if we've got the heritage register in such a condition that, you know, it addresses everybody's needs.

MR HINTON:   I had a question that falls more to your responsibilities, or certainly the Tasmanian government responsibilities, and that is an issue for some states - and some more than others - is their own buildings, that is they're in state government ownership, they have varying degrees of heritage significance and of course they're held across different portfolios within the state government.  Can you give me a feel for how Tasmania is approaching that issue, because there are several issues inherent in that sort of circumstance.

MR GADD:   Yes, it's problematic.  One of the hats I wear is director of National Parks which is a large owner of built heritage in this state.  In fact we've become the de facto managers of much of it over the years.  It's a difficult conflict.  I mean, come the budget process I'm arguing bricks and mortar up against waiting lists and people who can't eat because they can't get teeth type issues.  That's always the dilemma.  But we've tried to do in recent times is highlight the economic spin-off of heritage and the value to the brand, that is Tasmania.  That has a direct economic impact.  But the other arguments we're working to build up are the impact that we have on the community health and wellbeing and I don't think that can be underestimated.  Most government money is going into health and education these days - predominantly health - and there's no end in sight really.

	Yet the talk now is moving to, "Let's be more proactive.  Let's talk about lifestyle.  Let's talk about encouraging people to eat right, exercise," those sorts of things which ultimately have an impact on not only the health system but the justice system and all sorts of areas.  We're building the argument that our heritage is becoming an integral part of our community.  The National Trust example:  I've got lots and lots of elderly people come together around these historic houses and they have fundraisers and they look after the gardens and they have committees within committees.  Ultimately that has got to be having an impact on their health and wellbeing and I think there's a lot more awareness and recognition of that.  People are seeking out their heritage, they're seeking out their historic cultural heritage, and it's those sorts of arguments that we've got to continue to push and it's a big ask when you're dealing with ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Do you think there would be benefits in the ownership and responsibility for heritage properties owned by government to be put into the one portfolio; that is, some states have buildings beyond their needs - whether they be railway stations or post offices or schools ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   Court houses, police stations, old hospitals, hostel houses.

MR HINTON:   But they have a heritage significance.  Their particular portfolio - as Neil has often put in hearings - has the pursuit of service delivery, not managing heritage buildings.  So they're quite happy to sell it off and let others worry about the conservation issue associated with the heritage building.  What sort of systems might best be put in place to handle that efficiently?

MR GADD:   Well, I think in principle it would be great to have one central manager of all these assets but - as a potential repository for all those assets.

MR HINTON:   I'm not that transparent, am I?

MR GADD:   That would be a pointless thing to do unless you resourced me to look after it.  I run this argument with our natural resource all the time:  it's all well and good to go and lock up more and more land in this state and give it to me to be responsible for, but if you don't hand me recurrent funds to look after it then I might as well go and put a match to it now ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   Exactly.

MR GADD:   - - - because it's at risk.  The principle is good because you could have the expertise, and we've got Port Arthur and we've got most of those assets in this umbrella now, so I can tap into the conservation and archaeological expertise that exists.  But as I say, unless you're going to properly resource me for it then you're just compounding the problem really.

DR BYRON:   My interest in that is one of the public knowing what they're paying for through a transparent budgetary process.  If the Tasmanian government says, "Okay, we're going to put X million or 100 million into maintaining government‑owned historic buildings, we will do that explicitly and transparently.  If there's historic bridges we won't just bury that in the budget line for the Transport Department, it comes out of the heritage line.  If there's historic police stations or court houses or schools or hospitals, we won't bury that in the health budget or the education budget."  They still belong to those departments but it becomes quite clear that the state government on behalf of the citizens of the state is spending X hundred million on maintaining government-owned heritage significant properties, rather than just sort of burying it so that nobody actually knows where it's going or how much we're paying for it.  It's a sort of a transparency issue.

MR GADD:   Yes, I think there would be benefits from a community awareness point of view.  The difficulty always is, of course, that department heads will bury things in their budgets and when it comes to negotiate how much it actually costs to maintain the Richmond Bridge, I'm sure myself that that agency head had very differing views.

MR HINTON:   Doesn't it also take you down another track - and speaking of something you said earlier, Scott, and that's adaptive reuse, that is if a set of buildings are surplus to requirements of a portfolio and if we all accept that occupation is one of the best ways to ensure conservation, that would take you to the track of, "Okay, surplus to needs, sell it off, let someone else own it and let them use it but conserve it," that is, even though the use of course would no longer be its initial use it would be adaptive reuse.  Isn't that one of the key drivers and opportunities to look at?

MR GADD:   It is, but you don't even have to go as far as to sell it off really, you can lease it.  We've done actually that within Tally House which was costing my department something in the vicinity of 8 to 10 thousand dollars a month to keep the National Trust and the volunteers to keep the place open and alive.  We've now been able to actually do a commercial lease arrangement with Gunns, whereby they've taken ownership of the property.  The volunteers are allowed to stay, the National Trust are allowed to stay, they will continue to look after the house and grounds.  We've identified some surplus area within what are very substantial grounds where Gunns intend to develop a wine distribution front-of-house type operation and also link that back to a restaurant that serves meals in the house.  

	So in that sense we've got a fantastic outcome.  We've relieved the public burden, we've preserved the volunteers and the local community interest, and we've got a corporate sponsor that's prepared to take guardianship of the property for the duration of the lease.  At the end of that, the state gets back a maintained asset in better nick than what we handed it over in.

DR BYRON:   And you've still got public access and ‑ ‑ ‑

MR GADD:   Public access is ensured and ownership is still with the state ultimately.  There are opportunities also to sell, and in some cases these things are better off in private ownership, but it doesn't always have to be that way.  But certainly adaptive reuse has to be the way we're thinking, and some properties are more suited to that than others.  We have to be a bit more creative.  We've got to go beyond just conversion to a restaurant or a house, museum or whatever.  We've got to think about these sorts of opportunities that are out there, but we're also hamstrung by the lack of big corporates in this state and the lack of philanthropic opportunities.  

MR HINTON:   I have one more question.  It may open up another whole debate, but let me try it anyway.  It's to do with, having just discussed public ownership, private ownership.  In particular I have in mind here a very important category, residential ownership, houses in the hands of the individuals that own houses that are of heritage value.  This is where the local government role is very significant and there are significant tensions out there in a number of communities - a large number of communities - as to how the heritage objective is pursued relative to their own perceptions about their house; they can do what they like with it, to coin a phrase.

	The point that I wanted to raise with you is resolving that tension is very difficult, and one way to do it is to have transparent systems and certainty and know the rules, in effect.  But it also has been put to us by some interested parties that these issues are so complex that maybe a simple system is needed, and a simple system would be right of veto; that is, if the owner of the house says, "No, I don't want to be listed," end of story.  If the owner of the house says, "Yes, I want to be listed," it then gets captured or caught up in the system of heritage overlays for planning purposes of whatever.  Can you give me a feel for what your views here in Tasmania might be to that sort of idea?  

MR GADD:   The thing that strikes me immediately about that model is it would be probably open to abuse by unscrupulous developers, and we know there are a couple out there.  I mean, if it was down to the ownership of the house, there would be nothing to stop me just buying the whole block and exercising my right of veto, and the C.H. Smith at Launceston is a classic example.  It's a very controversial heritage issue at the moment.  

MR HINTON:   Not quite residential, though.  I was quite deliberately choosing ‑ ‑ ‑

MR GADD:   No, that's true.  That is CBD, but ultimately it will have residential components if the development goes ahead.  But there would be nothing stopping somebody coming in and just buying up a street of houses or whatever and then saying, "Well, I'm going to do what I like."  

MR HINTON:   They'd still be subject the planning requirements, the zoning requirements of that land.  The development authority ‑ ‑ ‑

MR GADD:   Yes.  If they had been done under the heritage listing, though, then potentially there would be less consideration of the heritage issues.  

MR HINTON:   Yes, that's the construction. 

MR GADD:   So I'd see that as a negative.  

MR ROMEY:   I think it's essential that heritage is seen as part of the planning process.  It's not a separate process, and increasingly it is being incorporated into the planning process in many places.  It had generic LEPs and heritage LEPs. They're now being combined into one LEP, which look at all aspects of environmental amenity, including heritage.  I think you used an example of Battery Point before, a cottage on Battery Point.  I don't think that there's any doubt that the sought-after qualities that Battery Point has are largely due to the baseline retention of so many of the properties there in some kind of original form that collectively create the character that people want.  They want to live there for that reason.  

	If individual owners had been left with the choice - I'm talking about recent times - again you have to look at the economic history here where owners didn't demolish houses before because they couldn't afford to.  But now they're not allowed to, and one reason you're not allowed to is because the community values the character of that place, and if they can afford to they will buy one and live there.  I'm not saying you can draw that analogy to every community and every suburb and so on, but in a place like Battery Point it's unarguable that the gravity of retained character due to heritage is a major factor in the amenity of the area and the value of the area.  

MR GADD:   I think part of the solution is probably we could place a little less emphasis on enforcement and more on education and creating that awareness about the values of heritage and explaining to people what we know, what are research tells us; that is, people are seeking it out.  It is increasingly valued, and there are other benefits, social and economic.  

MR HINTON:   Take it a step further, the example being of demolition not by direct action but demolition by neglect.  Does that, given the sort of approach you've just described to meteers and I think if we added - and Jenny has done the financial homework on that but we've got something like 55,000-odd hours of volunteerism in a year.  If you equated that into salaries we are putting a significant amount of in kind support into the community which, if we didn't do it somebody would have to pick it up and pay people a weekly wage and that would I think make it rather prohibitive and a difficult situation.  So we are in a sense hiding some of the costs in maintaining heritage by our volunteer force which is doing it for the benefit of the community at large.

	But we should also say that our volunteer groups are in the retiree age group, so if you were looking five to 10 years down the track it would be interesting to see where this equivalent number of people would come from, because the surveys seem to suggest that people under retirement age are no longer interested in regular volunteering into these sort of activities, and people over 55 are less interested in volunteering too on a regular basis because they've got a mobile phone and they're looking for a bit of travel, but the lifestyle of people in that early retiree age group now is not consistent with serving as a volunteer every Monday or whatever in a heritage property and that I think is something which is a hidden issue that's going to arise but relatively soon.

	We've worked on the basis of having an unpaid workforce for a large part of keeping these properties and volunteer expertise.  But I think the chances of that continuing into the future are going to be relatively slim.  In terms of the houses we have open, clearly the house museum is on its - I was going to say on its last legs but that's perhaps not quite the way to put it.  House museums are in themselves a heritage item and we are consistently and quite rightly under pressure to reinterpret our properties in a rather more sophisticated and contemporary way.  If you look once again at the UK that's done strategically but picking properties to identify particular periods or particular architectural styles or whatever.  We would like to do the same but once again it requires expertise and it requires significant funding to turn what we have now is the like the low-cost option into something which is rather more visitable and contemporary in its presentation.

	On top of that we have the issue of disability access which we have been grappling with in various ways but which again is not something that sits easily with the fabric or design of a heritage property, and while we would like to encourage more visitors to our properties, if we have to create disability access - it's not that we don't want to but just to do that is a rather more significant prospect than it would be in new properties where it's built into the architecture.  So there are a number of reasons why we've done well, we're continuing to do well would be my summary of it, but we can see ahead that there are significant factors which would make it less possible to do it as well as we would want to.  

	If you looked at some of the other documentation you'll see that every one of the properties that is relying on visitor numbers to support it and membership of the trust to support it, they are not economically viable in the short to long term.

DR BYRON:   But that's basically true all over Australia, I think.

DR MYHILL:   I'm sure that is.

DR BYRON:   All the National Trusts are telling us the same thing.  It's not a uniquely Tasmanian situation.

DR MYHILL:   I agree with that but the difference I think elsewhere - and I mean the trust is a nationwide movement but it still operates separately by state.  I think the difference you'll find in a state like New South Wales, which would be the obvious comparator example, is that - the population of New South Wales you'll have to tell me, but it's more than 3 per cent of the national population.  Also the difficulty we find here in a state like Tasmania is the lack of sponsorship dollars that are available because the headquarters are absolutely empty - company-wise is in New South Wales.  The sponsorship funding tends to go to the properties in New South Wales because of the nature they assume - well, they're in the city area basically and it doesn't filter through to the other states under our current structure.

	I mean 3 per cent of the population - I don't know how many really.  I can't think of a multinational that's got a headquarters in Tasmania.  If you think of somebody let me know but it just doesn't happen.  So that sort of subsidiary funding that you might well require - and plus I have to say if you look at the demographics of Tasmania, which is the other thing, not just the numbers but the demographics, I don't know how many people would be here on some kind of a pension but you'd have to suggest it would be higher pro rata than it would be in New South Wales or Victoria, or probably the other states perhaps with the exception of the Northern Territory.  But this is a population where the demographics are much more skewed than they are elsewhere and the capacity to pay would be much lower, or the capacity to find private support for heritage would be much lower than anywhere else that I can think of off the top of my head.

	Western Australia is in a different situation from us because there's a lot more sort of private money and large projects around that you can apply for that you can use to spin off some of the heritage projects.  Victoria and New South Wales have got strong Melbourne and Sydney based populations which are prepared to support heritage to some extent.  We're in a unique situation from that point of view, a small population and particular demographics, and related to the business sector, a relatively small number of large sized businesses that would have the capacity to pay.

DR BYRON:   Jennie. 

MS CHAPMAN:   Well, broadly I would agree with Marion in terms of the fact that we do have only 478,000 people in the state that are resident Tasmanians.  On top of that we've got some 780,000 visitors to the state.  So tourism is becoming - and certainly is - a growth industry for Tasmania, and heritage is very much a part of that growth and focus by Tourism Tasmania.  It would seem that because of the volume of heritage places in Tasmania, both listed and unlisted, they're a threat to themselves in the sense in that there's not enough funding and support mechanisms for people to be able to address the conservation factor and also to address the regulation system that exists.  

	It's a way of somehow not only educating the community but easing processes in that sense.  I'd like to highlight the rural sector in private ownership.  Marion has mentioned the fact that the viability of farms is an issue and is going to become more and more so.  Obviously with recent drives of Tasmanians up to Sydney and Canberra it's going to get considerably worse.  But there are a large quantity of heritage places that are registered that are in private ownership.  We talk about market failure, and certainly in your issues paper, market failure is raised a number of times.  I think here we certainly have an issue of market failure.  If you take in the barns, the exterior buildings, the odd farm cottages, the shearing sheds, all those buildings are of significance to the country and to the state.  

	In the case of the shearing sheds we're regularly seeing the farmer actually building a new iron shed as opposed to fixing up his old shed.  I think that it's an education problem but also too I think it's an issue of perhaps they're worried about the regulations that they might have to confront in actually dealing with modifying or adapting their shed to current use, so they bypass it and actually build a new one and it solves the problem.  The old shed sits there and slowly disintegrates.  How do we fix this?  I'm not sure that grants are the only way to go.  I have a feeling that perhaps if there was some form of funding structure on a low interest rate arrangement outside of bank loans, that may be the way to address the situation, where they're accepting the regulations and terms of the conservation of the shearing shed but in turn if they choose to sell it on, what is the scenario if they receive a grant.

	It seems to me there are questions that need to be addressed in that area to make it easier for them and also to, at the end of the day, conserve those heritage places, the same as the cottages.  We have travelled around - and I know you have - there many on-farm tourism accommodation cottages now.  Obviously they're now being used as buildings on a regular basis, so it's helping to maintain them and it's also adding revenue back to the farm.  So that's a positive outcome but in the case of the shearing sheds, and of course Australia's wealth originally came from the shearing sheds, perhaps we need to look at some sort of thematic funding for specific processes and apply them to such buildings - outback heritage.  You can think of mining landscapes, you know, there's so much.  The west coast here in Tasmania as well with the mining heritage that's there and is now just sitting derelict.  They're all areas that need to be addressed and who's going to pick it up and run with it.

DR BYRON:   Industrial heritage generally - and I guess shearing sheds are just a subset of that - but it could be steam engines or old railways and wooden bridges.  Industrial technology that is now sort of obsolete or redundant which has heritage values but is no longer worthwhile for the current owner to continue to maintain it and use it, they would rather have a shiny new one, you know, it's hard to see what the adaptive reuse potential is for an old timber bridge or a shearing shed or an old gasometer or something.

MS CHAPMAN:   That's right.  The sustainability and viability factors don't necessarily always come into play, do they?

DR BYRON:   The owners of properties like that who basically said, "Well, the old one is just getting too expensive to maintain and it doesn't do the job to the standard that's now required," it seems to me the question is what would society have to offer him to change the balance of the equation so that he says, "Okay, on that basis it would be worth my while to persist with this or to put more money into maintaining it," or to accept that, "It's a lower standard of service than I could get out of the shiny new one but I'll continue with the old one because" - whatever.  It seems to me that the challenge is to work out and then negotiate that sort of ‑ ‑ ‑

MS CHAPMAN:   And you go and talk to any farmer and they'll tell you wonderful stories about what happened in their sheds or in their cottages or whatever on the farm, but it's all ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Can we just stay on this topic for a moment.  I have a follow‑up - I was going to ask you a question ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   I think I interrupted Jennie.

MR HINTON:   Jennie, have you finished?

MS CHAPMAN:   Well, I can go on to the trust perspective in a moment but we could talk rural if you like.

MR HINTON:   I was going to be the devil's advocate for a moment.  Neil's raising a question of incentives to get a farmer to retain it, rather than build something else in the shearing shed.  But the question to my mind is, what is the significance of that building that warrants intervention by government to conserve it; that is, you say it has wonderful old stories.  Retaining that particular building, are you going to retain them all; are you going to retain a subset of them; are you going to retain a couple of them in Tasmania, a couple in New South Wales?  What system are we going to have?  Surely we can't retain them all.

MS CHAPMAN:   No, I agree with that.  It's the same for the trust in terms of our lobbying for existing funding.  Our properties are already recognised on all the registers.

MR HINTON:   We'll come back to that, I'm really getting to the ‑ ‑ ‑

MS CHAPMAN:   No, but the properties, like the rural industry properties, some have high significance registration, some don't.  Obviously I think there has to be a priority structure there in terms of the funding and how you address it.  You go to Woolmers Estate, you see an 1819 shearing shed; you go to Clarendon, you see a shearing shed standing there that can tell a marvellous story, but at the moment you can't access the building because we just cannot get the money to fix it.  It's the balance of how there's the issue of available funds - and I do see a difference between the grant process for the not‑for‑profit sector and the private sector, because often the private sector may not be the long-term owner of that property.  So how at the end of the day, if they've got the grant process, is that going to be dealt with, whereas if it was on a loan arrangement ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   Conservation provenance on the title?

MS CHAPMAN:   Possibly, yes.  No different from natural heritage.  They knowingly are entering into an arrangement there which is certainly going to have ramifications but it's an incentive for them.

MR HINTON:   Demolition by neglect.

DR MYHILL:   That was a good issue, in a sense.  I think you have to have the incentive as well as the regulation because people have got to want to do it.  I think it's partly the individual, it's also partly - there has to be some leadership being shown I think here and some strategic leadership shown.  It's all very well to leave organisations like the National Trust to keep identifying the new evolutions of heritage, but you need to have a broader perspective that starts before the shearing sheds start falling down.  I mean, Jennie reminded me of the example, if we drove past Ross there's a shearing shed that every time I drove down that road you sort of weep because it's sinking further and further into the ground.  Now, it may not be the one that you would necessarily want to keep but ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   That was behind my question:  why that one?

DR MYHILL:   It might be that one because it's there.  It's a very public one and you might want to do it, but the point is, at some point there has to be some kind of strategic approach to deciding what might be there, but at the moment it's coming from a push to do it and then you're having a problem now, the farmers used to once take great pride in keeping all the heritage going because there could be four or five generations' worth of ownership of a particular property and they would take it upon themselves.  But as Jennie is pointing out, there's an economic imperative that takes the funding away from something like that into other areas.  It's trying to find a way to give the incentive back to them looking after their properties, rather than letting them fall down to such an extent that it's too expensive to resurrect them.

MR HINTON:   Sorry, I diverted Jennie ‑ ‑ ‑

MS CHAPMAN:   That's all right.

MR HINTON:   Jennie, are you going to say some more words about the trust?

MS CHAPMAN:   Yes.  I did want to just use Clarendon as the example in terms of one of our trust properties, but obviously the scenario is pretty similar for all.  But if you take Clarendon, it's open to the public and receiving 12,000 visitors a year.  It does run at a large loss for the trust which of course is an issue given the fact that we're in administration now, and how do you turn these properties around and make them supposedly viable.  To be viable it would need at least another 6000 visitors per annum and then it will have ramifications on terms of the conservation factor of the site.  So once again there's a delicate balance between viability and conservation practices and usage of site, given that the site too was never built to be a public building.  

	It's the same for pretty much all of the properties we open to the trust.  They're physically not built to take high volume capacity entry.  So there you're having to niche market and be effective in marketing ways which is going to add volume to your revenue, but not necessarily volume to your floor traffic.  So in a place like Tasmania where we're isolated, this is a great difficulty.  Yes, we have the tourism factor; yes, we have the conference factor.  We have usage of buildings for particular projects, but it's certainly not going to bring in the revenue to make a property viable.

	It adds to the community.  If you took Clarendon out of the picture, Franklin House out of the picture in terms of Launceston, what would those centres have to offer in terms of the heritage experience, the house museum, the cultural landscape, all of these things.  Those 12,000 people that go out to Clarendon undoubtedly go back into Evandale, eat, sleep, stay longer, spend money on the town.  So it is giving a lot back to the community.  Clarendon itself has 103 volunteers, as Marion says, all ageing.  It's in a regional area.  It's hard to get a reflux.

MR HINTON:   Ageing beats the alternative.

MS CHAPMAN:   It's going to happen to us all, isn't it, but yes, it's very hard.  It's hard (a) because they're at a level where they want to enjoy life.  We're at a level where we're wanting to run a business professionally, have them skilled and trained up, be proactive in terms of the face of the trust.  So once again we're needing assistance because of our financial situation in terms of the infrastructure to train the volunteers and to have them feel comfortable with the roles that they have at the sites, and to build into them and instil in them the knowledge of the conservation practices of the site, particularly, too, out in the garden.  We have large volunteer groups that are actually maintaining the whole of the garden space, and there are issues there.

	The trust overall needs assistance or access to funds in terms of the availability of conservation plans, interpretation plans, business plans, you name it.  At this stage we go for a grant for a specific property.  We may not get it.  If you take the NEGP grants for instance - and I did look back on that reflectively - the trust made 67 applications during the time that the NEGP grants were available, of which 13 were successful and five were used specifically at Clarendon.  We're running eight sites, we're not just running one.

	I do believe the government at a national level and possibly even at a state level have an ability to tap into services that would assist not-for-profit bodies like ourselves in terms of access to skilled labour for conservation plans, interpretation plans, things that normally in a grant process can cost up to 50, 60 thousand dollars.  So that is pretty much it from me.

DR BYRON:   Thank you very much, Jennie.  You've made the point very clearly about the need for additional financial resources, but one of the things that we have to look at in terms of how the framework of the system operates at the moment is how well the existing funds are being spent.  There's no point in trying to fill it up when it's still leaking like a sieve sort of thing.  How can we be satisfied that the funding is already efficiently spent?  All the other trusts have also made the point that, "Our expenditures exceed our revenues.  Therefore we need more grants."  A businessman might say, "Maybe you ought to control your expenditure.  What else are you doing to increase your revenues?"  It's not obvious that the answer is a larger cash payment from taxpayers.  Is there anything else that can be done?

	Sometimes people have suggested lateral creative ways of increasing your own earnings or to - I imagine you've already done everything you can to reduce your outgoings, but anyway.  Can you enlighten us on that, please?

DR MYHILL:   I think you have to see -  it's how you look at this I think that's the important issue, and I think the other way I could put it was that if we weren't doing it, it would be costing somebody an awful lot more to be running these properties, and we are doing these on a shoestring.

DR BYRON:   Or it wouldn't be done at all.

DR MYHILL:   Or it wouldn't be done at all.

MS CHAPMAN:   Yes.  

DR MYHILL:   So therefore there's a step back from that saying, "Do you want heritage in Australia to be preserved?"  I think the answer has to be - if you look at the polling we did, the answer was yes, people expected to be there.  There's a sense in which I think we've been too generous as a trust, and that people have put endless amounts of time and energy and thought into this without costing it out essentially, and what we're finding is that the things that's probably caught is it if you own an old building, you know that it's a bottomless pit essentially; that costs are always going to be there, and they're not going to stop.  There are always going to be extra costs, and probably over time more.

	The second thing is that Jennie's point was that we have made a lot of attempts to bring increased numbers - we have looked at every possible way, put it that way - every possible way that you might increase the income to a property.  The income streams have been trying to be varied.  I'm saying not just here, but in every trust property.  We have weddings, but there's only so many weddings that you can have in a property.  There's only so many dinners you can offer for people to go there.  There's a limit to what you can do without setting up a separate business on the site, and even then it's not - you know, bed and breakfast is marginal as a supporter of a site.

	So I think if you treated this as an ordinary business and you factored in the hours that people have been working in the areas, they'd be even more in the red than they currently are.  So I suppose it goes back to the public good issue; do you want them there?  Yes.  I think most people do want them there.  What's the best way to do it?  We've been struggling manfully I think you'd have to say to keep these properties open, but I think all the trusts are at the same point which is that the cost to keep doing it - and also it's not just the maintenance and the current situation.  It's the fact that you're being expected, because of the growth as a professional heritage site, and the museums are a good sort of contrasting example, because they come under a government wing, I don't know what they cost, but Port Arthur is a fairly expensive operation.

	But they're also raising the standard in essence - quite rightly raising the standard of presentation, interpretation and so on.  So to keep even in the game in a sense in terms of the public presentation, you're always running a bit behind in terms of resourcing to do that.  I think the other point Jennie was making was that there once was a reasonable source of funding for the bricks and mortar that the trusts had access to under the NEGP, and while it wasn't everything, it was - you knew that you'd get some grants for that, because there was only essentially the trusts applying.  But once you open it up to a much wider range of people, then the chances of getting funding are lower, but the capacity to assume that you might get something from a property suddenly disappears.  

	So you might get a grant for Clarendon this year which does this bit, but you can't guarantee that you will get it for the roof in a couple of years' time even though that's the next step in the maintenance plan.  So the difficulty has been, as I see it, the fact that there is greater competition with grants, there's less grants available.  The granting system is in itself a chancy business, and the fifth thing is essentially that the presentation not only just has to be maintained in a fabric sense, but there's a higher expectation in terms of the quality of the presentation which needs to be pursued.  This is starting to become beyond the capacity of a volunteer organisation to produce.

DR BYRON:   Tony, if I can - just on that last point, the state government in their submission earlier this morning and I think some of the other trusts have pointed out the three components are the identification, the conservation and the presentation, and one of the questions that we're repeatedly asking people is how well are we performing on each of those three functions?  It may well be for example that you've done a pretty good job on identification.  You're going, mm, all right on the conservation, but struggling, and the presentation, the communication, the outreach, engagement with the public is the area where the bar is being lifted and you've got to go with it, otherwise you're not going to get the dissertation or the support.  Am I being too critical there?

DR MYHILL:   No.  You've identified exactly what the issue is.  The question is what happens next.

DR BYRON:   If you got an extra million dollars, would you put it all into identifying more places which may not be adequately conserved and may be locked up because there's nobody there to present them to the public or would you put most of that extra million dollars into then presenting the ones that you've already conserved, which is only a fraction of what's been listed.  There's all these sorts of trade-offs.

DR MYHILL:   Yes, those would be strategic decisions we'd have to make.

MS CHAPMAN:   And we certainly use the properties as education tools, too.  So I think we are very property focused to our detriment in terms of our bank balance, but it's the way it's fallen down.

DR BYRON:   Tony?

MR HINTON:   It's quite clear that not-for-profit organisations play a very important role in Australia more generally, and organisations like the National Trust particularly play an important role with regard to the heritage objective, and in that context, the trusts around Australia are putting the view that they could be a very appropriate, efficient, effective vehicle by which taxpayers' funds could be added to the conservation objective.  That's a quick summary and I see you nodding.

MS CHAPMAN:   Yes, that's good.

MR HINTON:   Bearing in mind my preamble ‑ ‑ ‑

MS CHAPMAN:   However.

MR HINTON:   There's always a however - there is an issue of accountability and transparency, and I'd welcome your comments as key players in the trust here in Tasmania, what sort of comfort can be given to taxpayers, generically speaking, that this transfer or this idea of this transfer of funds to NFPs would be used effectively and with accountability and transparency.  Can you give me some comments on that issue?

DR MYHILL:   I think as you are aware, we're in administration at the moment, and one of the reasons I'm here is I'm also on the committee that's looking at new forms of governance.  I think clearly that's been - I mean, in anticipation and also looking backwards, I think the view would have to be that we are looking at structures that would allow us to take better advantage of the granting process, and I think that will be part of what - we are moving from being a sort of a low-key community-based organisation into the sort of reality of the fact that we will have to apply for grants and we will have to seek sources of funding, and to do that, there are certain kinds of characteristics of the way that the organisation is structured and run that will need to be there.

	I come from the university sector and that was a transition we made some time ago, too, from seeing ourselves as just managing our own funding to being in an organisation which has sort of financial transparency and also process transparency.  In general terms, if we were to seek consultancies, then the audit trail was very clear within that organisation and I think that just has to be transferred into our setting as well because to move into this sort of era and to be available for that sort of funding, then clearly we have to have processes and structures in place that would allow us to conform to the requirements of government and others to fund us.

	Now, we're in transition in that I think you'd have to say, but it is certainly part of what we're looking at in terms of a future structure for the organisation and how it would be governed.

DR BYRON:   One of the things that I think induces a lot of people is that on the one hand, the trust is a voluntary membership based NGO, not for profit, et cetera.  On the other hand, it's got an act of state parliament.  The secretary of the relevant state department was talking about what he was doing about reforming the trust.  I can't imagine another context where the secretary of a government agency is talking about reorganising an NGO, plus the fact that this particular NGO process has a place in the statutory approval processes that development applications are routinely referred to this membership of NGO for a tick-off that these proposed works can be done.  So you're not just an ordinary NGO, are you?  Would it be ‑ ‑ ‑

DR MYHILL:   No, we're pretty special.

DR BYRON:   Yes, just remember you're unique like everybody else.  Am I right in thinking that not only I, but the public at large seem confused about the multiple roles of the trust?

DR MYHILL:   No, I think you're absolutely right, and I think that's partly because it's been a sort of an evolutionary sort of historical process the way which things have happened and since the Heritage Council and other sort of government structures have come into play.  So I think there's a need to articulate more clearly where we all sit in relation to each other.  I think the trust is in an interesting situation, I mean, partly forced upon us by the funding situation I would have to say in that we're both a community body in the sense of wishing to have and having an independent voice, but at the same time working with and, at the moment, discussing sort of partnership arrangements that would include - we have had access and we have had some funding.

	But it's no different I don't think from the fact that - I was just trying to think, other people have had interesting from elsewhere and still managed to maintain an independent voice.  I think that would be where we would wish to position ourselves, too.  There's also at the same time a movement perhaps in terms of a greater relationship between the trusts in general to provide support at a kind of a national voice as well.  So I think the strength from us comes both from our community support, but also the fact that we're linked into the trust movement in a broader sense which gives us sort of two prongs of independence I guess.

DR BYRON:   I don't think any other state National Trust is involved in the regulatory approvals works process the way that Tasmania is.

DR MYHILL:   I'm not aware of that because I'm not quite sure how the others operate, but I would have thought ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   They're not.

DR MYHILL:   They're not.  Okay.

DR BYRON:   That struck me as ‑ ‑ ‑

DR MYHILL:   Probably we're so much more important in the heritage area.

MR HINTON:   But maybe you could look at it playing the devil's advocate role the other way and say that in fact is a characteristic that's adding to the confusion, adding to the complexity.

DR BYRON:   And it's a burden on your members.

MR HINTON:   For example, you've got here a recommendation or at least views that the approval process needs streamlining.  Maybe one way to streamline that is to move the trust out of the process.  Is that oversimplification?

MS CHAPMAN:   I think there is no harm in the independent view.  We don't have the statutory powers that the Heritage Council have, and I think that in the future, the Tasmanian trust will probably work more in sync with what the Heritage Council is actually doing and with development applications specifically.  But I can see no harm in an independent voice if it's representative of a community sector of Launceston, Hobart or wherever, and the trust is putting up their hand for that particular issue.

MR HINTON:   As part of the consultative process with community.  Is that what you had in mind?

MS CHAPMAN:   That's right.  

MR HINTON:   Rather than a formal views obtained and approval given process.

MS CHAPMAN:   Yes.  

MR HINTON:   That's what you see coming out of the review of the Historic Heritage Cultural Act.

MS CHAPMAN:   I think that's also, too - historically that's what the trust grew from; concerns of the community in the development of Sydney Harbour or Port Melbourne.

DR BYRON:   But the landscape has changed a great deal in the last 40 or 50 years ‑ ‑ ‑

MS CHAPMAN:   It has.

DR BYRON:   - - - because then there were no state heritage agencies or state heritage councils.  There was no statutory listing, and it seems to me that the context in which the trusts operate has changed greatly in the last 30, 40, 50 years, and I'm getting the feeling that most of the National Trusts in each state are trying to develop their new identity and a new niche in this new framework.

MS CHAPMAN:   Yes.  

DR BYRON:   In Western Australia I think they're in the process of getting the act of parliament that gives them a special imprimatur repealed because it was getting in the way, and they're going to be a company limited by guarantee.

MR HINTON:   So you would see after the review of the act and the Tasmanian system has been reformed that there would be no need for your own National Trust list here in Australia.

MS CHAPMAN:   That was interesting to hear that this morning I think.  Once again I think it's certainly a list that we refer to as an organisation in terms of our own awareness of heritage in the state, and I don't know whether Marion has other views on that.

DR MYHILL:   No.  I think the question comes down to leadership and the vanguard in these things, and I think we would always wish to have some listing role in the sense that somebody has got to go the next step constantly.  19th century has been done quite well.  The 20th century is still barely touched, and to some extent the 19th century part that has been done, it's reasonably comprehensive, but there are other things that we have yet to look at, and I think what an organisation like ours does is have that capacity to look ahead, take the next step and act as a kind of educative body in terms of where - whereas government agencies tend to act on what is, we're looking forward in terms of what might be.

MR HINTON:   But if the list that gets established that has national significance and had state significance and local significance and lovely criteria that bring integrity and robustness and rigour to that system, that implies certainly to me that it is not a static list.  In fact it is reviewed such that things can come off and things can come on.  That suggests to me with that sort of construct it would be rather confusing to have another organisation here in Tasmania like the National Trust running its own list.  That would not preclude the trust being actively engaged in contact, communication and consultation with those who maintain the rigorous list and giving views what should come off, what should come on.  On the contrary I would have thought it would be essential that the trust be part of that process.

	But I would have thought having another list prima facie suggests to me to be (a) confusing, (b) a degree of complexity, using your scarce resources inappropriately and not good governance.

MS CHAPMAN:   I have to say in Tasmania, I mean, our list was provided to the Heritage Council for the foundation of their database.  So in actual fact, the list we're talking about is pretty much the same in this instance but I think because that list was developed by an enormous volunteer capacity, within the community there's a certain resentment that the information was handed over to be used with the powers which then put the trust in this quandary-type situation.  So it is still a matter of evolving and resolving these issues in my view, but I still can see no harm in an independent voice, and I think it's a good counter-balance to other strengths.

MR HINTON:   We're not likely to leave here today with me suggesting otherwise.

DR BYRON:   Of course there's nothing to stop anybody or any group of people from developing their own list of anything.  It's just how much credibility it's given or whether it's ‑ ‑ ‑

MS CHAPMAN:   That's right.  

DR MYHILL:   I think what people have got to see it as is a plus rather than a minus.  I mean the fact that people are actually interested in constantly looking at what else, what next, what else is an important source of creative energy I would have thought and should be regarded quite sensibly.  What they're working on at the moment is lists that are already in existence, but as I said, there's a lot that hasn't been looked at.

DR BYRON:   I thought initially when we started this inquiry that I was the only one who didn't really understand the differences between Register of National Estate, state heritage list and National Trust listing.  But I'd say rather than being half a dozen of us who don't understand, there's probably half a dozen of you who do.  But there's an awful lot of submissions we've received from people who thought, "But our place has been classified by the National Trust.  How can you say it doesn't have statutory protection?"  It doesn't, I'm sorry, or "Our place is on the Register of the National Estate, but" - well, you know, Register of National Estate never did confer" et cetera.  I shouldn't be surprised at how many people are confused because I myself was ignorant.

MS CHAPMAN:   And it has been - well, in Tasmania, it's only been seven or eight years that there's been this process of change, but there's certainly I think a huge amount of education that needs to be done to the private sector in terms of if they do own a heritage place, where do they go for information and how do they source easy steps to see them through their development application for the modification of their building.  That is seriously lacking.  It is one thing to have a regulation system and say, "We're here with a stick and we're going to tell you how to do it," of course someone is going to rebel unless there's ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Consultation.

MS CHAPMAN:   Yes.  

MR HINTON:   There's a review going on here in Tasmania - a review of the act - and early next year we're going to have progress there, but we also get the impression that a number of the state National Trusts are also re-examining how they fit in to this emerging different system, national, state, territory, local government, that is not necessarily reinventing themselves, but certainly examining themselves as to what is their niche, what is their particular expertise, what is their role for the period ahead in the different system.

	Presumably those National Trust aspects can be done through contact with your counterparts in states and territories to in fact get a synthesised way forward as to how the trust here in Tasmania will look relative to what it has looked like.

MS CHAPMAN:   Even the grant and aid process, too - the future for grant and aid and the funding for grant and aid, there's that shift there, too, which is calling into account a reason for the trusts to look at the way they're focusing on this specifically.  So - yes.

DR MYHILL:   But to take up that point.  Can I just take the point about the trust.  There is a sense in which we are becoming more national in the sense that discussions are going on in a more national way than they have perhaps before, but I think that also there would always be the feeling that there's not one template that fits every state trust because we all, with varying degrees, believe ourselves to have unique differences.  So while there might be some general areas of commonality I guess, I think the general ethos would be however that each trust has a somewhat different solution to the issue.  Some trusts, as I think you pointed out before, have got more properties than others.  Some trusts have got relatively few properties I think that they handle, and they don't quite see their role as being as much in that area as in perhaps some other - advocacy or education.

	I think there won't be the same answer in every state, but there will be an examination of the relative role definition in each of the states, and I would also suspect that there might well be some more cross-referencing in terms of - you know, some activities like magazines and things - sort of informational, educational areas where we're all trying to work quite hard on that, but they're quite expensive ways of going about it.  I think there's a strong sense in every trust that there are clearly sort of benefits of identity in terms of each state's heritage package, and that while there are national aspects, there are clearly issues that are very much more sort of state based as well and they would want to keep that flavour through it.

MR HINTON:   I'm hoping that your pessimism about the ageing membership of the trust will be countered by the fact to some extent at least that the population of Australia is ageing; that is the numbers who are traditionally volunteers, the older age group, are going to be in absolute terms larger.  Therefore a smaller proportion of the larger number may in fact be an increase for you.

DR MYHILL:   That's a very positive way of looking at it.  Perhaps we could have branches in the retirement villages; recruiting areas.

MR HINTON:   Fliers in departments and large employer locations saying, "If you are leaving work, here's an alternative activity."

DR MYHILL:   I have to say that it's only recently when we were examining this really that you start to look at what - we've tended to see the volunteers as sort of providing person hours in terms of properties, but there is the other side of it which is they do it because they enjoy it and it's not just for the heritage.  It is also for the social and other activities, and so I think we probably should put in for health grants I think as well.  We've done a very good job I think in keeping a lot of people very active and ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Out of nursing homes.

DR MYHILL:   Yes, so I think we should be funded for that, too.

DR BYRON:   I think we're going to have to move on in view of the time, but is there anything urgent or desperate that we haven't covered, because I would like to close up.

DR MYHILL:   Well, it is a never-ending story, but I think that unless you have anything further for us, we've probably in the documents given a reasonable indication of where we are and where we would like to be.

MR HINTON:   Thanks very much.

DR BYRON:   Thank you very much.  We might just adjourn until 20 past for a quick cup of tea.  Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

____________________

DR BYRON:   Thank you very much for coming, gentlemen.  If you could each introduce yourselves for the transcript and then if you could take us through the highlights of your written submission.  Thank you very much for that.  

MR LENNARD:   I'm Brendan Lennard.  I'm the council's cultural heritage officer and with me is Peter Curtis, who's the director development and environmental services with the Hobart City Council.  We provided a submission to the Commission on 29 July.  We made the point that it hadn't been formally endorsed by council.  It is actually going to the full council on Monday night, 15 August.  It went to a committee meeting of the full council last week, where they recommended that it be endorsed, so it's likely that it will in fact form the council's view.  So if there are any modifications we'll impart those to the Commission in due course.

	I guess the thrust of our submission is to advise the Productivity Commission how the council involves itself in cultural heritage issues, how it sees its role, how it deals with that strategically, how it deals with it in a statutory sense, make some observations about some of the current issues that exist.  A lot of the issues relate to the council's interaction particularly with the state government rather than the Australian government, and to some extent this submission has drawn pretty much on council's policies and council's sort of interaction with the state government over recent years, and there obviously has been an issue in relation to the Historic Cultural Heritage Act.  It was interesting having the opportunity of sitting through the government's presentation this morning.  

	We are aware that the Tasmanian government is addressing the various issues of the Historical Cultural Heritage Act, and I think the council takes some comfort in that.  There will be some issues that the council will have to I guess address in relation to potential modifications that the Tasmanian government makes in relation to this question of state heritage listing and local heritage listing.  Just to go to that particular point, council's current feeling on the matter is that it would be a lot easier if there was just one list.  In fact, when the Heritage Council formed its list in 1997 it was enshrined in the act that iously is going to vary case by case and what can happen to one building in terms of adaptation and growth and evolution will be different to another.  With those listings, those registration sheets et cetera et cetera are I think simply a flagging mechanism to say, "Look, this place does have some heritage value.  It does have some heritage significance.  This is how we've articulated it for better or worse."  That's how the Heritage Council and before that the National Trust has identified those places.  In some cases, the National Trust statement is a little bit more helpful than some of those statements.

DR BYRON:   I noticed that, they're variable.

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  The Heritage Council statements tend to be reasonably generic, and you'll find a fair bit of repetition, but I guess in the Heritage Council defence, I'm aware that as well as having those particular forms for each individual place, they have a number of general sort of guideline documents about the implications of listing.  They also offer advice.  They actually have a number of heritage advisers who are sort of architects.  They're quite keen to make those facilities available in the same way that the Hobart City Council makes my services available to potential applicants, to explain on a case-by-case basis the implications of this heritage listing.

	What that normally means is you really need to go and have a look at the place and understand what its values are.  You could spend hours articulating them all for each property and involve a lot of consultants' time et cetera et cetera.

DR BYRON:   Which could be unnecessary expense.

MR LENNARD:   Yes, and probably going to a lot of unnecessary expense when those heritage values probably aren't under any question.  It's probably better at the time when someone is thinking about modifying, changing, doing whatever they want to a building, to then invest the time at an early stage then and say, "Look, we'll go and look at your property and work out what are your needs.  Talk to the architects or designers and say, look, what are the implications for what you're proposing?"  Our planning scheme is very simple.  It just basically says - the City of Hobart planning scheme just says that new development on a heritage property or in a heritage area should be sympathetic to the values and not detract from those values.  It comes down to almost one paragraph to cut to the chase in our planning scheme.  It's a very simple ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   So really this is just a flag ‑ ‑ ‑

MR LENNARD:   It's a flag.

DR BYRON:   - - - that says, "Before you do anything or even think about doing anything, come and talk to us."

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  I think that's the way that it should be seen.

DR BYRON:   "We'll talk you through what's compatible and what we're unlikely to ‑ ‑ ‑"

MR CURTIS:   I think the other step in the process which the scheme does acknowledge is that possibly the first step in any major redevelopment is a requirement for a conservation plan and what we call statements of significance which would help to tease out the very issues that you're alluding to, and that is within this fabric, within this listing, what is indeed of significance, and to what degree can be it be adapted and modified et cetera et cetera.

MR HINTON:   But some have put the view to us that that very strength that you're just describing has an inherent weakness.  It carries with it discretion on behalf of the officials dealing with the judgment associated with that particular application, and when discretion emerges, to the full respect and integrity of you two fine officers, there could be some other council officers in another local jurisdiction that mightn't have the integrity embedded in this particular local government authority.  So that leads to the concern that if that discretion has with it lack of integrity, you end up with the worst of all worlds which is lack of consistency.

MR CURTIS:   Most definitely, and I think ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   What happens with that as well in terms of how decisions do get made of a favourable kind as opposed to an unfavourable kind.  So you see my concern that we have to be careful about presenting this as a strength as the overall system that might operate around Australia.

MR CURTIS:   Again the point you make is reinforced through the appeal process because that's the very thing that happens.  It's challenged.  There may be general agreement about the intrinsic values identified on those sheets.  The argument arises as to what extent within those values can work proceed and still maintain those values.  You will get a very diverse range of opinion and views.  I suppose what we're saying is that if you've got a competent conservation plan prepared by a heritage professional, then it's better than not having anything.  But as soon as you have one expert preparing a document, there are going to be half a dozen others out there that have a slightly different view as to the way in which it can be applied.

DR BYRON:   Maybe the answer to that question of giving discretion for case‑by‑case judgment is to have a simple and transparent appeals process that's not - you don't have to go the Supreme Court.  It's easy, it's cheap, it's fairly quick and efficient, but it's like the equivalent of a small claims court sort of thing where you don’t need to have barristers.

MR LENNARD:   We have, I guess it would be fair to say, such a system here, although it's increasingly becoming more legalistic.  I mean, up till a few years ago, it was the system you were describing then, but it's becoming increasingly more formal, more litigious.

DR BYRON:   Probably more values at stake.

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  

MR HINTON:   I had a question about your preferred approach and by the way, thank you very much for your submission because I think it touches on a very key issue for us which is the intersection of planning and heritage objective, and yet from the coalface from you people here in Hobart, it's very valuable for us.  The preferred approach, instead of the two approval processes that you've currently got, you'd really like to have your preferred model being a single application.  Within that is a process that would involve advice from the THC.

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  

MR HINTON:   It's unclear to me from the submission though whether that advice is obliged to be taken account of in terms of - let's say it's said, "That proposal would contradict the heritage characteristic of this building.  Approval is not forthcoming."  Is that view then subject to a valuation such that it still could be approved or is it an overriding no coming from the THC?  It still could get a no if THC gave a yes.  I understand that process.  It's the status of the THC advice that I'm getting ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   Whether it's a veto or advisory.

MR CURTIS:   That's a good point.

MR LENNARD:   That's a good question.  I guess my view is that if the Heritage Council rejected something and said, "This development should not proceed, full stop," I think it would be incumbent upon the council to basically impart that decision to the applicant.  

MR HINTON:   Why I raise it is that some others put forward this idea, and it's in the discussion that heritage should be embedded into the planning approval process.  Others say it should be separate, and when they say it should be separate, it's invariably because they would like to have the veto power operate, even though it would be part of the process, there may only be one application.

MR LENNARD:   Just looking at that particular issue, say the Heritage Council come back and say, "Look, this development should not occur because it's going to impact on heritage values to such an extent that they're going to be destroyed," the council I believe should still look at all the planning issues - traffic, parking, shadows, site boundary setbacks, all the usual sort of planning things and a general report should go to the Hobart City Council, the local government authority or whatever, and it would conclude, notwithstanding the fact that in general planning sense all the other issues are ticked off, there's a fundamental heritage objection to it to such an extent that the development should not proceed, and that would be the recommendation, I believe.  Now, if the person then wanted to take the thing to appeal, obviously the issue that they would be appealing would be the Heritage Council's issue.  

MR CURTIS:   It is an interesting question, and I suppose it depends again on - if the Heritage Council does move towards listings that are of state significance, then arguably that adds weight perhaps to their opinion in respect of that particular development, because what they're saying is that no redevelopment should occur; this is of state significance and it will impact upon other values of this property in their opinion, and perhaps that would lend weight for the council to say, "We really are dealing with a property of state heritage significance, and if the state heritage body says that this shouldn't occur, yes, we should be responsible enough to say it shouldn't occur."  

	There's a problem emerging here that I've always felt uncomfortable with, and that's this tiered approach to heritage value.  We can go back in this state to the old A and B listings of the National Trust.  At that time there was a perception that you couldn't do anything with As but you could do anything with B listings ultimately.  I think there's this danger again with national, state and local listings that it becomes a fiat to potential developers to say, "If it's a local listing, then it's of lesser heritage significance, therefore we should be able to put a bit of extra pressure on here to redevelop this.  The values aren't as great."  Of course, that's not really true.  For the local community and for other reasons, they could be of even greater significance.  

DR BYRON:   But to a smaller group of people.  

MR CURTIS:   Yes, to a smaller group.  

MR HINTON:   That's why I'm raising it, Peter.  The message this morning was that Tasmania will move down the track of other jurisdictions with listings of state significance and then there would be a separate listing of those with local significance, and that if you have your single application coming into the Hobart Council that has THC expressing a view on that particular site that is of state significance, quite clearly you'd suspect that the system would have a right of veto effect.  But if it's of local significance, then you could take the view that that's not really a THC view issue anyway, so it maybe should be a local decision on the significance, or erosion of that significance, taken at local council level.  But as soon as you go to that process, you're then increasing discretion again and you're increasing inconsistency.  The defence then becomes the Peter Neil model of robust appeal systems.  

	I'm quite attracted to that too, but I'm exploring this with you because your submission in fact seems to me to provide very useful information, but it still needs to be drawn out a little bit as to how it might operate under the new real world coming down the plath at us.  

MR CURTIS:   Yes.  Under our current planning scheme the council's policy position, you'd have to say, is that it ultimately has a discretion, notwithstanding the heritage value of the building, under certain circumstances to significantly modify the development for other reasons.  We have clauses in our schemes that sort of say if there are overriding economic or other reasons, or the building can't be used for other purposes - those sorts of things that creep into all planning schemes to give the council a discretion at the end of the day to perhaps do what ultimately it on balance sees appropriate notwithstanding some heritage significance.  I don't think we've abused that as a council, and it is there, because there is a feeling, I dare say, amongst the elected members, that they want that comfort to have that discretion at the end of the day.  

DR BYRON:   In exceptional cases. 

MR CURTIS:   Yes.  

MR HINTON:   Let me take it further in that there may be some councils out there in Australia - I'm not saying Hobart; in Australia - that would be perceived by any judgment less than sympathetic to the consideration of heritage buildings, the priorities being jobs, jobs, jobs, development.  In those circumstances, they would use their discretion under this hypothetical system, fairly invariably, that would not protect the heritage characteristics of the building.  In those circumstances some states might take the view that the system needs to be so robust that that can't occur, and hence would constrain the discretion of the local government.  I'm raising this because we need to be making recommendations that fit Australia.  Whether it's one structure fits all is another issue, but I would have thought that we have to be careful that we don't take the model of Hobart, where it works well, for example, and apply it to some other jurisdiction where in fact it would be a recipe for disaster in the minds of some.  

MR LENNARD:   I don't know whether you have some sort of a call-in type provision for if there are significant heritage issues and the Heritage Council or the state heritage body or some other body has made significant representations about something.  That would obviously have an appeal opportunity as well.  I think it's an interesting issue how that would be dealt with.

	Interestingly enough, we occasionally get the scenario where the Heritage Council will approve certain work occurring where our own assessment of it as a local council is that the work is actually not satisfactory, and it may not be satisfactory on heritage grounds, under our planning scheme.  It's a real dilemma, because to try and represent that professional opinion to elected members  - of course, they'll say, "Well, the Heritage Council has approved this so who are we to question it?".  That does occasionally present a dilemma.

	The other thing is, just touching on this national estate local significance issue and the thresholds, I think there are enormous unresolved questions there.  I'm thinking of buildings like the little sort of Georgian cottages in Battery Point in Arthur's Circus or even the warehouses in Salamanca Place.  Clearly the little cottages in Arthur's Circus are of local significance.  They're an important part of Battery Point, important part of Hobart.  To what extent are those little sort of Georgian cottages an important part of the state of Tasmania?  I would say they're clearly an important part of the state of Tasmania.  I'd say they're of state importance, but then collectively those cottages in Arthur's Circus, as an important part of Hobart and an important part of Tasmania, are actually an important part of the Australian national estate.  They're an important part of Australia's heritage.   So are the warehouses in Salamanca Place.  They're an important part of Australia's national heritage.  They are of national significance, if you like.  

DR BYRON:   Fortunately I don't have to make choices like that, but would the Australian Heritage Commission, who's responsible for putting the Australian Heritage Register together, say, "Yes, that is of some significance to many Australians but not of sufficient significance to enough Australians to get it on the list"?  

MR LENNARD:   That's exactly the question.  

DR BYRON:   People in Queensland and Western Australia may not know of ‑ ‑ ‑

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  There are many, but the building that we're in now, the post office across the road, you would have to say, "These buildings are of national importance," but are these any more important that Victorian and Edwardian post office buildings and town hall buildings all round the country?  Maybe not, I don't know, but to us they are.  We would clearly say these buildings are important not only to Hobart and Tasmania; they're actually important parts of Australia.  

DR BYRON:   But so is probably every other city hall or post office.  

MR LENNARD:   Yes, I know.  But how you actually establish these thresholds and these criteria ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Come back a step.  We were on the process of the unsympathetic council example.  One possibility that's been put to us is that the way to address that circumstance is to still have the decision at local government but the appeal goes to the higher level, that is, the state level, so when the local government unsympathetic to the heritage objective says, "No way.  Sure, go ahead.  Knock it down and put up your townhouse," the appeal by the community can go to the state level tribunal, which then provides only involvement in cases of dispute, not approval.  So your decision is at the right level but the appeal at the higher level.  Would that work in Hobart?  

MR CURTIS:   I think it would.  I'm torn also between ensuring that the local community still retains some control over what it perceives to be of local significance and local value and how it may or may not choose to protect to that.  Clearly the example that you've given is the problem.  Whether it is that much of a problem in reality or not, I don't know.  I suppose that's something that you're going to suss out, or maybe you have already.  I wonder wether anecdotally there is that evidence, that people are acting so irresponsibly that they're not taking note of anything of value within their community.  

	I think the first thing to ensure - and this can be done through state legislation and model planning schemes, et cetera, if they're not already there - the planning scheme templates, which simply require first and foremost for a local community, through its planning scheme and whatever, to have a heritage component in its scheme, to identify those things that as a community it believes to be of heritage significance, to have standard provisions that ensure that where local heritage values are identified, they're dealt with in a proper way or they're dealt with in a particular way.  It doesn't avoid the appeal process.  That ultimately is there for the watchdogs in the community to say, "Look, this isn't an appropriate decision.  We think that should be taken to appeal."  As you say, where that appeal body sits is really the next question.  I think our appeal system works quite well.  It's efficient, it's fairly accessible, increasingly the litigious nature of the process is becoming far more difficult - the outcomes are becoming less consistent - for a range of reasons:  the nature of the experts, the nature of the legal representatives that are present.  All those things have an influence of the consistency of outcome, unfortunately.  

DR BYRON:   Can I explore a possible sort of non-regulatory way through a hypothetical scenario:  there's a really nice old interesting building down the end of the street where we all grew up, and the owner has decided that the cost of maintenance are going up and up and up and it's not delivering the services, it's not longer fit for purposes or whatever, it's not listed by anybody or anything, and he's decided to sell it to somebody who's going bulldoze it and put something else up.  There are 200 of us who feel passionately about this old place that's been there since we were kids - the grandfather lived there or something.  One way we could do it is go to the council or the state government saying, "Put a list on this," and then what happens?  Eventually it will just rot slowly instead of being demolished quickly.  Another scenario is that the 200 of us who feel passionately about it each put in $10,000 and we buy it and then we do something with it - I'm not sure what yet.  That's another problem.  

	Is there an opportunity, when there's a small number of people who feel passionately about conserving a particular place, whether it's an old World War II airfield or the old race track where the stock cars used to race in the 50s or something, for a small company or whatever to acquire it and then manage it appropriately?  Is that a solution sometimes rather than using planning powers or the courts to say the person who currently owns it, who doesn't want to keep owning it and maintaining it, has to?  That doesn't seem  to be a terribly successful outcome either.  

MR CURTIS:   It's a model that could be applied.  I can give you another similar example, unrelated to heritage.  A good Hobart example of that is say bushland that's deemed to be of value.  

DR BYRON:   Yes, a bush heritage park.  

MR CURTIS:   The council has just recently purchased on behalf of the community significant tracts of land in Mount Nelson.  That could equally have been a number of heritage buildings or it could have been other heritage assets.  I think the difficulty is that the extent of heritage goes well beyond the capacity of local communities and groups to solve the problem, so to speak, by purchasing it and owning it.  That can apply in a limited number of cases perhaps where it is deemed to be of particular significance, but the capacity of the local community to keep on doing that ‑ ‑ ‑

MR LENNARD:   Yes, I think that's the thing.  

DR BYRON:   The Bush Heritage Fund that started here in Hobart is actually now doing that all over Australia.  We don't beat around the bush, we buy it.  They're identifying places of very high conservation value where they don't attempt to buy every metre, every hectare.  In some sense that's similar to what the National Trust was doing 40 years ago, picking out the really important places of high conservation value, targeting them and if nobody else would buy them and look after them, they would buy them and look after them.  

MR LENNARD:   Yes, the National Trust - well, certainly internationally, I think - had a small houses scheme where they would actually buy a house that was derelict or under threat, they would actually put up the money and buy it and invest some money in fixing it up and selling it.  I mean, they are limited opportunities when the number of heritage places is disproportionate to the population.  I mean, no doubt you've already heard about that.  So this idea of 200 people sort of chipping in and buying the local pub, I don't think would work so well, even in Hobart.  It certainly wouldn't work well, I don't think, in Tasmania.  But, yes, there may be instances where it might work.  

	The situation that I see quite often is someone who has a house and they want to do something which is in conservation terms derogatory to it, they want to do something which doesn't achieve conservation outcomes, and they say, "Well, I've got to do it this way, I've got to do that, I've got to take out all these timber windows and put aluminium windows there," et cetera, "I've got to add on another flat at the back to make it economic."  I know from experience that there are other owners who would quite happily take that building on and not do those things and who would be prepared to actually look after the building.  Sometimes the buildings haven't actually found the right owners; it's not that the owners haven't found the right building, it's the other way around.

DR BYRON:   The question of changing the owner to fit the building, rather than change the building.

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  I really think it is quite often the case.  A classic case was a property, a conjoined set of cottages in Cascade Road here, probably about 18 years ago.  Someone came along, a developer bought them, wanted to demolish them.  The National Trust - it was more 10 years ago so it was before I joined the council.  The National Trust made a representation saying that it shouldn't happen.  I think the council did refuse the application.  The National Trust argued at the tribunal on the side of the council against the developer saying, "These buildings were capable of being cared for," and they were ultimately successful.  So the buildings couldn't be demolished, they had to be retained.

	The first thing the developer did was to sell them and in fact the person who then bought them did an incredible job, fixing them up, restoring them and actually ended up winning an award for the exercise actually which I guess helped pay some of the bills.  But that was a classic case where the builders eventually found the right owner.  My view is that most people who live in old buildings, particularly in Hobart, live in them because they like to live in them.  They like to live in the streets that have old buildings.  They don't live in these old areas just because they're convenient to town, they live in them genuinely because they feel comfortable with the environment they live in.  Quite often it's the case of a house that does have problems is really getting the right owner.

MR HINTON:   That intersects nicely with my question about funding programs that as your submission very usefully - thank you very much - describes the council's heritage funding program.  That detail is very useful for us because it gives us substantive, concrete examples of how a funding program works.  But those sorts of programs, whether they be rate rebates or direct grants or whatever, work in circumstances of the kind you've just described where the private ownership of a particular building, particularly a residential building, the people there want to be there and they want to maintain it and therefore the consent that the council can help them maintain it, that's a plus from their perspective.

	But there's another category of owner who doesn't have the money to maintain it and in fact might even not live there, and therefore you get the "benign neglect" to pick a term used by Neil a moment ago, such that it deteriorates.  Do you think the council should have - or councils around Australia - powers to address those circumstances in addition to the sort of extreme circumstances like safety?  If a building is crumbling and causing public potential safety concerns then most councils can take action to redress that.  But should there be some power of forced action on ownership in circumstances where the heritage objective is not being achieved?

MR LENNARD:   There is in relation to Tasmania under the Cultural Heritage Act.  There are actually provisions to not only stop the kind of building that they've seen where someone has actually (indistinct) but there are also provisions to actually undertake repairs.

MR HINTON:   Have they been used?

MR LENNARD:   Not aware that they have been used.  

MR CURTIS:   No, I mean, as someone again that's very much involved in dealing with abating the statutory nuisances in that process you actually have to go through, enforcement is a nightmare.  It is an absolute nightmare.  If you achieve an outcome in five years, you're lucky going through the process, and invariably the organisation has to pay the cost.  You will never recover the cost.

MR HINTON:   Usually government entities, whether they be local, state or national, are perceived by the judicial processes to have deeper pockets than individuals.

MR LENNARD:   Yes.  

DR BYRON:   But one good example of an organisation that may own a heritage listed building and decides they can't afford the maintenance is the churches.  We've had submissions from a few of them:  buildings that are surplus to requirement - I think the Uniting Church particularly had that because of the amalgamation of three into one; declining populations in rural areas and ageing congregations; occupational health and safety issues where the church is a workplace.  So the management is now criminally, as well as civilly, responsible for injuries in the workplace in many jurisdictions.  What the churches have said, "If we had an extra million dollars we would probably put it into social services, rather than putting it into bricks and mortar, you know, or replacing the slate tiles on the roof."  So even if it's heritage listed at a state level as being highly significant, if the congregation simply doesn't have the money to pay for it, what do you do?

MR HINTON:   Have your budgets been squeezed by maintaining your own heritage buildings?  You must have a lot here in Hobart.

MR CURTIS:   Yes.  I'd be honest and say not significantly, and the reason I say that, I mean, this building has had quite a lot of money spent on it over the years, obviously.  I mean, one of the fortunate things in Hobart - I'm generalising - probably Tasmania generally, is that the climate and the quality of the stone and lack of general pollution means that the overall quality of our buildings isn't all that bad, if you look at the money the state government has spent on buildings over recent times.  But apart from this building there are other heritage assets we've got but this would probably be undoubtedly the most significant sandstone building we have and it's at a point where it is in good condition at the moment.  So there's not a lot of money to be spent in the foreseeable future.  You would probably go another 25 to 30 years before you had to spend a great deal more.

MR HINTON:   I've got one more question, given the time.  I've probably got lots of questions but can I have one more?

DR BYRON:   Your last one.

MR HINTON:   He's a tyrant.  It's looking more broadly here in Tasmania, not just in Hobart, that is Hobart clearly has a strong focus, Hobart Council has a strong focus on heritage for the obvious reasons, just looking out the window.  As someone said to us, a number of local government areas and councils have very limited resources and capacity to pursue heritage judgment, heritage listing and heritage assessments and whatever.  Is there scope - and it's maybe already occurring - for some sort of outreach program by the Hobart City Council, you know, do you, Brendan, get out there and visit Strahan or wherever?

MR LENNARD:   I don't see there would be any limitation to do that.  I think my own view is that the council, as a capital city council, does have a leadership role, and that actually hasn't occurred.  We've had some interaction with immediate neighbours, Glenorchy and Clarence indirectly merely because the person that assists me has done some part‑time work in those other councils, so she's bringing that sort of expertise that's been developed here to those other councils - Clarence and Glenorchy.  But that's not been a formal arrangement that - I mean, it's been endorsed by council through the general manager, but it's not something that the council has gone off to seek.  But I see no reason why the council couldn't - I mean, we're actually involved with industry networks and cultural heritage practitioners throughout the state, and other sort of stakeholders.

MR CURTIS:   We provide support to other councils in a whole range of different ways.  But Brendan is correct, we're not necessarily doing it in heritage but it's only because we haven't been asked, I suspect.  I mean, we provide support to Tasman Council, for example.  It's a fair distance away from us but in a number of administrative type areas, as Brendan says, we also have arrangements where we're sharing staff.  We're sharing project officers with Brighton Council at the moment.  We've shared them certainly with Glenorchy in the past and we have staff exchanges to those councils.  So I think we recognise our leadership responsibilities and role here and certainly the current general manager is very keen to share those resources when it's appropriate to do so.

DR BYRON:   Yes.  Well, I'm sure we could go on the whole day, but thank you both very much for that.  Is there anything urgent that we haven't covered that you need to raise?

MR LENNARD:   No, I don't think so.  Thank you for the time.

MR CURTIS:   Thanks for the time.

MR HINTON:   Thank you very much.  Once again, thank the council very much for this fantastic building and this room to hold these hearings.

MR LENNARD:   More than welcome.

____________________

DR BYRON:   If you'd just sort of officially introduce yourself for the transcript and then you can take us through the main points that you want to do today.  Thanks for coming.

MR BARRON:   Thank you very much indeed.  Vincent Barron representing Tourism Council Tasmania, and I'm a director of Tourism Council Tasmania, a board member.  The submission we make is that on behalf of a broad membership of the Tourism Council Tasmania, and we just seek to address a range of issues that probably impact fairly directly and maybe somewhat narrowly on this sector of the Tasmanian industry and on the Tasmanian economy.  So we'll see where we go from there in raising some of those issues.  The first thing we acknowledge the unique position that Tasmania enjoys, having such a concentration of the best and earliest examples of our national built heritage.

	Within a short drive of anywhere in Tasmania, you can enjoy probably more than anywhere else in Australia.  It's at all parts of the island, as no doubt you're finding out.  It's an asset and one we particularly sell, and more than that it's a key element of Tasmania's brand, and we really are concentrating more on that brand at the moment.  So protecting examples of our built heritage is important, but so too we submit is promoting the benefits and the use and the experiences that these properties should provide, and we'll develop that in a moment.

	Tourism is a key contributor to Tasmania's economy.  Our built heritage is a key attraction and potentially with the right application - by that we're meaning providing really appealing and attractive experiences based on our built heritage - it could make an even larger contribution than it is at the moment.  We say that we need to look at the role of heritage buildings at the start, and we see it as being to add value to a community in a number of ways and for the benefit of generations to come.  We also need to associate the value of heritage with a benefit to the economy.  That could be across a range of things.  It could be tourism.  It could be specific to accommodation, it could be attractions, construction examples of an era gone by, lifestyle comparisons from an era gone by.  The thing is we then need to promote the use of these heritage buildings for those particular reasons.

	In Tasmania there are some very good examples of heritage buildings that are worthy of protecting.  However, simply not everything is worthy of protecting.  Not everything is excellent, and in some areas, heritage is losing its attraction.  We could get to the stage of having too much heritage.  We should not be acquiescing to the anti-everythings where the real value, the benefit to the community and the economics of keeping the building can't be demonstrated.  

	We are known for our heritage buildings.  In fact, it's a means by which we differentiate ourselves, say, from New Zealand which is seen as a like market in this industry.  In some instances now, we need - having said that we value the heritage, we need to go the other way.  If we're going to keep tourists coming, we need more high-standard accommodation, more modern attractions and not necessarily more heritage buildings preserved.  The market in some sectors can almost be seen to be saturated in heritage buildings without the previous caveat I put on it, but they have a benefit and they're being promoted.

	So in reality, the market is looking for more than what old buildings can provide as attractions or even in some adaptive reuses, and if we address some of these very uses.  It's not conducive to developers and investors to be held to ransom thereby jeopardising economic activity and jobs by third party objectors who have no understanding of how, let alone the ability to make these sites pay for their upkeep, and there have been recent examples of involvement, and specifically I suppose National Trust which is going through a transition period at the moment is highlighted here; the need to keep these buildings, the best of them, alive and providing an attractive and appealing experience for visitors is probably best demonstrated by looking at what's happened in some cases where they have not been kept like that; observing the fate of some of the National Trust properties not having the appeal of some years ago and not being able to be maintained.

	So these buildings need a commercial application to be maintained as living examples.  Many of them we've described as being in a parlous state  They need to be promoted, able to contribute to the economy and jobs by providing an experience and enjoyment of the past.  They must be changed again from static furniture displays and continue to provide an experience.  

	There is a big cost burden on those who seek to develop.  Those buildings worthy of presentation that will undergo adaptive reuse still need from the ground up every conceivable service from a complete rewiring for power and light, replumbing, and there is a major cost and I'd just like to develop that aspect of it.  If these adaptive reuses provide a public and community economic and social benefit, then we would submit that some incentive or recompense should be made to the owner or developer.  Some examples of the costs being borne disproportionately by owners and developers - an example is you can have a well-maintained hotel property, it's been restored to an example of its era.  It is a major tourist attraction, the wider community use the facilities without buying a beer or doing anything else.  So they're not contributing financially in any way.  So this is a working experiential site.  It's an excellent example of an adaptive reuse.

	When it comes to the upkeep of that and other heritage buildings using traditional building materials as against modern materials and methods, it does impose a considerable cost, and that impacts on the heritage building's operational competitiveness compared to a more modern hotel that they're competing with down the road.  Again getting down to not so much the nuts and bolts, the slate and sandstone and paint specifications that require more expensive paints, they all contribute to the additional costs of maintaining a heritage property, and we again submit that if the community want these buildings to be preserved, the community should contribute.  

	This could be in a whole range of areas and obviously requires further investigation and further study as to how that may be done.  It could be increased tax deductibility, it could be depreciation schedule changes, it could be cash grants from a range of levels of government for periodic major works such as slate reroofing or sandstone maintenance or anything of that nature.  Basically that's the area we've chosen to submit on, Mr Commissioner, so I'm happy to try and answer any questions.  

DR BYRON:   Thank you very much.  There are a lot of interesting points I'd like to pick up from that.  The second one is about the contribution of heritage tourism to the economy, but the first one is a general question.  Would what you've just said be taken with shock, amazement or horror by some in the heritage community?  Is that a radical position?  

MR BARRON:   I don't see it as a radical position but, yes, it could be taken as perhaps a view from a private sector, and we are an industry representative body, so that's the view that we look to take.  However, if one looks at the examples we've given of where buildings have been preserved without any thought as to who has the carriage of maintenance and therefore it shouldn't be taken in any way, shape or form - buildings such as this are in commercial use.  That's been taken care of; it's some of the other examples that are held up and no-one has responsibility for but everyone wants to see stay there.  If that shocks people ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   I've made almost the same statement this morning.  Somebody has to be responsible for looking after it and somebody is going to have to pay, and everybody seems to agree that the cost of maintaining older buildings is higher and likely to become even higher in the future.  So there's no denying that there are costs involved.  One of the things we've got to look is how those costs are going to be met.  If they're not met, the places will simply deteriorate.  

	We've had other people tell us about the business operating out of heritage premises and the guy down the road who doesn't have to pay $50,000 for the slate roof.  If the first one goes broke because of the additional costs of maintaining a heritage building, then who's going to look after it?  That point has been made I think fairly forcefully, but coming back to static displays of furniture and museum houses, do you think that there are more people around Tasmania or more generally who are coming to the realisation that static museum house displays with unprovenanced bric-a-brac are not a great tourist attraction; in fact, they don't even pay for the costs of maintaining those houses?  

MR BARRON:   I'm happy to comment.  Just taking it back a step, in all of this it is a matter of assessing what is necessary to provide the benefits we talked about for future generations, how many examples of whatever heritage building we need.  That's the first question before we decide to do more than adaptive reuse and bulldoze it.  That's number 1 that came out it, so the second point I noted there from the discussions was the mix.  It's the mix of how many examples we have and what we are seeking to provide in the way of construction examples, lifestyle examples of years gone by.  We don't need them all; it's getting the mix right.  

	The third part about it is, I don't think anyone should be surprised there is a place for museums - very, very important - however, not every heritage building needs to be a museum and I think there is a realisation coming upon our community that we cannot just have static displays as museums.  In fact, my initial point was in Tasmania's case we have a strong built heritage:  it's getting the level right, getting the mix right.  What we're lacking is making more of those buildings, promoting them and putting an experience into them.  

DR BYRON:   That's a point that's come up a couple of times this morning.  If you think of the three phases of identifying and conserving and then presenting that to the public and telling a story about it - not just in Tasmania but a number of places, it's been suggested - it's that third step where we're really falling down.  We have some fabulous assets but we're just not marketing or presenting or when people come we don't make it interesting, exciting, dynamic enough to get them to come back and bring their friends.  

MR BARRON:   I think that's a fair statement.  It's a matter then of again at what level we want to do that, and there are enough recent examples here in Hobart, in New Norfolk in particular, of some massive investments on adaptive reuses of heritage buildings.  So if the market can stand it, we can attract, for the right mix and dotted around the place - not every building - commercial development at the level we require.  That does promote it and that does preserve the examples that we're looking for.  I don't know if that specifically answers that question.  

DR BYRON:   Yes, it does.  

MR BARRON:   If we can't find through government, local government or any other means a really positive potential use, we should look very hard before we keep heritage buildings.  

DR BYRON:   Thank you.  

MR HINTON:   Vin, thank you very much for attending today.  Are you going to give us a written submission following up your presentation this morning?  

MR BARRON:   I can do that, Mr Commissioner, yes. 

MR HINTON:   We'd be delighted to have it, because it has a couple of advantages:  we make sure we get it right as to what you're saying, but others can see your points as well, though this transcript will be on our web site for all other interested parties to see as well.  But it's also from the Commission's point of view very useful to have interested parties from a range of perspectives coming to the Commission to express their views.  It helps us reach robust conclusions, so thank you very much for your particular perspective. 

	I had a couple of questions I wanted to follow up on, and the first one was - I'm not sure whether I heard you correctly right at the start.  I got the impression that you had some concern about Tasmania being over-heritaged; that is, the conservation objective has been pursued too far.  I had a question whether or not that took you down to a conclusion that that process was getting the balance wrong or whether in fact it lacked rigour such that the integrity of the heritage objective was being eroded and there's an important difference between that.  The first has integrity, just that it was the question of funding; the second one is there's a lack of integrity, and it's that whether or not which particular view you're in.  

MR BARRON:   I suppose I'd have to go back to answering the balance one first because that's the point I've made in how many and getting the mix right, so I probably need to concentrate on that.  There is a requirement to keep examples and - look after the future generations and keep examples of life and construction a alderman on Clarence City Council and asked him for a copy.  He did exactly what he said he would do, and within 48 hours I had a copy.  Unfortunately, the executive summary, the simple cheat sheet, if you like, which enables us to focus on the key issues and implementation tasks, was actually missing from the council's copy.  When I contacted the alderman concerned, he said - and I believe him - "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of that," and although he was on Cape Barron Island for the day, he undertook to come back to me, which he did.  He said, "I'm told that that is the council's only extant copy and the chap who prepared it is dead so, sorry, we can't help you."  I just found it incredibly interesting when as a local organisation we're looking at this major plan.  It took two years or more to prepare, and the council has mislaid the executive summary of the implementation targets.  

	But going on further, I raise some issues which we could point to specifically within the community, and although I'm appearing here as an individual today, the submission I've given is totally consistent with the objectives of our organisation, which is the Richmond Residents Association.  I'm also a member of the Coal River Valley Historical Society, which in fact is managing Oak Lodge, a property what's owned by the National Trust.  So we have an active community in the heritage area.  The specific examples I've raised, which I've taken both from the Coal River resource management plan and the current Richmond planning scheme 1993, illustrates to me and to other people in the community that, despite the planning, despite legislation, despite subordinated legislation, the very issues that have been raised in this hearing earlier today about "council discretion" are among the  major issues we face.  

	In discussion with aldermen, where I've pointed the inconsistencies of decision-making with the legislation, one of them said - I won't give his name because I know him very well - "Barry, the operative word is 'discretion'," but I can give you some examples where two bodies were created at the time of the change from the former Richmond Council, which was incorporated into the Clarence City Council in 1992-93.  At that time, because of the change in the style of local government, the electorate had to now vote for 12 councillors, whereas previously we had an award system.  Quite literally I could stand next to my councillor in the pub and say, "Hey, mate, what's going on?" and deal with it in that way.  We now have a remote body - and I don't want to overplay this - some 15 kilometres away sitting in a modern office next to a large shopping centre, and all of the aldermen profess that they equally represent our local area.  We're not large enough in ourselves to get a local candidate into the council, and knowing the kind of trade-offs and so on and so forth anyway, almost certainly that councillor, even if we could elect one, would have, I would have thought, a limited effect to represent our view.  

	Anyway, the basic situation as we see it with, for example, the Richmond planning scheme - and the point I was making was that when the councils merged they set up two bodies, a Richmond Advisory  Committee and a Richmond Planning Advisory Committee.  In both cases you'll note the word "advisory" although they're subcommittees of the council.  A classic example is less than 18 months ago a decision was made on a particular building in town that it should be allowed to become a multiple-seat restaurant when it had previously been tea rooms.  Coincidentally the ownership of that building, which had recently been sold, had been associated with a trust or a family group of one of the aldermen.  Submissions were made.  The Richmond Planning Advisory Committee, which includes two aldermen, made a recommendation that this development application be refused.  Subsequently a report was made by the manager of Planning Assessments or something similar, who's a council officer, and his recommendation went totally against the Richmond Advisory Planning Committee.  

	Ironically, one of the two councillors who sat on the Richmond Advisory Planning Committee moved the motion that development should be passed; it should be approved. So we seem to have a councillor who on the one hand on the local advisory committee said it shouldn't be and then somewhere on the road to Damascus, or Belle Rive in this case, the shades fell from his eyes and he changed his opinion.  Not only did he change his opinion, but he actually moved that it be passed.

	I realise that this is not policy and this is the minutiae of local government, but the point I'm really wanting to make is we can have as many plans and as many planning schemes and as many policies, and lots of people involved in the process, but at the end of the day, if the written word is not implemented then, to use the old cliche, it's not worth the paper it's written on.  You end up getting some very frustrated electorate members, ratepayers, local residents, who not only get frustrated but they get cynical about the process and they withdraw from the process.  Signage is a classic example in Richmond.  The Richmond planning scheme, as is the Coal River resource management plan, is very strong on the controls for Richmond.  As an aside, I'm assuming that both the Commissioners are aware of Richmond and where it sits in the heritage area.  

DR BYRON:   Yes, been there.  

MR CHAPMAN:   Again going back to the old Richmond Council, there was quite a strong protection of signage in those days.  They did actually have standards, and if people deviated from the standards then they were given a personal visit and then those signs either disappeared very rapidly or they were forced to change them.  I can attest to that because I've run a business in Richmond; I've applied for signage under the old conditions.  The Richmond planning scheme has an even tighter set of requirements.  It's an excellent scheme on the surface of it, but in reality in the last 12 years only five signs have been applied for - in fact, less than five - and yet signage has burgeoned.  One of the examples I use, because it's quite current, is a business in Richmond called Ma Foosies.  It was owned by a couple for 21 years.  They were very successful, or appeared to be.  They were investors in other businesses locally, they sent both their children to private school, all out of the tea rooms.  

	They sold this building in July of last year.  Within weeks three discreet signs had turned into five larger, more garish fixed signs, a sandwich board, which they'd never had before, and five umbrellas for the sunny days with generic advertising on them from Ice Rock drinks to Liptons tea.  I provided JPEG photographs in their full glory of colour.  Certainly in the black and white version you won't get, if I may use the term, the horror of all that, but it's totally inconsistent with the heritage aspects of both the building and the town at large.  

	Why has this occurred?  Only the councillors, the aldermen, can tell you, but I perceive that they have a difficulty, because they have allowed this erosion of the scheme, they've turned a Nelsonian blind eye to what's been going on now for the last 12 years, and suddenly the enforcers are in town in terms of our organisation and individuals like myself, and they're in a difficult position, because if they knock back these people their inconsistency is going to go to a tribunal and the whatsit is going to hit the fan.  So at the moment the discretion comes in again, and instead of dealing with this issue as a whole, they've done a little bit of horse trading.  They've made them reshape one piece of signage and move it, which was expensive for the people who put it up - without application, I might add; they just put this signage up - and they've then said, "But we want you to take those two signs down."  So it's this discretionary - a bit here, a bit there - rather than the actual implementation of the planning scheme itself. 

	This is typical of what's occurring in Richmond in terms of signage, and if we take other issues from the Richmond cultural resource management plan, we can see the continuing inconsistencies.  The plan itself reports particularly on the  Richmond bypass.  We have recommendations of wide consultations in Richmond, where a north-west bypass has been actually shown on local maps for close to 30 years but has never been implemented.  We've seen substantial increases in visitors to Tasmania, and because Richmond is either the second or third most visited place in Tasmania, a large number of visitors along a strip.  

	We have on the one hand the Tasmanian government wringing its hands and saying, "Yes, we're sympathetic," and, "We're this and we're that and the other," but then saying, "Look, it's all too expensive."  On the other hand we have the council saying, "The fabric is being damaged.  Something needs to be done," but in fact these are really political rights, because Richmond itself is not benefiting from any positive outcome.  Effectively little has been spent, and it was interesting hearing one of the earlier submissions.  There's a clear impression in Richmond that we've been cash‑cowed as a tourism product, that there's little or no investment and the kind of agenda that we've heard about today has been driven with sympathy in both state and local government because they appear to be almost entirely economic rationalists.  So, "Heritage in itself has no value unless we can make a dollar out of it."  

	I've been in business for 40 years.  I'm not anti-business.  That's how I make my money.  But in Europe, in Britain, people can actually do both, it would appear.  They can sympathetically integrate old buildings into modern business usage.  They don't need to be ossified.  They can be adapted in a way which keeps the basic external integrity of the streetscape, et cetera et cetera.  I'm probably preaching to people who know a lot more than I do about the subject.  But it is apparent for anybody who travels overseas that heritage can and does work very well elsewhere in the world and in fact is an integral part of a tourism product.  It doesn't clash with the aims of tourism.  One of the main reasons people go is for this sense of the eternal that comes from long-settled townships and buildings.

	So in terms of the Richmond bypass, we see there's been a lot of lip service given and then there are turf fights between the local government and the state government, but in the final event in 2005 we don't have a bypass.  There are those who argue that if - and particularly people with a short-term perspective, because one of the things you don't hear too much in Tasmania about tourism or about heritage is sustainability.  There are countries that have been magnets for tourists for 50 years, 70 years, 100 years in Europe.  There's this lack of consistency that the Commissioners themselves have raised earlier in this hearing.

	So it would appear that people often come to Richmond with a very short‑term business or economic perspective.  So we see lots of people moving in and out of tourism businesses.  There are the minority who stay for 15 to 20 years and become fully-functioning members of the community, but many other people are hardly known in social terms within the town because they are very busy on their businesses, they make their money, they then move on.  

	The other thing to point out about Richmond is it's a living community.  It's not a Port Arthur which has had a vast amount of money - I'm not gainsaying that - spent on it, but we're actually a living community.  People do live there.  We're concerned that whilst we should remain an attractive tourist destination that the total social and cultural fabric of Richmond is allied to the heritage factor, so it becomes an all‑embracing fabric, if you wish.  There are many other examples I can raise which is again in this minutiae of policy implementation, policy enforcement and so on.  I'm only talking about one small town of 800 people, but this is a significant issue for our community.

DR BYRON:   Thank you.  It's an issue that I guess one or two people have brought up in each state that - the details of course are different but there's sort of a general class of problem where there are plans and commitments and yet some agency at government at some level doesn't seem to be complying with the written plans and commitments.  It sounds like you've given us another example of that category.  I presume that you and the Residents Association have brought it to the attention of the "relevant authorities" what the requirements of a resource management plan are.  So can I ask what reply you received when you pointed out they seem to be overlooking this agreed plan - or not?

MR CHAPMAN:   The reply - and I actually have the copy of letters with me - in particular as a result of the, I felt, totally inadequate response by the elected council members.  I discussed the matter with the Environmental Defenders Office in Tasmania and they actually wrote to the council.  The council has never responded directly to the Environmental Defenders Office.  They have written a couple of paragraphs to me saying that this matter is still under investigation.  My original letter to the mayor and aldermen, on signage, I wrote on 4 December 2004.  As a result of the inaction which I had followed up subsequently with telephone calls and further letters, the Environmental Defenders Office wrote to them in March.  On 18 May the business that had installed these large number of signs made an application for a single sign.  I found this interesting.  The anecdotal evidence I had is that there were many discussions behind the scenes in this application for a single sign.  

	The council on Monday approved this sign, even though on this occasion the Richmond planning advisory committee recommended that it not be approved.  It is quite frustrating to see, if I can use the term, "illegal" signage sitting and staying there months on end, and then a council official writing a report for the consideration of the aldermen prior to a vote that says, "The council has recently been informed."  Now, this report he wrote in August 2005, and the council were informed on 1 December 2004.  Now, I've been in business, I've not worked in public service, and I don't wish to demean anybody here who is in public service, but maybe eight months is recent in the public service; in business, you would be out of business.  It's that simple.

MR HINTON:   Thank you very much for your written submission and appearing today and drawing this case to our attention.  As Neil says, it helps us get a better understanding of how the systems across different jurisdictions are working or not working.  My question is in relation to - well, your submission picks up signage and traffic management issues in particular.  Are you detecting incidences of also inadequate application of planning requirements for construction of buildings as well, or demolition of buildings?

MR CHAPMAN:   Unfortunately the construction of buildings, yes.  Now, I haven't approached the council on this one, but in June, just prior to - I went overseas for a month on 8 June.  The construction of an outbuilding in the historic commercial area of Richmond was drawn to my attention.  I advised the people, I gave them a draft letter to send that said, "Look, you know, I'm currently the guy around town that everybody wants to throw something at.  You've raised it with me and my advice is that you do this."  This outbuilding which was constructed on a boundary with a skillion roof - and this skillion roof, when it rains, sheds water onto this other person's property.  It's also covering, I am informed - and this not first-hand knowledge - access to either a stormwater connection or a sewerage connection.  The family that are constructing this building have previously constructed a building without approval in Richmond which was subsequently approved by the Clarence Council.

	So there's evidence of this continuous discretion, and the discretion appears to be what your relationship is with individual aldermen.  I hope that's not too indiscreet and that I'm not going to get some form of slander or libel suit, but I can only say it appears that way.  It appears that inaction is the main response from our council.

MR HINTON:   At Richmond you said there's 800 residents.

MR CHAPMAN:   Approximately; it is growing.

MR HINTON:   How large is the local government area overall?

MR CHAPMAN:   Perhaps Brendan might help me. 

MR LENNARD:   No idea.

MR CHAPMAN:   I believe they say they are now the largest, I think somewhere between 30 and 40 thousand.  Would that be a fair ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   That's moving more to the sort of average that we understand Tasmania now has ‑ ‑ ‑

MR CHAPMAN:   Yes.

MR HINTON:   Which means as you say, on your judgment, a single alderman out of that Richmond location would be very hard to achieve given the number of constituents in the local government area.

MR CHAPMAN:   Yes, and even if we could elect him, how effective would he be when he has to horse-trade with the other 11 aldermen.

MR HINTON:   But the fact that you don't have your own aldermen that in itself doesn't necessarily mean that the council overall does not have proper regard to the interests of Richmond; that is, what is the driving force for acting in a way that you assess to be negligent with regard to the planning requirements?  It's not because you don't have your own alderman, it must be other incentives or relevant aspects of work.

MR CHAPMAN:   In my view it's the economic imperative.  It's the fact that Tasmania has been economically disadvantaged until fairly recently.  There are those people who argue they're still substantially economically disadvantaged, and I have some sympathy with both the state government and council in that they sought to bring employment, because the lack of employment in Tasmania in the past has led to a lot of young people leaving Tasmania for the mainland, as you know we call it, and elsewhere.  But conversely it seems as though the pendulum has swung the other way and again, just hearing one of the submissions today which really surprised me, there's still this very, very strong element that anything that gets in the way of making a quid perhaps should be circumvented in some way.  "If we can't adapt it, well, we should get rid of it," seems to be the - and we know that in modern, civilised societies we have to integrate all of the elements.  We can't have a society that is a do‑nothing, won't change society.  Conversely, we really don't want to see societies that, you know, "Let's knock everything down and what we can do today is best."

DR BYRON:   I was just going to say there's a bit of a tension where the economics comes into this because, on the one hand some people are telling us that a very good reason for maintaining historic heritage places - buildings et cetera - is economics, and now you're saying that it not being maintained is economics.  We're trying to work out whether economics is the villain or the victim in this particular plot.  Maybe it's two different sorts of economics, but we might have to think about that a bit more later.

MR CHAPMAN:   If you were to ask me the question then I would come into the first category you spoke of.  It's my perception that those people who have the power to do things in the Richmond area come into that second category that I raised.  So I don't believe that heritage is in any way incompatible with a successful commerce, a successful business, but you have to take a longer-term perspective.  I can use an example:  in 1985,  myself and four other families purchased the former Bridge Inn.  Now, that was a sandstone building that was constructed - initially part of it in the 1830s; some a little later.  But in 1957, a single-storey skillion-roofed better block frontage had been added by somebody who was running then the working hotel.  I suppose the fact that he subsequently became the owner of the body-works might say something about that.  But in 85 we found a place that had had sandstone doorways knocked out, we found a place that had sandstone windowsills knocked out.

	We found a place with a single-storey 35-year-old concrete block addition to the front, and we were able to buy that and, with an investment of only $10,000 apiece, go out and raise the funds and restore it and turn it into a contributing building which is not recognised as part of the town's heritage, which still works, with then four businesses in it, and a residential flat in the stop storey.  So it can work; it can be done.  There is no reason why historic buildings cannot be adapted. 

MR HINTON:   The Franklin Street carpark issue:  you flagged that as a facility that's been developed but has not been utilised.  Perhaps you can explain to me the link here to why you're drawing this particular example to our attention.  Is it an illustration of action by local government not delivering outcomes?  

MR CHAPMAN:   That is the very reason.  In fact, the Richmond cultural resource management plan draws this out as one of the key issues in one of the eight major headings of traffic management, and the bypass was one of the issues, Franklin Street carpark was another, and there are a number of other issues.  We find it difficult to comprehend why our streets can be packed with visitor and local traffic, why planning restrictions are not enforced, why vehicles regularly park in areas that they are allowed to park in, but as soon as they're full on the main street they park on continuous yellow lines, where people are not supposed to park, in areas where buses are supposed to stop and pick up passengers and so on, and yet literally within seconds' walk of the main street is a very large carpark that's just had a very expensive new toilet block put in.  Yet the signs are confusing.  They're not obvious.  

MR HINTON:   Do you need a parking inspector?  Is that what you're suggesting?  

MR CHAPMAN:   At the end of the day, Tony, the current system is not working.  There's probably a range of solutions to this issue, but we're not seeing the solutions coming forward.  We raise issues with the council through its Richmond Advisory Committee, we raise them directly to the council, to aldermen and to officers of council, and we almost invariably get these rather - I won't call them patronising; that's the word, but dismissive maybe letters that, really rather like politics, you ask a question and somebody answers a different question.  We don't actually get an outcome that truly faces or deals with the issue that we raise.  So I tried to put that in context.  It's a town that can be saturated with vehicles.  Where you've got wonderful buildings that the tourists come to see, presumably for the ambience, whatever it may be, they mostly want to take photos.  They can't photograph the darned buildings because there's somebody's Winnebago in front of them.  

DR BYRON:   Okay, I think you've made that point pretty clearly.  Anything else? 

MR HINTON:   I'm fine, thanks.  Anything else, Barry, you'd like to draw to our attention that you think we've overlooked so far in your presentation?  

MR CHAPMAN:   I don't think you've overlooked anything in the presentation, but for somebody who believes in acting locally, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that we need to think and legislate nationally, that the big area of concern is the way that discretion is used by your hypothetical council.  

MR HINTON:   The earlier discussion this morning?  

MR CHAPMAN:   Yes.  

DR BYRON:   One of the things we have to think about is whether a system where rules are made in Canberra or Hobart would actually deliver you better outcomes than when they're made at Clarence City Council or whether the question is how to make the existing system deliver better outcomes - the outcomes that it currently promises.  Thank you very much for coming.  Thank you very much for the time and effort in the written and oral submission.  

MR CHAPMAN:   Thank you very much.  

DR BYRON:   Dr Abbott, would you like to come and take a seat, please.  Thanks for coming today.  We've read the letter that you wrote a few days ago about Richmond Bridge and so on.  So if you could just introduce yourself for the transcript and then take us through the main points that you wanted to tell us about the Richmond Bridge. 

DR ABBOTT:   I'll just introduce myself as Dr Abbott.  I gave some points, some notes there, and I'll just highlight some of the points.  If you've read the little letter I sent in, then you've got the main gist of the problem.  The Richmond Bridge is an unusual case insofar as it's owned by a state government and any efforts to conserve it will have to be made at that state government level.  The local government gets involved, but in such a peripheral way as to be of no consequence.  The other unusual feature about it is to conserve that bridge you'll have to build another structure.  There's no other way.  You can't strengthen it without destroying the historical integrity of it and so on.  

	At the moment it's the transport section of the Department of Infrastructure that's responsible for the bridge.  Its primary responsibility is to provide roads and maintain them.  As far as I can gather there's no specific budgetary allocation for preserving an historic bridge.  The other point is they regard the Richmond Bridge just as a historic bridge.  They don't see its unique character at all.  You get some surprising things.  I've got a whole file of letters where we're trying to get something down about this.  I'm quoting here from a letter of July 2001, where the minister that was responsible argued, "We have to continue using the bridge to provide funds for its conservation."  I can't quite see the logic of that.  

DR BYRON:   It's not a toll bridge, is it?  

DR ABBOTT:   It's not a toll bridge, no, but that's the sort of answer you get if you raise it - just absolute confusion:  While, yes, the Richmond Bridge is important; it figures prominently in tourist literature, it's even been on stamps and so on, I can't see the state government having come to terms with what needs to be done to preserve and conserve the Richmond Bridge.

	They had a conservation plan for the bridge published in 1997 which recommended that the load limit should be 15 tonnes.  That's been ignored.  I suspect that's been ignored because they feel if they close the bridge to anything above 15 tonnes you wouldn't be allowed tourist coaches to drive over it, so it's very much a short-term sort of measure.  What worries me is that, with the volume and weight of traffic on that bridge, it won't be too long before there's quite severe damage done to it.  I know the department response was, "No, we can keep this up," but talking to the stonemason that every now and again has to repair the bridge, he's quite adamant that there are cracks there that they're just ignoring.  

	So I think there is that risk.  I'm sure if you were to do some sort of cost-benefit analysis of a project to build another crossing so that traffic could be diverted from the bridge, that would justify building another crossing, but no-one seems to think in those terms at all, at least in the relevant government department.  I think that sort of summarises the situation - that plus the paper I sent you earlier.  

MR HINTON:   Thank you very much for your appearance today following up your other documentation.  I had one question:  is there a natural alternative crossing place that would lend itself for an alternative bridge construction to take valid traffic, including heavy vehicles?  

DR ABBOTT:   Yes.  In fact, the Commonwealth government money, talking of heavy vehicles, to build a road or upgrade a road a few miles upstream, Fingerpatch Road, and heavy traffic is supposed to go up that, but it doesn't of course.  If there's a bridge there, we use it.  Some years ago, I can't remember just how many, they did decide to build a low-level crossing and actually resume some land ready to do that.  That was never built, I don't know why.  Rumour has it that the department decided to build a road in the north of the state, in this famous north-south continent in Tasmania.  

DR BYRON:   Yes, the Mason-Dixon line.  

DR ABBOTT:   Yes.  So there is that possibility.  Over the years there's also been another possibility of building it in another part of the town.  Yes, there are places they could build a bridge.  

MR HINTON:   Dr Abbott, where does the responsibility rest for resolution of this issue from your perspective?  Is it the state Department of Transport and Infrastructure or Resources and Energy?  

DR ABBOTT:   Who should make the decision?  

MR HINTON:   Where is the impediment to making progress for the conservation of ‑ ‑ ‑

DR ABBOTT:   I'd say it's the state Department of Infrastructure, plus I doubt if there's a political will.  I think I said somewhere in a letter to the chairman I sent - I don't know if you saw a copy of the letter I sent with my paper - that I met the chairman of the Tasmanian Heritage Commission, who went to great trouble to you that Tasmania was the last state to pass heritage legislation, the implication being it really wasn't interested, and I think it probably wasn't.  

DR BYRON:   But the bridge is on the state heritage register?  

DR ABBOTT:   As far as I can gather, yes.  

DR BYRON:   Given it's history, I'd be surprised if it's not.  

DR ABBOTT:   I think if you looked there would be a lot of things you'd be surprised at.  

DR BYRON:   Okay.  I should not presume anything, that's true.  

DR ABBOTT:   No, I believe it is, but I've never been able to work out administrative structure in heritage matters.  You've got a heritage division in the department of - something something something - and you've got the Tasmania Heritage Council, and I'm told they have nothing to do with each other, which is interesting.  But who's responsible for what?  Whether it should be the Tasmania Heritage Council that's looking at the bridge and saying, "Nothing is being done about this bridge," I don't know.  I haven't had time to go to the complexities of the Tasmanian government administrative structure. 

MR HINTON:   Dr Abbott, is there a doubt as to how much the bridge is at risk?  I would have thought that, as Neil picked up, this is a well-known bridge.  This bridge is recognised and accepted as having very particular significance for Australian and for Tasmania, and certainly for Richmond.  It therefore follows that, if there is inaction, perhaps knowledge of the degree of the risk with regard to its conservation is not well appreciated.  Is that the problem - not the significance but the risk?  

DR ABBOTT:   No.  You see, in 1997 they had a conservation plan prepared, with Commonwealth government money involved.  It recommended that the loading on the bridge should be reduced to 15 tonnes.  That's by 40 per cent.  It's not just a marginal change, and they just said, "No, we don't need to do it."  I just can't believe that a study done with computer analysis, using programs developed, I'm told in the United Kingdom, says, "Right, 15 tonnes should be the limit," and yet someone says, "25 tonnes."  It's a huge difference, isn't it? 

DR BYRON:   What would happen if a 24-tonne vehicle went across it tomorrow and the bridge was damaged or cracked?  

DR ABBOTT:   You could have tourists to see a broken bridge sort of business.  

DR BYRON:   What if people were injured?  Who'd be responsible - the state government? 

DR ABBOTT:   I don't know.  You see, the road itself is a local council road.  The bridge is managed by the state government, and I've been given to believe it's owned by the state government, but then talking to an alderman one time he said, "No, we, the Clarence Council, own the bridge but the state government runs it."  That's the sort of problem.  I don't know who really does own it - toss a coin.  

MR HINTON:   That was partly behind my question about who has responsibility. 

DR ABBOTT:   The state government is responsible for managing it, and you get a peculiar situation where the council's ability, for example, to control traffic is very limited.  There's a little 30-kilometre sign at one end of the bridge.  At one stage, talking to the council people, I said, "Why don't you put up a much bigger sign to make sure that traffic proceeds across the bridge slowly?"  

MR HINTON:   With approval from the council as to the sign shape.  Sorry, that was an aside that was uncalled for. 

DR ABBOTT:   Basically the council said, "No, we can't put that up without state government approval."  

DR BYRON:   That's right, yes. 

DR ABBOTT:   So you get all these sorts of - I'm used to being in third world countries, and I reckon it's more complicated here in Tasmania than in a lot of third world countries.  

DR BYRON:   I know it's no consolation, but we've had similar discussions in Victoria and other states.  There it's been about old timber bridges rather than stone bridges, and even in places where a new bridge has been built that bypasses or upstream or downstream, then the question is:  what do you do with the beautiful old historic bridge, because the highways department isn't going to want to maintain it any more because they've got a new concrete one. 

DR ABBOTT:    You could make the Richmond Bridge into an historic monument.  You could even charge entry to inspect it if necessary.  Over the years they've built up layers on the bridge so that the level of the road, I'm told, must be three or four feet above the original cobblestone surface.  So you could remove it and make it into an historic monument.  Again, you'd have to get the money, and I should imagine then you might be able to tap into Commonwealth government money because, as I understand it, if it was given to a trust, for example, they could get the money from these heritage people. 

DR BYRON:   Perhaps.  

DR ABBOTT:   You see, this is the problem.  They say, "We can't give the money for the Richmond Bridge because it's not on a major road, and we can't give it because it's a state government, rather than a local government or a trust or something else, that owns it."  There seems to be a difficulty in regard to the legislation.  This is certainly what the Australian Heritage Commission said to me in a letter they sent at one stage.  

MR HINTON:   But the community in Richmond would consider the bridge to be not the only but certainly a key ingredient to the attraction for visitors to Richmond?  

DR ABBOTT:   Yes, the majority of Richmond residents.  

MR HINTON:   The majority?  

DR ABBOTT:   Yes.  You then get onto another issue about building a bypass, and that goes into local politics in a very complex way.  But I'd say the major of Richmond residents would be in favour of that.  So also is the premier of the state.  I can quote him in the paper where he's said this must be preserved.  It's a matter of getting something done to convince the premier he needs to spend some money, unless Commonwealth funds could be provided.  

MR HINTON:   But the key ingredient of saving the bridge from your perspective would be constructing an alternative bridge?  

DR ABBOTT:   Yes.  I can't see any other ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   That is a threshold issue for you?  

DR ABBOTT:   Yes.  You see, if you were to say, "Right, we'll build an alternative and traffic over 15 tonnes has to use the alternative," there's just no way they could police it.  They just couldn't do it.  Realistically you couldn't say, "Right, you must go up there.  If you're above 25 tonnes you go up there."  No, they'd still use that bridge.  So if weight is a threat, then the bridge has to be closed to everything except pedestrian travel.  

DR BYRON:   You could turn it into a pedestrian bridge.

DR ABBOTT:   Well, a historic monument.  You'd then get the oldest bridge in Australia as an historic monument.  It is testament to the fact that convicts did contribute to Australian development, which is often forgotten, isn't it?  

DR BYRON:   Yes, good point.  I don't know if we've got a simple answer for that, but it's possible that if we find the right ear to whisper in or the right arm to twist somewhere.  But it sounds like it's a classic case of something that falls down the crack between different agencies.  

DR ABBOTT:   This is the problem.  It is an unusual case.  If it was a matter of just repairing the bridge, maybe funds would be coming forward, but since there's another structure, then you get the relationship between the Commonwealth government and the state government and, since that bridge is part of a road, a local government.  How much more complex could you get?

DR BYRON:   As I say, I don't know that we can come up with an answer for you but ‑ ‑ ‑

DR ABBOTT:   I thought you'd have a case study for your report.  

DR BYRON:   Yes.  It's a beautiful case of complexity and how the system sometimes breaks down and doesn't deliver what it says it should deliver. 

MR HINTON:   And if the Tasmanian government representatives were appearing this afternoon after this session, then we could have asked them, but they appeared this morning.  

DR BYRON:   But you never know.  We may get a chance to take it up with somebody and find out a bit more about it.  

DR ABBOTT:   For example, did they have a Department of Infrastructure person there?  

MR HINTON:   No, it wasn't.  It was Tourism, Parks, Heritage and the Arts - a very senior person, head of the department attended.

DR ABBOTT:   But not the Tasmanian Heritage Council? 

MR HINTON:   No.  

DR ABBOTT:   You can see how complex the whole thing is.  

MR HINTON:   That council is advisory.  

DR ABBOTT:   I think it's an independent statutory body.  

DR BYRON:   Yes, but it's secretariat is not ‑ ‑ ‑ 

DR ABBOTT:   If you tried to get a diagram of its structure you'd have a very spaghetti bowl looking thing.

DR BYRON:   Thank you very much for bringing that to our attention.  We'll see what we can follow up on that.  Thank you very much, Dr Abbott.  

DR BYRON:   I said this morning in my opening remarks that we always give an opportunity for anybody who's in the audience, if they want to come forward and make any comments on the public record, for the transcript, there's an opportunity.  Just take a seat, any one by yourself and that will go into the transcript as saying who you are and we'd welcome your comments.  

MR PARKER:   Thank you, Chairman.  My name is Guy Parker, I live at 11 William Street, West Hobart and I've been very interested to attend today's hearing as I am interested, very interested, in Hobart's heritage, and I own a property in West Hobart which I consider to be a part of Hobart's heritage, and it's been very interesting to listen to the hearing today because I have learned a lot today and I do think that there are some serious problems with regards to this point of discretion.  I don't want to be too critical of the Hobart City Council because I've always been a great supporter of the Hobart City Council.  In fact, I ran for council myself in 2000 and I fully support Mr Lennard as the Hobart City Council heritage officer because I think he does an extremely good job in his professional capacity, and I was very interested to hear of his very interesting comment this morning before lunch regarding the ownership of properties.  

Unfortunately my capacity is fairly well limited to residential properties although I'm learning quite a bit about commercial‑type heritage properties but I was very interested to hear his very good point that he made regarding people who are possibly the wrong owners of properties in respect to some of the rather abhorrent types of things that they put forward to propose to carry out on their existing extremely attractive properties, and I see that Mr Lennard has a very difficult job.  But I did interestingly note that the Clarence Council has recently appointed a heritage guidance officer who people are advised to approach this officer before they make plans to carry out developments on properties.  Although this might not be the role of Mr Lennard, because I'm sure his duties are well and truly taken up, this might be something that the Hobart City Council would like to consider and it might alleviate this problem that seems to have continually come up today regarding this point of discretion.  I've seen it happen myself at having attended many council meetings over the years, and I thank the tribunal for time in listening to what I have to say.  

MR HINTON:   Thanks very much.  

MR PARKER:   Thank you very much indeed.  

DR BYRON:   Thank you.  

MR COLE:   I'm Bruce Cole and I'm secretary of the Engineering Heritage Tasmania.  I've had several opportunities to come along and speak to you and I've said no on two occasions but you're such a welcoming pair that I've cracked.  I've also been the national chairman of Engineering Heritage Australia and both those organisations are special interest groups of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and I did prepare a fairly feeble submission which I have given to you.  I'm a bit ashamed of it, that's why I didn't want to talk but I didn't have too much time.  I think all I want to say is that if you look at heritage registers in general - the Tasmanian Heritage Council in particular - you don't find too many engineering structures on them.  I'm sure there are some bridges there.  

One of the things that in Engineers Australia we do is to put bronze plaques on items of high significance, engineering historic structures, and we've put a plaque on the Richmond Bridge and I'm told that a lot of tourists stop there and read the plaque before they walk over the bridge.  So it's in a particularly good place and we've got 16 other heritage sites around the state so far and we're progressing.  But in general terms, the heritage registers have lots of buildings on them.  One of our aims is to try and get Engineering Heritage must better represented.  I mean, one reason that not too many engineering structures are there is because we haven't been energetic enough at nominating.  There's nothing to stop you nominating them but you do have to get around to it and we have our own program and our own priorities.  

I understand that the Tasmania Heritage Register has got the largest number of listed items of any register in Australia and that might be because when the legislation came through in Tasmania the first requirement was to get all the national trust properties on the heritage register, and that really knocked them over for the first three or four years and they are only just now starting to deal with new nominations.  But I would be more interested in the lifts inside the buildings than the air‑conditioning systems and where the waste water goes,  and et cetera, et cetera than the pretty facade that everyone can admire.  In our plaquing program we try to pick things that are in public view, such as bridges and power stations, mines, those sort of things.

Engineering Heritage Australia is a member of the national cultural heritage forum, so we do have a representative on that and I have been to one of their meetings and I think that they might have produced the most comprehensive submission to your commission because they've been very keen for this Productivity Commission review to take place, and I hope they've made a lot of points on our behalf.  lding can be demolished - incredibly time‑consuming, costly and laborious.  It's plain to anybody that the building is unsuitable as a church possibly.  What's the dilemma then as I see it faced by the Anglican Church?  First of all, many tourists love heritage buildings and communities, including churchgoers - and members of the Anglican Church, I should add - appreciate the connection of these old heritage buildings with the past.  Also the fact is, speaking as an architect - and a bit disappointing about this, but nevertheless the fact is that many people prefer to look at old buildings than new ones.  That's just the reality.

MR HINTON:   More comfortable.

MR WEGMAN:   Well, for all sorts of reasons.  You can't escape the fact, that's just the way it is.  But the downside of course - and this is where the dilemma is - that first of all, as I've already said - if I can just reiterate it - that the churches are frequently unsuitable for contemporary worship.  They are not allowed to make alterations to them to make them more appropriate, or else there are so many hurdles put in the way that it's just not worth the effort.  The regulations, as I've said before, make it extremely difficult to dispose of unsuitable buildings when they're used as churches.  Many buildings require major conservation, restoration and expensive, ongoing maintenance.  

	Finally, the clincher is that churches just don't have the means to undertake the repairs, especially if your building is unsuitable.  Why would you spend - if you were running a business - half a million dollars conserving a building that doesn't suit your operations.  So now we come to the bit there where hopefully there will be a bit of discussion and some comment made to Mr Costello perhaps.  

DR BYRON:   Which one?

MR WEGMAN:   Probably the guy with the money - or the guy with our money.  It appears to us that the tourist societies and heritage committees are very keen to retain old churches for reasons that do not directly relate to the core business of the Anglican Church; in other words, we love our old buildings and I share that view - and we're not knocking old buildings.  I share that view and so do many people.  We love the texture, the scale, the connections that they have, the history, I suppose.  Some of them are very beautiful, some of them aren't, but lots are very beautiful.  
However, they may not be suitable as churches.  Therefore it seems to us that if the community and society love them, the community and society ought to help pay for them.  

	Previously there was a chap talking about a bridge and I thought it was interesting because I thought it was exactly the same problem.  Council will say, "We haven't got the money," but it's the community that determined that they want that bridge kept for historical purposes.  The whole community benefits from having it.  Why should a council be lumbered with the cost of maintaining an item that the whole community benefits from having?  Our argument is - I guess it's the same for the church and this is the contribution, I guess, our point to it.  At the moment what happens with heritage funding is that heritage funding is disbursing - you know, you ask for a large bucket-load and you get a teabag or something like that of money to do a small amount of work.  It's not good enough.

	If the community want our heritage buildings because they're beautiful - and they are - then the community should pay for it.  Is that such an unreasonable point of view?  Why should it be a church - whether it's our church or anybody's church - do it?  That, I guess, is a fundamental issue that really ought to be hammered home that we want our ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Keith, you finished on a very key point, so I'll go straight to it.

MR WEGMAN:   Yes, please.

MR HINTON:   You used the words "the community should pay".  But I think you could also elaborate on that further to describe who the community - the community is not everybody.  Those benefiting could be something less than the 20 million Australians; something more than the 100 people that might attend church in that church.  So there's a question of being more precise as to who is benefiting from the building who therefore wish to have it retained, who therefore might be burdened with the financial cost of maintaining it.  We have to be careful about this wonderful word "community".

MR WEGMAN:   I'm making a broad sweep to generate a reaction.

MR HINTON:   That's fine.

MR WEGMAN:   Okay.  

MR HINTON:   So my reaction is who?

MR WEGMAN:   Well, obviously the benefits are (a) the church, but if it's a building that's unsuitable for them then it's a rather shallow benefit, but nevertheless obviously when we say that the community and society - the public purse is what we're talking about - should help to fund it, I think probably we're talking about an assistance rather than 100 per cent funding.  We can't expect - because obviously the owners of the property get some benefits from it simply by having it.  But the society and the community who really appreciate the building, regardless of whether it was a church or not, they would like it for its beauty, for all the other things that aren't necessarily church type things.  Therefore, a much wider ‑ ‑ ‑

DR BYRON:   I think the point is very well made, and it's not just churches, but if the owner of a heritage-listed building decides that because it's not delivering the services that you want or need, or because the costs to maintain it have become astronomical or unaffordable, and if it's on the heritage list, you know, there's clearly some sort of conflict or tension that needs to be resolved.  We were talking to somebody else earlier this morning about - there's no point in having a list of places which can't be maintained because their owner - whether it's a church or a farm or whatever - can't afford to maintain it.  Otherwise you'll just end up with a list of buildings that are falling apart, rather than a list of buildings that are being well looked after.

	We know it's going to cost money to preserve any sort of heritage building.  Somebody is going to have to pay for it.  The owner decides it's not worth their while paying all those costs.  I guess one of the things we are being asked to look at is, is there some mechanism for putting together a package where the feds chip in 2 per cent, the state puts in 7 and a half or 15 or something else, and the local government puts - or philanthropy has to raise 10 per cent, you know.  I don't know the formula or whether there could be a formula.  The  bottom line is that if we can't raise the funds from all sources to look after the place properly then that's telling us loud and clear that maybe it has to go, if nobody is willing to put their hand in their pocket to do what's necessary.

	The points that you've made were made very strongly to us in I think just about every other town where we've had hearings.  I think in rural areas it's even worse where you've got declining populations, declining congregations, much older people, many pensioners, you know, they don't have deep pockets.  Yet small country towns see those same churches as the backbone.  If you take that away it's got a real sort of community cultural consequence, but by the same token it's not safe to use, it doesn't meet purpose and it's prohibitively expensive to maintain.  I see that as a tremendously difficult problem to resolve.

MR WEGMAN:   That's the big dilemma, isn't it?  That's the dilemma of conservation.  It is very, very expensive to do it properly.  Only private companies who have deep pockets, and government-type institutions, can probably afford to do things to the level, to the standard required.  But judging by the heritage reports that I quoted, it would seem that churches, despite their meagre means, are actually maintaining their buildings better than the organisations that do have the money but choose not to spend it.

DR BYRON:   There's probably the perception out there that the churches have got very deep pockets.

MR WEGMAN:   Not true.  Well, it might be true in Sydney; it's not true here, I can assure you.  But still it's also a matter of choice, isn't it?  It's not just a matter of deep pockets, it's also a matter of what you choose to spend your money on.

DR BYRON:   The Uniting Church in Melbourne told us that if they had another million dollars they would put it into social services, they wouldn't put it into bricks and mortar.  They wouldn't put it into fixing up the old pipe organ either.  Yet there are people who think that conservation of pipe organs is extremely important.  In that sense, again the church as the owner of a historic asset is not terribly different from the Defence Department that has an old barracks somewhere that they don't need.  It's a beautiful example of why it's such a difficult problem, and I don't have a good answer for it.

MR WEGMAN:   Yes, but there is a difference between the two cases.

MR HINTON:   Could I take up your point that they are very difficult to dispose of, and alterations to make them work better.  We do see plenty of examples around where churches have been sold.  The difficulties you're flagging is because no‑one wants to buy them or what is the impediment to sale?

MR WEGMAN:   Okay.  Let's take an example.  We've got a church in North Hobart called Holy Trinity Church.  It's a lovely building, it's up on a hill where you can see it from almost anything.  It's falling apart, frankly.  It needs a lot of work done to it.  It's a lovely building.  They haven't got the money to maintain it, ie, the church doesn't have the money to maintain it.  What's next?  What are they going to do?  How are they going to ‑ ‑ ‑

MR HINTON:   Is it surplus to needs?

MR WEGMAN:   Yes.  According to the current bishop it's surplus to needs.

MR HINTON:   Then the immediate alternative that comes to mind is adaptive reuse, and therefore that essentially, given that the church really would rather not lease it out, that suggests to me that the church would put it on the market and maybe - in real estate terms "location, location, location" - it has something going for it up on the hill and that would seem to be something that's worth pursuing.  You could retain the building, ie, cultural heritage characteristics retained, albeit not as a church.  What is the impediment for selling that church?

MR WEGMAN:   Probably demand, I suspect.  I used to go to a church in West Hobart called St John the Baptist.  That was converted when we merged with another church.  That building was sold and it was made into a residence called Pendragon Hall and it's been sold a number of times.  There's a few churches I've heard of in Hobart - in Tasmania certainly - with adaptive reuse.  There are so many of them, that's the problem.

MR HINTON:   Which also means that their heritage value is that much less as well.  There's a scarcity component that doesn't apply.

MR WEGMAN:   Yes, that's right.  I think the problem is difficult but I think though nevertheless - similar to the chap with the bridge - I think that the principle is that if a large - okay, I wouldn't expect somebody from Sydney to pay for my building, but nevertheless my taxes help to preserve buildings in New South Wales, I'm sure, through some roundabout matter.  So it's not entirely clear cut.  Governments are always spending taxpayers' money on behalf of the taxpayer that half of us don't agree with if there's something going on in the other side of the world that we can think of.  They don't think twice about spending money on their own favourite causes without asking the taxpayer. 

	What I'm thinking is the terms of heritage though, it is such a sensitive and important area that it needs to be better funded.  Now, the split of funding that you were commenting on, sure, the owner - it can't be 100 per cent.  As I say, I put it like this to essentially attract a reaction which I got.  I thought I'd get something.  Well, you have to put things in black and white, in fact what you're really talking about are shades of grey.

DR BYRON:   Exactly.

MR WEGMAN:   So I what I would like to do - a couple of things.  First of all, I think it would be worthwhile for the government to increase its generosity when it comes to the preservation of heritage issues.  If it is deemed to be so important by our tourists and visitors, then for goodness sake, a wider community has got to help to pay for it, because a wider community benefits.  I think that it would be worthwhile for heritage councils to be less precious about their buildings.  We have some disagreement at various times but nevertheless - I've got an example here of boxed pews, you know.  There's a lovely church in Battery Point that's got boxed pews.  It's an old Wesley church or Methodist church that's got boxed pews.  For goodness sake, boxed pews in the 21st century, you've got to be joking.  It's not the way worship is done.  Churches and heritage councils should be a little more flexible in allowing adaptive reuse, even within a church, so they don't constrain you to using this 19th century layout, for instance.  A case has to be made.  But modern worship isn't done like it was in 1662, even in the Anglican Church.

MR HINTON:   You're on transcript.

MR WEGMAN:   Yes.  So that's two issues.  I guess they were really the main things.  I think we've just got to be permitted to be more flexible.  That's right, the third thing is the Heritage Commission is a great body for saying, "No, you can't do it."  They have all sorts of rules that stop owners from doing things, but they never have the money.  An organisation that can impose rules without suffering the economic consequences of those decisions is not - it is a very hairy way to run an organisation.  All we ever hear from the National Trust and Heritage Councils are things that owners cannot do.  But because they never have to pay for them, they can say what they like, and the owners suffer the consequences of some of those decisions.  So I think more funding, more flexibility in terms of what we do with the heritage things.  I agree that protection is required but not quite so preciously.

	Thirdly, the Heritage Act and heritage organisations should have teeth, both to enforce things financially but they also somehow should be brought to face the consequences of some the things they impose on owners.

MR HINTON:   You've made your points.

DR BYRON:   That's a very good summary.  Thank you very much.

MR WEGMAN:   Thanks very much.

DR BYRON:   Well, I think that sort of exhausts the audience unless one of the transcription people would like to - there being nobody else, I declare the pubic hearing closed and we'll reconvene at 9 o'clock Monday morning in Canberra.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

AT 3.35 PM THE INQUIRY WAS ADJOURNED UNTIL
MONDAY, 16 AUGUST 2005

INDEX

		Page

TASMANIAN GOVERNMENT:
SCOTT GADD
KATHERINE HOUGH
DEBRA LEWIS
PETER ROMEY		614-636

NATIONAL TRUST  OF AUSTRALIA (TASMANIA):
MARION MYHILL
JENNIE CHAPMAN		637-656

HOBART CITY COUNCIL:
BRENDAN LENNARD
PETER CURTIS		657-674

TOURISM COUNCIL OF TASMANIA:
VIN BARRON		675-684

BARRY CHAPMAN		685-693

GRAHAM ABBOTT		694-699

GUY PARKER		700

ENGINEERING HERITAGE TASMANIA:
BRUCE COLE		701-705

ANGLICAN CHURCH:
CORNELIUS WEGMAN		706-703