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Spark and Cannon Transcript of Proceedings

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Spark and Cannon Transcript of Proceedings SPARK AND CANNON Telephone: Adelaide (08) 8212 3699 TRANSCRIPT Hobart (03) 6224 2499 Melbourne (03) 9670 6989 OF PROCEEDINGS Perth (08) 9325 4577 Sydney (02) 9211 4077 _______________________________________________________________ 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 SYDNEY ON FRIDAY, 19 AUGUST 2005, AT 9.00 AM Continued from 18/8/05 Heritage 970 He190805.doc DR BYRON: Good morning. We can resume the public hearings of the commission's inquiry into the conservation of Australia's historic heritage places. First up this morning we have Mr Graham Brooks. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you for the written submission which Tony and I have both read carefully. Our normal procedure in all the hearings is to ask you to summarise the main points from the written submission, 10 or 15 minutes or so, and then we'd like to discuss that with you and elaborate on some of the issues that you've raised. MR BROOKS: Thank you, Dr Byron. I think, given that you have obviously read my submission in detail, I'll try and keep my summary very short, because I think sometimes some debate and discussion is maybe the best way to flush out some of these issues, particularly now that you're so far through your own research. The point I wanted to make, I come here as a private heritage consultant in private practice. I'm managing director of Graham Brooks and Associates, but I'm also the chairman of the ICOMOS International Cultural Tourism Committee, and I have been the chairman of AusHeritage. I think some of my other colleagues from Melbourne and Adelaide have no doubt - and probably even other parts of the country - - - DR BYRON: Yes, we have. MR BROOKS: - - - have given you a sense of where we see both a national and an international role, I guess, for the heritage industry. Heritage management in Australia to my experience, which goes back over 30 years, is of a very high standard when you compare it internationally. I think the system which has been developed in Australia is one that is well thought through, it's had a lot of testing, it's had a lot of input from a lot of people. I guess as a result of that - and I've been comparing this with other systems around the world for quite a long time - there's a strength here which, from the point of view of the commission I think, really needs to be managed and continued and is supported as an industry, as a system. I don't think it needs a radical overhaul, but I certainly think it could do with a little bit of polishing - and I guess that's where a lot of my colleagues have saying to you. It's good, because it has a very well established legal framework both at national and state and local levels, supported a lot by a lot of community representation, a lot of professional volunteer expertise. But fundamentally, I think, it's because it's tied in to a very large degree with the planning and development system. I address my comments primarily to the conservation of the built heritage rather than to other aspects of the moveable heritage or the intangible heritage 19/8/05 Heritage 971 G. BROOKS or the indigenous heritage. There's lots of terms around. But, basically, I address my comments to the built heritage. As I said, it's basically a matter of property management. I've said in my paper that Australia is essentially a private property owning democracy, and that is really fundamental to my whole point. We're dealing here with an historic asset which is probably somewhere like half of the built environment right across the nation. It is an extraordinary financial asset, it's an extraordinary cultural asset, and it's an extraordinary use asset. So it's not about just those lovely old Victorian cottages or that Georgian heritage in Tasmania. We're dealing right across the entire spectrum of the Australian built environment, and that goes to modern office buildings, it goes to 1930s flats, from the Opera House right back to Cadman's Cottage. Fundamentally, the process in Australia that works so well is that you're dealing with a combination of protective controls and market based incentives. I believe that balance is reasonably good in this country, because in my experience as a practitioner, without the controls the marketplace would run riot. Without some incentives the marketplace simply would expect government to do all the work. I think, given that we are a private property owning democracy, that combination of control and incentive is really where you need to look at the levers. In my paper I comment about the difference between a command economy and a market economy. That's something I picked up in Eastern Europe and Vietnam at the end of the 1980s when we were watching what those poor people were going through, and how suddenly the regime changed quite radically. So it was a very interesting exercise to see. The other things that Australians have is a very strong view of the role of property in contemporary life. They regard property as needing to be useful, safe and secure in terms of the quality and amenity, its availability for development, and as a basis for wealth generation and intergenerational security. By that, really what I mean is, that Australians, I think, require that their historic buildings are useful. I think you've probably had a lot of debate about, "Can we have more museums. Do we need more museums. Should we have more museums." I think most people - and in fact I think the recent premier of New South Wales is a classic case – believe that we don't need more museums. We need buildings that are useful and that stay as basically as part of life. To my mind, when an historic building or any building falls out of being useful then it's on the skids. All of my professional work is really trying to make historic buildings remain as useful and vital parts of the national economy, the local economy and that sort of asset base that I was talking about. 19/8/05 Heritage 972 G. BROOKS That's really where the difference between control and incentive come in. I think the marketplace, to a very large degree, responds to a lot of those things. There's obviously a significant role for government to mediate between the rights of the community or the expectations of the community, and the rights of private owners. Not only private owners, of course, but public owners, because a great deal of the built environment in this country is owned by the public sector. A lot has been disposed of recently, and it's that disposal process which has been managed quite well in certain circumstances, and been managed very badly in other circumstances. One of the critical questions in terms of this mediation process is knowing what's important. There's been a big debate years ago in Sydney between the major property owners saying to the city council, "Well, tell us what's important. Don't keep coming back at us every time we try and do something with a building, and then you decide it's important, then all the rules change." I had a case in court yesterday in Woollahra where that in fact is happening right now. The owner comes along, it's a house in a conservation area, the locals think of it as an amenity issue rather than a heritage issue, but they insist on the local council upping the ante in terms of its protection right at the very last minute. The council is scrambling, the courts are scrambling, the owner is confused. So that process of listing and identification I see as a fundamental aspect that could gain a lot more public support. It's a process which government has done of itself, in terms of things like the new EPBC act. We've done work for army and defence in various places, identifying what's important for them. The City of Sydney, when this debate was going on said, "All right, we'll give you a list," and they came up with 800 buildings. The property industry said, "My gosh, that many." But ultimately it meant that those property owners could then say, "All right, there's another process of management that we have to be aware of." The City of Sydney Council's submission talks about the heritage floor space provisions; extraordinarily effective as an incentive based process. It's that combination. You must do it, but here's some incentive. I think that's critical to the whole way that we work in this country. If I could also mention that I've been watching this process for over 30 years, and one of things I came across in my younger days was a UNESCO report in 1972, when they sent out an English conservation architect to look at the state of conservation in Australia. It's interesting when you think the UNESCO and the Brits are coming out to tell us what's going on. In fact in those days very little was going on. There was perhaps a couple of dozen buildings that were listed. Most of them were painted white, and run by the National Trust.
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