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Standing Committee on Social Issues REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL ISSUES INQUIRY INTO THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY ——— At Sydney on Monday 5 September 2005 ——— The Committee met at 9.30 a.m. ——— PRESENT The Hon. J. C. Burnswoods (Chair) The Hon. Dr A. Chesterfield-Evans The Hon. K. F. Griffin The Hon. C. J. Lynn The Hon. R. M. Parker The Hon. I. W. West CHAIR: The Committee has been quite busy. This is our third hearing in Sydney. As some of you may know, in the past two weeks we have been to Port Macquarie and Broken Hill to talk to people about the funeral industry and related matters. Today we have cemetery trusts, various religious and cultural groups, Unions New South Wales and InvoCare, which is quite a variety. LEE ROYSTON SQUIRES, Executive Manager, Joint Committee of Necropolis Trustees, corner Hawthorne and Field Avenues, Rookwood, sworn and examined: CHAIR: On whose behalf are you appearing? Mr SQUIRES: On behalf of the Joint Committee of Necropolis Trustees. CHAIR: Did you receive the questions we prepared as a guide? Mr SQUIRES: Yes, I did. CHAIR: Before we get into those, would you like to make an opening statement? Mr SQUIRES: Yes. I notice that a lot of the questions centre on Rookwood, which is a very large area. I have brought in a number of brochures showing a coloured map of Rookwood, which is one of the largest public areas in Sydney. CHAIR: Most of us probably have been there at some stage or another, so we would have a rough idea of it. Is there anything you would like to say by way of introduction? Mr SQUIRES: It is very good that the Committee is inquiring into the shortage of land for public cemeteries in Sydney. It is in critical supply. There are a lot of issues that have been raised already in government circles about the shortage. I understand that the Committee is focusing mainly on costs and pressures on those costs, so I will try to focus my answers that way for you. CHAIR: Our first couple of questions, how is Rookwood managed and what is the role of the Joint Committee, and our second question about how much space is available will give you a chance to open up the issues you mentioned. Mr SQUIRES: I have had a short time to prepare some answers, and I would be quite happy to provide written replies to some of these, if the Committee would like. Rookwood occupies 286 hectares. As you will see on the map it is roughly 1¼ miles deep and a mile wide. It is one of the largest public spaces in Sydney. It is divided into 13 separate managed areas. There are six cemetery trusts, the Joint Committee itself being another organisation and the Australian War Graves. There are five denominational cemetery trusts managing the buried areas and a general cemetery trust that manages quite a number of other religions and non-religious people. Each of the six trusts has its own body of trustees, and management of the general trust has been combined with the Anglican Cemetery Trust since 1878. The organisation dates from the mid nineteenth century, and it is covered by its own Act of Parliament. There is also a general crematorium, which came into effect in 1926. Matters of common interest to all those organisations are dealt with by the Joint Committee under its brief. The role of the Joint Committee, moving on to the second question, has existed in its current form since a revision of the Act in 1988. Its brief is to cover basically all infrastructure items, in effect cover items of interest to one or more trusts in Rookwood. The Joint Committee composition is made up of representatives of each of the cemetery trusts plus four appointees by the Minister, being the Minister for Lands or the Minister looking after the Crown Lands Act. The trusts are autonomous. They are covered by the Crown Lands Act, and the Necropolis Act has been amended recently to show clearly that it creates the Joint Committee, which is a unique organisation being a two-tiered trust system. It is quite unique in Australia. CHAIR: What sorts of people does the Minister appoint, experts in particular areas? SOCIAL ISSUES COMMITTEE 1 MONDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 2005 Mr SQUIRES: The four appointees are a representative of the Department of Lands, usually a senior officer, an appointee from the company that owns the private cremation company; an appointee from the National Trust and from the Heritage Council of New South Wales. To give some dimensions as to where its money goes, the Joint Committee looks after some 18 kilometres of roads within Rookwood. There is a large water supply system, which it built and operates about 4.9 kilometres of pipes work in there and 19 meters. It also has an enormous sewer system to save cemetery land. The fence alone around the place is nearly seven kilometres long. There is 10 kilometres of canal and a residual area not allocated to the trusts in the order of 28 hectares. The replacement value of the Joint Committee assets in its last annual report was $26 million. The Joint Committee raises its money in two ways, principally, by levying the trust—it gets about 50 per cent of its income from that—and it raises rent from the land for the crematorium, which comes to it by virtue of the Necropolis Act. The total income for the Joint Committee, which is expended on an annual basis within Rookwood, is in the order of $1.7 million. Occasionally we pick up heritage grants because the site has great heritage value. CHAIR: Who owns the crematorium? Mr SQUIRES: The crematorium is registered in the name of the New South Wales Cremation Company, which is the pioneer company with cremations. Currently it is owned by InvoCare, which is a public company. It has been bought and sold quite a few times over the years. CHAIR: What is the percentage between burials and cremations? Mr SQUIRES: At present the percentage of cremations is around about 46 per cent of the services that are conducted within Rookwood. CHAIR: Is that trending up? Mr SQUIRES: That trend does not compare with the majority of Sydney. The majority of Sydney is in the order of 65 per cent cremations. CHAIR: Has it risen at Rookwood or has it stayed the same? Mr SQUIRES: The trend is downwards. The number of cremations that are levied by the Joint Committee is on top of the rent paid by the crematorium. The number is on a steady decline. CHAIR: Do you know why that is? Mr SQUIRES: It is hard to say exactly what the reason is for that downward trend. There is a slight trend upwards across Sydney, but at Rookwood the trend is downwards. It has been for some years. CHAIR: How much space do you have? What are the dimensions of the problem? Mr SQUIRES: That is a fairly complex question to put a number on. There are many factors in estimating what land has been used. At Rookwood different trusts have different ways of burying. For instance, the Jewish Cemetery Trust and the Muslim Cemetery Trust bury one to a grave in each episode. It is easy to work out or predict how much land has been used and make a prediction on the rate of usage. The larger trusts, such as the Anglican and General Trust and the Catholic Cemetery Trust and the Independent Cemetery Trust have fairly large areas. The largest is in the order of 250 acres, about 83 hectares. They have different capacities, according to the type of burial. For instance, the Anglican and General would have capacity for second burials whereas the Catholic Cemetery Trust would have capacity for second burials and also aboveground burials. Those issues complicate any predictions about how much land is left. It makes it rather difficult to predict beyond, say, the future of the Jewish and Muslim trusts with any particular accuracy. Everything is "about", if you like. Even if we say that the cemeteries will be full, we might say they look full but in fact we know that second burials take a great deal of time to take place. For instance, in the northern SOCIAL ISSUES COMMITTEE 2 MONDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 2005 part of Rookwood is the old ground where the last burial right in the Anglican sold in about 1921 and the last burial took place in the 1990s, and that was a second interment. With cemeteries, apart from the Jewish and Muslim trusts, where they actually have a finite area, they do not come to a stop. The larger trusts will dwindle and that will put quite a lot of pressure on the future costs. It is best to take up those details with the trusts themselves. The question often comes up about future land. The Joint Committee has been involved in that ever since the question was first raised. Consequently my estimates, which may vary from the trusts' estimates, would be that the Muslim trust will be filled about 2007-08; the Jewish trust about 2019-20; the independent trust sometime after 2070; the Catholic trust sometime after 2040; the Anglican and General sometime after 2100. Those figures could be revised with a knowledge of current trends. The figures I have quoted are based on 2001-02 base figures. It gives an overall idea. We can safely say that there is a limited capacity at Rookwood and there has to be action taken through legislation and whatnot to maximise the capacity that is left.
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