Despite enormous effort from Heritage organisations such as the National Trust, from 1 February 2012 the Register of the National Estate will no longer exist.
Mr Eric Martin, President of the National Trust of the ACT, said last week; “This puts at high risk a number of listed places in the ACT and Australia including those places of local significance under the National Capital Authority which will have substantially weakened protection.
From today the list fails to exist and the list of heritage places throughout Australia is reduced as many of the places on the list were not protected by other statutory lists,” Mr Martin said.
The Register of the National Estate is Australia’s most comprehensive national inventory of natural, indigenous and historic places considered worthy of conservation and protection for current and future generations. It includes over 13,000 places of aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or other special value.
Mr Martin called on the heritage Minister, Tony Burke, to immediately reinstate the list, as was recommended in the Productivity Commission’s review into the “Conservation of Historic Heritage Places”, until statutory protection is afforded to all places of National, Commonwealth, State or Local level.
The Register of the National Estate is a major national asset developed over decades through the investment of considerable financial and intellectual resources and was largely based on the original National Trust Heritage list.
Following amendments to the Australian Heritage Council Act 2003, the Register of the National Estate (RNE) was frozen on 19 February 2007. According to the Departments website, from that time until 2/2/12, was regarded as a ‘transition period’ allowing “…states, territories, local and the Australian Government to complete the task of transferring places to appropriate heritage registers where necessary and to amend legislation that refers to the RNE as a statutory list.
On 1 January 2004, a new national heritage system was established under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). This led to the introduction of the National Heritage List, which was designed to recognise and protect places of outstanding heritage to the nation, and the Commonwealth Heritage List, which includes Commonwealth owned or leased places of significant heritage value.
The Federal Environment Department says, “The establishment of this national system was in line with a 1997 agreement by the Council of Australian Governments that each level of government should be responsible for protecting heritage at the appropriate level.
The Australian Government’s role in relation to heritage is to focus on protecting places of world and national heritage significance and on ensuring Commonwealth compliance with state heritage and planning laws. Each state and territory government, and local government, has a similar responsibility for its own heritage.
As a result, there was a significant level of overlap between the Register of the National Estate, and heritage lists at the national, state and territory, and local government levels.”
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