A comment on the draft report of the Productivity Commission's inquiry into the conservation of Australia's heritage places

摘要

In December 2005 the Productivity Commission released its draft report on the conservation of Australia's historic heritage places. The draft report advocated a number of significant changes to the current practices and procedures for heritage protection at local and national level. One of the draft report's primary recommendations was that the system of heritage listing by local governments should be amended so that an item could only be listed as an item of heritage if the owner of the item had entered into a voluntary conservation agreement with the local government authority concerned. Ignoring most of the submissions put before it by heritage based nongovernment organisations, the draft report rejected suggestions that there should be greater use of incentive or sanctions to preserve and protect items of historic heritage. Rather the recommendation focused on preserving the rights and interests of the property holder over society's interest in preserving items of historic heritage. The final report is due for release on 21 July 2006.