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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-06 Daily Xml
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Bills

Heritage Places (Protection of State Heritage Places) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (15:49): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I thank the Hon. Robert Simms MLC for his commitment to the protection of heritage and his initiative in introducing legislation to further the protection of State Heritage Places. The government has made a commitment to legislate to better protect State Heritage Places, and takes this opportunity to augment the bill introduced in the other place to advance a graduated system of enforcement, to increase penalties for noncompliance and to otherwise improve processes under the Heritage Places Act 1993.

The increased financial penalties for violations of the Heritage Places Act bring South Australia's penalty amounts in line with those of other jurisdictions. Protection orders under the Heritage Places Act currently stipulate a penalty for noncompliance within the order, but no subsidiary enforcement measures exist to support positive conservation outcomes for state heritage properties.

Registering enforcement orders on the title of land belonging to the person who is subject to such an order ensures that if the property is sold, the purchaser is aware of the encumbrance. This measure, as well as providing daily penalties forcing the person to undertake works contemplated by the order in a timely manner, offers these subsidiary measures. This may avoid a repetition of the circumstances that have led to the continued demise of, for example, Bell's Plumbers Shop.

Further specific enforcement provisions offer a graduated scale of responses to noncompliance. A repair notice advises the owner of the need to repair a State Heritage Place if the place suffers from neglect or disrepair. This preliminary step has the advantage of allowing owners the opportunity to undertake repairs and to discuss the repairs with a heritage architect without exacting a penalty. Only if the owner fails to comply with a repair notice will the secondary enforcement of a repair order be issued.

Restoration orders have been introduced to address the situation of a person who carries out works in relation to a State Heritage Place without prior authorisation. The order may require the person to rectify any work or activity undertaken or otherwise restore the place to its previous condition. The amendments also extend the ability for the minister, in relation to repair, restoration or protection orders, to cause any works or action contemplated by the order to be carried out by a recognised heritage professional and to recover the cost of doing so as a debt. In order to facilitate prosecution for noncompliance, the amendments provide a clear presumption that the owner is responsible for any damage or destruction which is the subject of any potential prosecution.

I am advised that the Department for Environment and Water spends in excess of $10,000 a year on newspaper advertisements to comply with notifications required under the act. Providing alternate means for public notifications will provide broader circulation, reduce costs and contemporise this provision. Finally, aligning the practice of designation for sites of geological, archaeological, paleontological and speleological significance with the listing processes for State Heritage Places allows for better public engagement in the designation process.

I would like to commend this bill to the house, primarily on the basis that it will help protect State Heritage Places and provide a much more subtle and graded way to manage State Heritage Places and their owners, in a supportive way for those owners who wish to be supportive of their state heritage, but, at times, in a punitive way where owners have clearly decided that demolition through neglect is an appropriate course of action.

A secondary reason I would like to support it is to point out how good it is to see in parliament, occasionally, a bill start with a different political party and be continued with another one. The cross-party work that can occasionally occur and is seen in this place is, I think, a sign of politicians doing the right thing for the right reasons, rather than always sticking solely to party lines. With those words, I commend the bill, and note that I will be happy for this bill to be adjourned at this point in order to allow some substantial amendments that we are proposing to be properly briefed to the opposition.

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (15:54): I rise to speak on the Heritage Places (Protection of State Heritage Places) Amendment Bill 2023. This is a bill that has come to us from the other place, and I thank and acknowledge the Hon. Robert Simms for bringing this bill to the Legislative Council and for having it pass the Legislative Council and come to us now.

This was a bill that the Liberal Party supported in the Legislative Council, the latest in a string of legislation related to heritage that the Liberal Party has supported in this place. Whether it be the Ayers House legislation this year or whether it be the many bills before this house related to the Adelaide Parklands and heritage listing them, I note time and time again the government has opted not to support those bills.

We have been consistent on this issue. The Liberal Party is the party of heritage in this place. It is also the latest in a raft of legislation that we have seen come to us from the opposition or from a minor party and then supported by the government, by the parliament. It really is starting to look like this is a government bereft of any legislative agenda, so much so that they have to take Liberal Party ideas and Greens' ideas to give us anything to do in this place. This is just another example of that.

What it is perhaps the biggest example of is Labor once again pretending to care about heritage before an election. I think I have seen this film before and I did not like the ending. We only have to go back to 2022 and the last election. Ironically, it was three weeks before the last election that the now minister for heritage made a promise. In February 2022, a few weeks before the last election, she told a community forum and I quote, 'Labor has absolutely no intention of knocking over any State Heritage Place.'

The worst thing about that promise is that people believed her. People in the community who care about heritage believed the now minister for heritage when she stood up three weeks or so before the last election and said that Labor had no intention of knocking over any State Heritage Place. What did they believe that to mean? They thought that it meant Labor would not go and knock over state heritage-listed buildings.

What did this now minister for heritage do merely months after forming government, merely months after making that promise a few weeks before an election? She went and bowled over a state heritage-listed building. Merely months into this new parliament, we saw the bulldozer going through the Thebarton barracks, which was enormously sad. But it was also the bulldozer going through our entire system that protects heritage in this state. It was treated with total contempt by the government and it was treated with total contempt by the very minister who agreed, before the last election, that they had no intention of knocking over any state heritage-listed place. It was also, of course, the bulldozer going through her very own promises when it comes to protecting heritage, protecting state heritage in South Australia. That was a promise made by the now minister for heritage about three weeks before the last election.

I find it extraordinary that here we are today, three weeks before another election, and again we see this minister talking about heritage. Three weeks before another election, we see Labor fronting up with a piece of Greens legislation, clinging to a piece of Greens legislation, trying to pretend before an election that they care about heritage. They might have fooled South Australians at the last election, they might have fooled the people of Dunstan at the last election, but I do not think they are going to fool the people of Dunstan again because this is clearly not a government that cares about heritage.

If the minister for heritage really wanted to protect state heritage-listed buildings in South Australia, she would not come in here clinging to a piece of Greens' legislation two years into her government: what she would do is stop bulldozing state heritage-listed places. That is what she did a few months into her government and a few months after making a commitment that that was the very thing she was not going to do.

If the minister cared about protecting heritage, and particularly this legislation which concerns state heritage-listed buildings of which there are only a couple of thousand, she should simply stop putting the bulldozer through them as she did with about 10 associated with the Thebarton barracks sites in this term of parliament. I just find it extraordinary that we see the exact same stunt again a few weeks before a by-election.

If the minister really cared about protecting heritage in this state, we would not have new promises in a press conference in Norwood with the Greens a few weeks before a by-election. What we might have seen is some action over the past couple of years, what we might have seen is the minister actually meeting some of her own policy commitments when it comes to protecting heritage in South Australia. One of them I have spoken about already, which was, 'We will not put the bulldozer through any state heritage-listed buildings.' But there were more, and they related to state heritage buildings—exactly what this bill now purports to cover.

Again, if we have a look at Labor's very own policy document before the last election, we saw a commitment, and I quote:

A Malinauskas Labor government will:

Legislate to require proposed demolition of state heritage sites are subject to full public consultation and a public report from the SA Heritage Council.

We are two years nearly into the Malinauskas Labor government and we have not seen any attempt to legislate this commitment to require that the proposed demolition of state heritage sites be the subject of full public consultation and a public report from the SA Heritage Council. In fact, we have seen the exact opposite. We have seen the demolition of State Heritage Places by this very minister without any public consultation or report at the time from the State Heritage Council.

We then have the minister front up, clutching a piece of Greens' legislation, pretending to care about heritage. I note that the minister is apparently going to move a series of amendments to the legislation that has come to us from the Legislative Council, and I note that quite substantial amendments were filed last night in this place, and we will consider them in due course. Indeed, I think there are 18 pages of amendments to what was a two-page-or-so bill from the other place, and we will have a look at those.

What we do not see at first blush anywhere in those 18 pages of amendments, which we presume is South Australian Labor's heritage policy being enacted at the behest of the Greens three weeks before a by-election, is a legislated requirement that requires that the proposed demolition of state heritage sites be subject to full public consultation and a public report from the SA Heritage Council.

If we are suddenly caring about heritage a few weeks out from the by-election, so much so that you are going to rush through the Greens' legislation as a priority in Government Business today and so much so that you are going to spring 18 pages of amendments on this parliament, why is it that we are not legislating Labor's very own election commitment on a single page in that amendment? It is another broken promise from this minister for heritage who likes to say one thing before a by-election, likes to put out the flashy policy document in 2022, but we see no action now two years into the Malinauskas Labor government on doing that. We certainly do not see it in the bill before the house and I cannot see it anywhere, having a first glance at these 18 pages of amendments.

Once again, we are three weeks out from another election. It is extraordinary. We have the exact same stunt being pulled: pretending to care about one thing before the by-election—in this case it is heritage—and doing the complete opposite after. If she really cared, she would stop putting the bulldozer through heritage buildings and she would actually advance her own election commitments that have been sitting there for two years now. It is quite simple legislative change on the face of the election commitment.

This stands in stark contrast to how the South Australian Liberal Party have approached heritage over the past couple of years. We have been very consistent on this issue because we are the party of heritage. We know that heritage buildings tell the story of our past, and if they are appropriately preserved and protected, used and celebrated, they can tell the story of our future as well.

That is why the South Australian Liberals have been out in the community for the past year, talking to them about these very issues, talking to them about our plans to better protect heritage in South Australia. We have been presenting to them a plan to Save Our Suburbs, which was a series of policy proposals that would see the character of our streets and suburbs better preserved, that would see our historic heritage buildings across my own electorate, the electorate of Dunstan and the electorate of Adelaide preserved and would grow our important tree canopy.

If you want to talk about protecting heritage, some of the ideas that the South Australian Liberal Party have been talking about over the past couple of years the minister might do well to pay some attention to. We have spoken about things like introducing a simple process for listing local and State Heritage Places under a single heritage act and one heritage minister. We have spoken about implementing a strategic approach to identifying heritage buildings, supporting councils to undertake urgent heritage surveys and also to establish a high-quality South Australian heritage register.

We have spoken about expanding heritage conservation grants. This government tried to scrap them in their first budget, realised what a mistake it was and quickly brought them back, but we have suggested perhaps they could apply to local heritage places as well as State Heritage Places. We have spoken about introducing a power to require the remediation of derelict local heritage buildings. This bill before our house deals entirely with state heritage-listed buildings. It deals mainly with section 36 of the Heritage Places Act, which is the section that covers intentional damage or neglect.

Unfortunately we do see, time and time again, often owners of state heritage-listed buildings letting them go to rack and ruin in the hope that one day we might just give up the fight. We want to push back against this sort of damage and neglect, and that is why we supported this bill in the other place. But it is not just state heritage-listed buildings that are subject to such neglect. Time and time again in my own electorate I see a similar story, unfortunately, with local heritage buildings. They are often purchased by people seeking to develop the site who either knew or did not know they were locally heritage listed.

They apply to develop the site and they cannot, of course, because the site is locally heritage listed, so what do they do? They open the windows, they open the doors, they let the place go to rack and ruin on the hope that we would simply give up the fight and the heritage value is so diminished that they get their way and can develop the site. This happens in Toorak Gardens to Glenunga in my own electorate.

What we have discovered, looking at the legislation, is we have an act that does go some way in protecting state heritage-listed places in these circumstances through section 36, which the Hon. Mr Simms's bill is seeking to bolster, but really an act and legislation that does not cover local heritage in the same way. A question we pose to the government is: why not have a similar protection for local heritage-listed buildings that we do for state heritage-listed buildings? That is often what gets raised with me when I am out doorknocking. It is not the 2,000 or so state heritage-listed buildings, which we know are enormously important, and we beg the minister to stop putting the bulldozer through them.

But often people are more concerned with the lovely locally listed heritage home a few doors up and what its future might be and what that might mean for the character of their own streets, and that is something that is totally overlooked by this bill from the Greens and totally overlooked by these 18 pages of amendments from the government, which we assume is the totality of their heritage policy being announced in this bizarre fashion two years after the last election and three weeks before the next election.

So these are all ideas about protecting heritage that the Liberal Party has been talking about for the past couple of years, so if you are in the market of stealing ideas from the Greens, well why not the Liberals? We have been talking about it for quite a while and we have been consistent on the issue, and not just about protecting heritage homes but also preserving the character of our streets and suburbs more generally.

I think we all live where we do for a reason, but there is a lot of concern in local communities that every subdivision or rebuild might slowly be eroding the character of some of these established neighbourhoods, and that is why we have been again out in the community speaking about these issues, talking about Labor's 85 per cent urban infill target that was introduced quite some time ago, which really has to go. This was a policy that saw the deliberate urban infill of our established neighbourhoods. It said 85 per cent of any new development in South Australia, or in Greater Adelaide, should be in the existing urban footprint.

What we saw as a result of that is the slow erosion of the character of our neighbourhoods and our suburbs, so we should scrap this urban infill target and encourage the right development in the right places. We have spoken about tightening demolition controls and ensuring they apply to more heritage homes, so this would look something like reassessing what character and historic areas are looking like and whether they are serving the purpose they are intended to do. We have also spoken about putting community at the heart of decision-making when it comes to our suburbs, our streets, our neighbourhoods—empowering local communities, empowering local councils, and importantly requiring earlier and more frequent consultation on proposed developments.

I am seeing repeated examples in my own electorate of a development application being put up that has triggered a public notification period. We have seen that public notification complied with. Neighbours have had the opportunity to have their say, a decision is made, neighbours are either satisfied or dissatisfied, and the decision has been made. Neighbours assume that is the end of it, but they would be very wrong. What we are seeing time and time again is fast-forward a week, a month, a year, and we see what is sometimes described as a minor variation to these development applications, or perhaps a new development application which does not trigger the same public notification requirements. Sometimes these minor variations might be as minor as a couple more storeys or a few less car parks, and they have a real impact on what the development means for the surrounding neighbours, and we do not see a requirement for any notification or consultation when that is occurring.

I think sometimes, unfortunately, we are seeing the early notification deliberately used to circumvent notifying what the actual plan is. My community certainly is sick of it, so we would like to see more frequent notification on such developments. But again, this mainly concerns local heritage buildings, which is what is often raised with me when I am out doorknocking, when I am out in the electorate of Dunstan doorknocking around Beulah Park. There is a serious concern about their very own streets and what this government is doing to protect them, and unfortunately it is not a very pretty picture that they painted.

Again, you do not just have to steal the Greens' ideas. Come and have a look at our ideas on this as well, because consistently over the past couple of years we have been standing up for heritage, standing up for character, standing up for tree canopy to try to preserve and protect the character of our neighbourhoods, whether they be Beaumont or Norwood.

Some of these ideas that we have been talking about may very well be in the government's own planning review, the expert panel's Planning System Implementation Review, that I understand now is done. I think it was done about a year ago. It has been sitting on the minister's desk I think since around Easter last year. We have not seen it. We have not heard anything about its contents. We certainly have not heard the government's response to it.

Every day that is sitting on the Minister for Planning's desk is a day that there are heritage homes at risk in my electorate and surrounding areas because ideas that are in that very report, which we have not seen, cannot be implemented. I hope that the planning review has considered many of those ideas. I certainly made my own submission to that review. I know the shadow minister made a submission to that review as well. I hope they have been taken into account, but what I would really like is just to simply see it.

So I once again use this as an opportunity to call on the planning minister to release the Planning System Implementation Review and, indeed, to release the government's response to the Planning System Implementation Review. It has been sitting on his desk for a year, they have been in government for two years, and the best we have seen, the most substantive heritage announcement we have heard has been today, three weeks before an election, with the government clinging on to some Greens legislation and moving these 18 pages of amendments that do nothing of the kind. So let's see the planning review.

That brings us to this crowning moment in heritage policy from the Malinauskas Labor government, which is the bill before the house. The bill, certainly as it came to this house, does three things. The first is an amendment to section 33 of the Heritage Places Act to allow the creation of a heritage agreement which is entered into between the owner of a State Heritage Place and the minister to provide for the 'management, occupation, use or future use of the land'.

I note that the act already allows heritage agreements to be entered into for the management of the land or any place, specimens or artefacts in accordance with management plans. The change here is that management plans can relate to the occupation and use of the land. That is a worthy amendment to make and one that we supported in the other place. Of course, it does require the cooperation of the landholder and that is not always forthcoming. Certainly, in the example that the minister has used just now of the Bell's Plumbers Shop, I do not think there was a management plan in place there and, as far as I can tell, there has been a total lack of cooperation from the owner of that state heritage-listed place.

So it requires the cooperation of the landowner, which might not always be forthcoming, and it also requires a minister that is willing to go out and try to strike such agreements. There is no point in having these provisions there if we do not actually have a minister who cares about this and who will go to the trouble of going and striking such heritage agreements and setting up management plans and working with owners of state heritage-listed places to help them better protect and preserve their great asset that they are custodians of.

The second thing that the bill that came to us from the other place does is provide quite significant increases in penalties applicable in circumstances where there is intentional or reckless damage to a State Heritage Place. For example, we see the increase of a penalty from $120,000 to $250,000 for an individual, and $500,000 for a body corporate. I understand that several of these pages in the government's amendment are just saying, 'We should make it even more. Let's double it.' I will be interested to hear how we have arrived at that, but the consensus is we need to increase penalties for breaching such provisions. I think that is a good idea and, again, that is the reason we supported it in the other place.

If we again turn to the example that the minister is very fond of, Bell's Plumbers Shop, I think the penalty that applied there, after a minister really tried to enforce a penalty, was about $26,000. I think we can all agree that that simply was not going to have a sufficient deterrent effect on future owners of state heritage-listed places, such Bell's Plumbers Shop, to take such action.

Again, this is going to require a minister who wants to act. You can have the biggest penalty in the world, but unless we have a minister who is prepared to go and seek orders under section 36 of the act there is really no point in having a penalty at all. It also requires a heritage branch in the department to be appropriately resourced to go and enforce such offences and such penalties. Again, we can have great big penalties, but if they are never actually enforced and we do not have a heritage branch within the department that is equipped and resourced to go and investigate and enforce such penalties, and everyone knows it, they are not going to serve the deterrent effect that everyone hopes they will. So I would be very interested to hear from the minister on just what she has done over the last two years, as the minister for heritage, on the enforcement front, using the tools and powers that she already has under the act.

The third and final broad matter that the bill that has come to us from the other place deals with is amending provisions relating to protection orders. This is under section 39A of the act. The act already allows for the creation of protection orders if the minister believes that the order is reasonably necessary to ensure or secure compliance with any requirement imposed by or under the act. However, this bill proposes to introduce penalties for failing to comply with protection orders. It is a relatively high penalty and one that keeps accumulating day by day.

Once again, I appreciate the intention. I think it is a good thing because we do want to have significant deterrents against intentionally neglecting a heritage property, and we do want to have an incentive to take some action when we see a protection order not being acted on. Again, it relies on a minister actually issuing a protection order. It will be interesting to explore, throughout her two years as minister for heritage, just how many protection orders have been issued by this government and what their status is.

We can have all the tools in the world, but if we do not have a minister willing to use the tools it is going to be entirely ineffectual, just as I think it is unfortunately going to be rather ineffective and ineffectual with respect to Bell's Plumbers Shop. This is a building that has been used as an example in the other place, and it is a building that has been used as an example by the minister just now.

It once was a wonderful building. It is located on Payneham Road in College Park and was constructed by a former premier, John Colton, in 1883. The shop was entered onto the South Australian Heritage Register in 1985 in recognition of it being a significant example of a Victorian-era shop and dwelling.

In 2018, unfortunately the owner of the property, Mr Philip March, was found guilty of ignoring an order to repair the state heritage-listed place. Although he was fined by the Environment, Resources and Development Court, we unfortunately saw, during the course of those legal proceedings, the ownership of the property transferred by Mr March to a company registered overseas. That very much complicated those proceedings and very much complicated recovering any of the fine that was issued against Mr March. The sad reality is that even if we could enforce such a fine, it was, as I said earlier, a relatively modest fine that was able to be issued. It was $26,800, which we think is clearly not sufficient in terms of a deterrent effect and something that I hope the bill from the Hon. Mr Simms might address.

During that previous term of government, though, the Minister for Environment attempted to engage with the owner of that shop with the intention of trying to promote its preservation, its restoration and its activation. The best way to protect a heritage building is to use a heritage building. Although contact was achieved, what we saw, unfortunately, was a lack of cooperation from the owner, which I suppose is typical in situations like this.

It is unclear whether the government over the past two years has continued to attempt to engage with that owner, whether the minister is interested in pursuing protection of that State Heritage Place and, indeed, whether any of these 18 pages of much trumped amendments might go some way in saving Bell's Plumbers Shop and preventing it from being the eyesore that it has turned into on Payneham Road. Whether it is Bell's Plumbers Shop in College Park, Romilly House, Edmund Wright House or Gawler Chambers, on this side of the house we absolutely want to protect, we want to use, we want to celebrate, heritage buildings. That is why we supported this bill in the other place.

I know it was supported by the government in the other place, and I know they are going to support it here, with a whole raft of amendments, because they stood up before the cameras today, three weeks before an election, and told everyone that they will; but the same thing happened three weeks before the last election. We had a minister stand up and pretend to care about heritage and then do the complete opposite after the last election. We are seeing it once again here, three weeks before the next election, a minister stand up and pretend to care about heritage, and I do not think she does at all. You might have fooled the people of Dunstan once, but you will not fool them twice.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Hughes.

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