Mr Rudd and St John the Baptist

The Old Bear

DID YOU take note of a post-election point of interest about Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd attending church with family in Brisbane on the morning after the triumph of the night before? Newspaper comment was that it was much the same usual Sunday religious observance for him, at his local Anglican Church of St John the Baptist in Bulimba, in his seat of Griffith.

Let’s hope that’s a good omen. He has promised to govern for all Australians, and that pledge should extend to those citizens who are traditional church worshippers, and who want to see both the Federal and State governments do something about preserving heritage churches. Not just cathedrals.

PM Rudd’s personal choice of regular worship venue is a small, historic church, said to provide evidence of the way the Anglican Church developed in Queensland during the 19th century. It’s timber, and has served the area since 1888, with European settlement there starting in the early 1850s. In this there are parallels with Holy Trinity Church’s role in Hobart’s early life.

But Holy Trinity has been closed. One wonders what Kevin Rudd’s reaction would be if told his beloved St John the Baptist was to go?

The same Mercury edition that reported him going to a traditional church also printed a letter from the chair of the Holy Trinity Support Group, Christian Garland, with the heading “Federal salvation”. He reasoned that with large budget surpluses it’s time to create a Heritage Futures Fund and to invest $1-2 billion in it. He also mentioned the creation of a charitable trust to secure Holy Trinity’s future and that a Heritage Futures Fund would kick-start its restoration, and other historically important old buildings elsewhere could be helped in future through the same financial assistance.

I know this fund idea was put to John Howard pre-election and that there was a promise to look at it. Of course, he no longer holds the reins and Kevin Rudd has plenty of priorities on his plate as he sets about the business of his Labor running the country.

There’s a tricky aspect that State Labor in Tasmania has already declared it’s not willing to help in providing its own funds for Holy Trinity.

Incidentally, it’s probably not generally known that in September, when the Greens Christine Milne had a motion in the Senate seeking the creation of the Heritage Futures Fund, it was defeated by Labor and the Liberals.

Eric Abetz was a vocal opponent, observing that whereas his government recognise and valued Australia’s architectural and other heritage, it was a matter of shared responsibility and he bemoaned the “woefully inadequate funding” provided by State Labor governments around the country to “support and manage places on State Heritage Lists”.

He declared: “It is time for State Labor governments to step up to the plate and provide the resources needed to protect places under their own legislation”.

Today he’s also departed power and the ministerial ranks, and so, with Labor rule, perhaps the long-serving Duncan Kerr may now be in a position to see what he can do to help the cause.

I should also record that the Anglican community in Hobart had a St John the Baptist Church. It dated from the 1850s and its West Hobart parish was originally formed from part of Holy Trinity and St David’s parishes. But the lovely stone Goulburn Street building was closed and sold in the late 1990s.