As governments age, we see that moral, if not actual, corruption and decay set in. With the political decay of the parliamentary process comes concomitant decay and corruption within parts of government institutions. A case in point is the capricious, risible and arrogant actions of Heritage Tasmania (and the Tasmanian Heritage Council) and the Resource Management & Planning Appeals Tribunal (RMPAT).
Both these organisations were established to serve the community: Heritage Tasmania to protect, preserve and foster an appreciation of Tasmania’s built and scenic heritage; the RMPAT to adjudicate matters of planning process. Both organisations have been found wanting; they are dysfunctional, erratic and inconsistent in their decisions.
Heritage Tasmania is a pariah in the conservation industry’s eyes, being seen as pro developer. The RMPAT is so biased towards a legal interpretation of planning issues that commonsense and the well-being of the wider Tasmanian community are totally absent from the decisions handed down these days.
To take a case in point: Macquarie House at 151 Macquarie Street, now hidden behind an early twentieth century addition but still including its original “outbuildings”, is a colonial, three storey brick building built in 1815 and the first of its type in the Colony. It is universally considered to be of major national heritage importance. [It was built by Dr. Thomas William Birch (1774-1821), surgeon, merchant and ship owner, who had arrived in Hobart Town in May 1808, as medical officer on the whaler, Dubuc. He was one of three surgeons in the Town, but did not practice. Birch thrived in the infant colony, and became sufficiently wealthy, through land speculation, to build Macquarie House. The house was sufficiently splendid for Governor Macquarie to choose to stay with Birch, rather than at the then inferior Government House, on his visit to Van Diemen’s Land. Macquarie House even sported its own cannon. Obviously, Birch did not consider the threat from foreign invasion sufficiently neutralised by the local armed forces!]
For several years now, Macquarie House has been under threat from developers who plan to build a mundane nine storey office block on the site in Victoria Street. Much effort, by the Hobart City Council, has gone into beautifying Victoria Street and yet Hobartians are to have an inappropriate, multi-storey building towering over this pleasant precinct.
Aided and abetted by a moribund Heritage Tasmania, the plans were approved by the Tasmanian Heritage Council in spite of the fact that the Hobart City Council had twice unanimously refused to grant development approval. Here was an organisation, charged with the preservation of Hobart’s precious colonial heritage, acting in a cavalier and ill-considered manner, creating mischief instead of upholding basic conservation policies, which it knew full well the community expected it to uphold.
In September 2009, the matter was referred to the Resource Management and Planning Appeals Tribunal. This organisation has long been reviled by members of the public. Originally, the RMPAT had been set up to resolve planning issues between neighbours, developers and local councils in a spirit of good will and reconciliation. It has been debased into a tribunal where legal niceties carry more weight than commonsense and honesty and where the average man is incapable of receiving a fair hearing unless represented by costly legal advisors. This important decision, handed down by the RMPAT on 13th September, 2009, has received no airing by the media. The decision will now allow the entombment of Macquarie House’s kitchen and dining room for ever, and render the restoration of Birch’s House impossible.
This outcome is courtesy of two public institutions entrusted with the care of our early history. These government instrumentalities should now by eviscerated by the newly elected government in 2010, and new organisations created in their place charged with the protection of Hobart’s fast dwindling heritage. To paraphrase Hamlet’s friend, Horatio: something is rotten in the state of Tasmania.
Earlier on Tasmanian Times: John Hawkins, heritage landscapes, Scott Gadd, Graham Corney, Peter James and David Bedford
