THE territory's Planning Minister, Simon Corbell, has thrown his support behind the ACT Heritage Council after two of its decisions were scathingly overturned.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
When the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal rescinded the heritage registration of the Expansion Mural at the Canberra Rex Hotel in July, it said the council was interpreting the heritage legislation incorrectly.
''The tribunal was also concerned by evidence in relation to the paragraph dealing with Heritage Guidelines in the attachment to the Notification of Provisional Registration,'' the tribunal said. ''This paragraph is false and misleading. The council should rewrite the paragraph to reflect the fact the guidelines are proposed but not yet in existence.''
And a tribunal decision about St Patrick's Church in Braddon last month criticised the expertise and work of the council.
''We feel obliged to say the proposed register entry prepared by the council does not measure up to what we would expect of such an expert body,'' the tribunal said. ''No one reading it would have any clear understanding of the ways in which the listed building and its curtilage were seen to meet the two criteria that the council considered it satisfied.
''It contains clear factual errors, already present in the first draft of the document in 2010 and never corrected, despite expert consensus to the contrary.''
Despite the criticism, Mr Corbell declared he had confidence in the council.
''The owners of Rex and the Catholic church exercised their right to seek a review, and associated with that procedure is a cost,'' Mr Corbell said.
''It is no different to any other administrative decision.''
The chairman of the ACT Heritage Council, Duncan Marshall, said the council was confident it had made good cases for registration, based on the considerable time, effort and expertise applied.
''On my reading of the judgment, the tribunal expected a higher standard from the council's work, and was disappointed,'' Mr Marshall said. ''At this stage I do not want to respond by criticising or disputing this view.''
The owner of the Rex hotel, Wayne Gregory, who took the council to the tribunal to have the work's classification changed, said at the time of the tribunal's decision that people who could not afford to fight bad decisions by the council were disadvantaged.
