The ACT Heritage Council would not have to explain why it chose not to list a place or object under amendments to the territory's planning system under changes to be debated in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday.
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According to the Heritage Act 2004, the Heritage Council must detail the reasons why they decided not to place an item on the heritage register against a set of criteria.
As it stands, every notice of decision must include this assessment.
However the amendment gives the Heritage Council the flexibility not to publish an assessment in its decision, if an assessment has not been undertaken.
Kate Gauthier of the Oaks Estate Progress Association, who recently criticised the council for knocking back their bid to heritage list the village of Oaks Estate after 16 years on the backlog, said the amendment reflected the "fundamentally poor attitude to publicly accountable decision-making in the ACT".
"Should either proposed amendment be passed, the Heritage Council will not even be required to pay lip service to whether they are meeting the very basic requirements of their existence, which is to make statutory decisions that are bounded by the framework of the Heritage Act," Ms Gauthier said.
"Both proposed amendments, from the government and the opposition, are highly undesirable. Both remove requirements for the Heritage Council to follow standard statutory decision-making frameworks, where decisions must be shown to have taken into account the legislative provisions under which they have been made.
Hugh Griffin from the Oaks Estate Progress Association described it as a "massive snub to generations of Western democracy".
"Can you imagine if ACAT or the Supreme Court did that?" Mr Griffin said.
However a spokesman for planning minister Mick Gentleman said the amendment did not affect the obligation to provide a statement of reasons for a decision.
"This amendment is not making a substantive change to decision-making powers under the Heritage Act but rather to what information must be included in a written notice of a decision," he said.
"This amendment merely recognises there are currently circumstances where the Heritage Council may decide that a nominated place or object should not be provisionally registered for a reason other than that the place or object does not meet the heritage significance criteria.
"In such cases the existing requirement to include an assessment against the criteria in the statement of reasons is sometimes redundant."
