SoHONSW Press Releases?  We issue Press Releases whenever we see heritage issues being misreported  and/or the view of owners being ommitted or misstated. This page should be live and up to date before the end of 2008.

The Advocate [Tasmania]

20 November 2008

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE SOCIETY OF HERITAGE OWNERS NSW

Re: TA’s story about how heritage fanatics are utilising Tasmanian heritage nomination provisions and heritage laws in an attempt to torpedo a much needed new $7 million bridge for the Ulverstone community and its visitors [The Advocate “Bridge Plans Collapse” 20/11/08].

The Society of Heritage Owners NSW urges the local member for Montgomery Mrs Smith, Mayor Downie and any others equally appalled at this stab at the heart and well being of the local community to use this case to amend and update inhumane heritage laws and policies.

SoHONSW defines “heritage fascists” are those who place their thrill about old things over and above community well being, community safety and community interest and normally expect the community as well as individual property owners to suffer even the most serious adverse effects without compensation in order to cater to these heritage hobbyists passion. Across Australia these heritage fascists have had a free run for the past 30 years, often using tax payer  generated ‘grants’ to trample all over communities – most especially rural communities. All in the name of preserving heritage. SoHONSW urges the Tasmanian media to commence investigating the links between the Executive and members of those pro heritage organisations, and how many of the key players personally benefit from expanded heritage nominations and heritage listings after alleged spontaneous heritage nominations. 

NSW and of late NSW rural Councils are all to familiar with these pro-heritage organisations, their members and more particularly those who earn their living off being ‘heritage consultants.’ They blow into town, ostensibly at the invitation of the local historian or architectural buff, offering a free lecture or the like, commence an orchestrated local ‘campaign’ to save this or that and attack as philistines anyone who objects. They also normally start pressuring the local Councillors to fund an expensive local ‘heritage study’ invariably undertaken by another heritage fascist, who is not only in receipt of rate payers money for the job,  but often a long term committed heritage activists whose opinions are not shaped by fairness and objectivity, but rather by ideology.  Their reports unsurprisingly always recommend scare Councils funds be expended on heritage, which not coincidentally then benefits more of their ‘heritage consultant’ mates.   They often also want the Council to employ a Heritage Officer and for local property owners to be forced by unfair heritage laws to have part of their properties part nationalised “in the public interest.” 

It is a heritage rort,  pure and simple.  Vulnerable rural communities are increasingly the target, but often fail to realize they are being systematically ripped off and the actual cost,  until its too late.

Just because these heritage fanatics present as middle class, well educated, well dressed and smooth talking esthetics, does not mean they are engaged in any less of a racket than the hoons who smash shop front windows for a fee on behalf of glaziers, or those who collect protection money from stand over merchants.

If you think this may be an exaggeration, let me cite a few recent examples of heritage damaging rural communities in NSW.

The first example concerns the rate payers of NSW’s Kempsey Council who live on or traverse the treacherous, unsealed dirt road at Point Plommer. Locals wanted it sealed because of the human costs incurred, such as accidents, damage to vehicles due to rapidly developing pot holes, asthma and dust covered washing, as well as its impassibility during and after heavy rain. All matters rural community members immediately understand and sympathise with. So who opposed to sealing of this dirt road? None other than the NSW National Trust. Why? They claimed this was a ‘heritage’ dirt road and must be retained as an example of such roads. Bugger the locals. Their lives and health are not worth a tinker’s cuss – retaining the dirt road is all that matters. Not that any of them are likely to regularly use or be affected by the Plommer road. They just like the idea of it being there in that unsafe condition.  If it was a Sydney road they had to traverse with their children endangered, they would scream for it to be sealed. Country lives, heath and safety are however, expendable.

Mr Neish, the Executive Officer of the NSW National Trust recently visited Bathurst as part of his grand state tour following his appointment. What did he do there? Get in the way of the local community quickly upgrading their much needed rural hospital, allegedly because of a ‘heritage’ operating theatre. I kis you not. While rural health funding is slashed to the bone, lives are on the line, and the Central West Health Service in NSW makes front page headlines because hospital medicos have no money for vital equipment like bandages and either have to buy it themselves or borrow it from local vets, every health dollar is precious. And delay in improvements unforgivable. So what was his solution at Bathurst? Some heritage specialist was required to be hired by the hospital refurbisher, no doubt at great cost, to ‘advise’ on the heritage aspects of the so called heritage operating theatre. Time and money ripped out of the rural health budget to subsidize these peoples heritage hobby.

This is not a one off. The same prioritizing of shabby buildings over and above human life occurred at Newcastle. Heritage fanatics with significant support and funding from the NSW National Trust mounted an action to delay a move to a much needed modern mental health unit as they were concerned the old mental health building would fall into disrepair when emptied of staff and patients. Never mind the human suffering of mentally ill clients who would get a boost from fresh surrounds and modern facilities or the staff working in Dickensian conditions.  No siree – ‘saving’ the decrepit building was their sole concern. Senior doctors managing the mental health system had days of their work time wasted attending Council and other meetings to justify why the patients and the staff should be permitted to occupy their new premises,  rather than being left to moulder away in the existing inappropriate rabbit warren, until the heritage fanatics were sure the empty building would be ‘saved.’

The other great issue for rural communities apart from transport, health and safety is jobs. Recently Mr Neish was in Mudgee and Parkes,  where he opposed the demolition of a shop which was part and parcel of a much needed development of a major shopping complex and car parking that would create many extra, much needed jobs for similarly specious reasons.

SoHONW says rural Councils are being systematically hoodwinked by heritage fanatics into pouring resources into their hobby or heritage business. It is they are who is being “helped” – not the locals.

Most pro-heritage organisations are nothing more than an organisation made up of heritage fans and more critically, those that make their living out of heritage. It is obvious that the more heritage listings listed, the more the latter earn,  and the more the heritage hobbyists have their passion catered to and subsidized by others.

The Society of Heritage Owners NSW encourages the rate payers of Ulverstone to run these heritage fanatics out of town before they get their hooks into your Council and commence demanding your precious resources be reallocated from essential infrastructure such as safe roads and bridges and into the pockets of their members and friends to fund yet more ‘heritage studies’ that will ultimately harm your community’s well being.

SoHONSW also strongly encourages your local member to use this [and many othe]r examples to move an amendment in Parliament to Tasmanian heritage laws that ensures vital infrastructure projects which save or improve human lives, such as this bridge, be exempted from heritage laws and heritage nomination. 

Heritage fanatics and those with their snout well embedded in the lucrative heritage trough will shriek, but ignore them and get on with building your new bridge – without delay and without the added costs associated with these heritage rip off merchants.

Meanwhile, anyone interested in more information about heritage fraud and abuses are encouraged to visit our website at www.sohonsw.com

June Pead

Secretary

Society of Heritage Owners NSW

Bridge plans collapse

BY SEAN FORD

20/11/2008 1:00:00 AM

THE Heritage Council may kill plans for a new road bridge at Ulverstone, leaving local politicians Sue Smith and Mike Downie incandescent with fury.

The State Government has been gearing up to build a new bridge worth about $7million.

"We could end up with no brand spanking new bridge and a heap of taxpayers' money being spent on this plain, old, ordinary cement bridge to try and bring it up to sustainable condition," Montgomery independent Mrs Smith said yesterday.

"The government would not commit money to replace a bridge for the fun of it.

"I'd challenge the Heritage Council to tell me where in hell there's one ounce of community support in Ulverstone for that bridge."

The Heritage Council recently decided to nominate the 1930s-vintage bridge for permanent listing on the Heritage Register, which would mean it must be retained.

The government had been moving towards funding a replacement bridge to the south and then demolishing the current bridge.

Central Coast Mayor Cr Downie said he was furious.

"How can anyone justify rehabilitating an old bridge like that when it would cost you more than to build a new one? That's ridiculous.

"How far do you go with heritage; it's not as if it has striking architectural features."

Mrs Smith said: "The stop everything mentality stops right at the top with the Heritage Council itself."

She said former heritage minister Paula Wriedt said in 2006 changes to the relevant act were likely to come to parliament in autumn of 2007.

"We still haven't seen it and we still have this nonsense going on."

She said she would have tried to get amendments made to the laws to stop incidents like the bridge one if they had not been in the government's proposed amendments.

Central Coast Council general manager Sandra Ayton understood rehabilitating the existing bridge would cost the same or more than a new one.

Objections to the listing may be lodged with the Heritage Council by mid- January.