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Executive Summary

Heritage places and objects provide cultural and physical links with the past, with the history of human habitation, and with the evolution of plants, animals and the physical landscape - heritage defines our sense of place. This is the second national assessment of the state of heritage in Australia, and it uses heritage indicators devised in 1998. The first assessment was published in 1996 (Purdie et al. 1996).

The key findings of the 1996 State of the Environment Report for the heritage theme are listed in Appendix 5. The 1996 report provided some baseline information from which trends are identified in this 2001 report.

This report presents an overview of the current state of Australia's heritage places, objects and Indigenous languages, and the major pressures that are affecting them. Where changes have occurred since the 1996 report, these are quantified as far as available information allows, and trends are identified and discussed.

In the language of earlier State of the Environment work, these relate to either 'condition' (the actual health) of the heritage described, 'pressures' (generally threats) on heritage significance, or 'responses' (generally actions) by government and the community to the conservation of heritage significance or to addressing perceived or real pressures.

The condition-pressure-response model, which was used in the 1996 Report and in selecting heritage indicators in 1998, is referred to where it is clearly a useful concept in the discussion of the data, but it has not been applied rigidly as a structure. In 2000 the Australian State of Environment Committee decided that an issues-based approach, as used in the present report, would be more productive in describing the state of our environment.

For the 2001 State of the Environment Report, commissioned research addressed the condition of heritage places and their associated objects and Indigenous languages. Specific measures have been developed and tested for the condition of places; for example, the survey of the number of historic heritage places assessed (by sampling) as being in (a) good, (b) average, and (c) poor condition. Measurement is a relative exercise, and this report aimed to establish baseline data with which to measure change in future reporting periods.

State of Environment report card for heritage in 2001

Australia is a land of unique heritage value:

• it is the only developed country in the world whose biodiversity is defined as megadiverse,
• it is where for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples the ancestral beings inscribed the law on the lands and waters as they created the landscape,
• it is the home of the first Australians, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who have owned and cared for the lands and waters for at least 60 000 years,
• it is where the first Australians have successfully accommodated major environmental and social changes into their unique ways of life,
• it has a rich and varied history of European settlement over the last 210 years,
• it has become the home of people from many countries around the world, with a consequent richness of tradition and cultural diversity, and
• it is the only nation whose territory includes a continent.

Source: Purdie et al. (1996, p. 9-5)

Key finding

Although conservation of heritage improved during the reporting period 1995-2000, components of Australia's distinctive natural and cultural heritage are still being lost due to the inadequate identification and protection of heritage places and associated objects or collections and Indigenous languages. In addition, there are uncertainties about future heritage management arrangements and how these will affect current conservation management regimes.

Positive outcomes

Heard and McDonald Islands, Macquarie Island and The Greater Blue Mountains Area were inscribed on the World Heritage List. This takes the number of Australian World Heritage properties from 11 to 14 during this reporting period.

Regional Forest Agreement surveys in most States and some large-scale regional studies (such as in the Murray Mallee, Paroo, and Cumberland Plain-Outer Sydney regions) have resulted in the further identification of heritage sites, although most have not yet been recorded in heritage registers. Approximately 3000 heritage sites were identified through the Regional Forest Agreement surveys. These surveys were important as the first large-scale attempts at an integrated assessments of all heritage values in a place.

During the reporting period the number of places listed on the Register of the National Estate (recognised for their heritage values by the Australian Heritage Commission) rose from 11 000 to approximately 13 000. The list of Register places was made accessible on the Internet.

There appears to be an increasing involvement in, and to a certain extent, control by, Indigenous people of Indigenous heritage issues. This is demonstrated by: established regional and local Indigenous heritage organisations actively being involved in heritage management; the presence of Indigenous site officers in both government and community employment; and, the general strength of concern expressed by Indigenous people for their cultural heritage.

Work on Native Title and land claims is encouraging detailed research into Indigenous tradition and recent Indigenous history, with an increasing number of sophisticated and integrated studies which present a holistic view of Indigenous culture. The study and celebration of recent Indigenous history by Indigenous people is demonstrated by the healthy publication rate of memoirs and regional Indigenous histories, and nomination to the Register of the National Estate of significant Indigenous historic sites.

The active program through the Natural Heritage Trust to augment the national reserve system in Australia continues to improve the conservation of Indigenous places conserved in natural environments. The number of joint management arrangements between nature conservation agencies and Indigenous communities continued to increase, and twelve Indigenous Protected Areas have been established as part of Australia's National Reserve System since 1998.

The area of heritage places and landscapes owned and managed by Indigenous people continues to increase above the 15.1% figure of 1996. The 1996 figure was an increase from 9.6% in 1983, compared to almost 8% in National Park or conservation reserve tenures in 1996.

The Return of Indigenous Cultural Heritage Property Program instituted in 1998 is facilitating the return of cultural property to Indigenous people from Australian museums and other collecting institutions. There were increased efforts for the repatriation of Indigenous materials by Australian museums within the reporting period, especially for human remains and secret and/or sacred objects. There were 19 agreements with Australian museums for the repatriation of Indigenous materials in the reporting period.

Major public events, cultural activities and media coverage, contribute to an increasing public awareness of Indigenous culture and heritage.

The Natural Heritage Trust and the Centenary of Federation Fund provided substantial boosts to heritage conservation and management of heritage places and objects, (for example, World Heritage property management, Queensland Heritage Trails Network, new National Museum of Australia). The Natural Heritage Trust program makes a significant contribution towards improving the adequacy and representativeness of the conservation reserve system through its acquisitions program.

A survey of 12% of the historic heritage places listed in the Register of the National Estate found that 95% of places were in fair or better condition.

The National Conservation and Preservation Policy and Strategy for Australia's heritage collections, released by the Cultural Ministers Council in 1998 is a significant achievement. A survey found that environmental conditions for storing heritage objects in the major collecting organisations appear to be reasonable across all sectors. The proportion of collections catalogued across all heritage sectors appears to be improving.

There were significant advances in heritage methodology and practice during the reporting period. The Australian Natural Heritage Charter was adopted in 1996. In 1999 a new version of the Burra Charter was released which addresses intangible aspects such as understanding, meanings and use, in addition to its traditional concern with the physical fabric. There has been more regard for Indigenous heritage values other than the specifically archaeological, and this has led to integrated assessments in the Regional Forest Agreements and other survey processes. Values tables showing the type, extent and distribution of all values have become part of these assessments.

The Madrid Protocol on environment protection in Antarctica came into force in 1998.

Negative outcomes

No suitable data are available for assessing the condition of natural and Indigenous heritage places other than for natural heritage places within World Heritage properties.

The current Natural Heritage Trust program does not provide sufficient funding to meet the objective of making a significant contribution towards improving the adequacy and representativeness of the conservation reserve system through its acquisitions program to the target percentage of reserved environmental types.

In contrast to the Natural Heritage Trust's assistance for natural heritage places, there are currently no long-term national funding programs of similar magnitude specifically for Indigenous or historic heritage places.

Indigenous heritage issues have been at the forefront of the political debate during the reporting period. This has had some favourable results, but there has also been a strong polarisation of views, especially in regional Australia with some resentment of perceived favourable treatment for Indigenous Australians. Rejection by the government of significant aspects of the report on the Stolen Generations has led to public dispute about the facts of the treatment of Indigenous people since white settlement of Australia. Similarly, continued publicity (often inaccurate) about land rights and Native Title has made many country landowners suspicious of, or even destructive towards, Indigenous sites. These issues may have had some negative effect on Indigenous people contributing information about Indigenous heritage places. Several high profile controversial disputes concerning the importance of Aboriginal sacred sites and their conservation versus other proposed land use demonstrate that there is still considerable disagreement and misunderstanding in the community about these complex issues and their resolution.

Legislative regimes are still inadequate for the conservation of Indigenous heritage in some jurisdictions, with lack of provision for some level of active involvement in and control of Indigenous heritage by the Indigenous community. The failure to date of Federal Parliament to pass legislation based on the recommendations of the Evatt Report means that there is a lack of minimum national standards for Indigenous heritage legislation.

While there is Indigenous involvement in Indigenous heritage management, many of the protocols for consultation and involvement instituted by local Indigenous communities are not always recognised and used effectively. Although there has been a marked increase in the number of Indigenous people involved in heritage management, there is still a comparative lack of well-qualified Indigenous heritage managers in senior positions in State and Commonwealth Governments.

The number of Indigenous languages and the percentage of people speaking these languages has continued to fall in the period 1986-1996, and this trend accelerated over the 10 years. By 1996, seventeen of the previous twenty strong languages were still strong and three had become endangered.

Management of heritage places has been affected during the reporting period by declining public sector agency budgets for heritage place maintenance and conservation (with some notable exceptions, such as Victoria's Public Heritage Program); and by the cessation of the National Estate Grants Program and the tax incentive scheme for private heritage property owners and their replacement by a limited grants program. The trend is to support tourism infrastructure rather than conservation maintenance per se, as exemplified by the range of heritage trails funding and localised Centenary of Federation grant funding.

In many jurisdictions there is still a lack of integrated management planning for the conservation of both natural and cultural heritage leading to unnecessary neglect of one or other aspect of heritage even in conservation areas. This is despite some examples of this planning, especially in the Regional Forest Agreement surveys.

The absence of any World Heritage historic heritage site is a noticeable gap in the representation of Australia's heritage places of outstanding universal significance.

A survey of 12% of the historic heritage places listed in the Register of the National Estate found:

• continuing occurrence of vacant and deteriorating government buildings, demonstrating governments' lack of interest in funding heritage asset retention in the various jurisdictions,
• growing ongoing and deferred maintenance for many churches, which will pose major conservation funding problems over the next decade, and
• a continuing low but steady rate of damage done to heritage buildings by inappropriate works such as remodelling of shop fronts and interiors, and insertion of windows.

A survey of museums found that there is no coherent, agreed, national definition or shared view of what might constitute cultural heritage collections despite the presence of the National Conservation and Preservation Policy and Strategy for Australia's Heritage Collections released in 1998. Because of inadequate cataloguing, most small museums are likely to have little idea of the significance of particular items in their collections, and despite the introduction of Australian Museums & Galleries Online (AMOL) to collect this information, we do not know how many objects by category are held in these 2000 museums. Nor do we know their condition. Small and large museums generally have documentation systems that are idiosyncratic and inadequate to meet current demands of scholarly and public access. Many of the collecting institutions surveyed highlighted a shortage of storage space as an issue. Also many smaller collecting organisations faced problems with display conditions.

There is a problem of heritage indicator data collection across a diverse range of sources - natural, Indigenous, historic places, Indigenous languages, heritage collections and objects. Constant changes to the information collected, or not collected, and reported means that it has not been possible to have a set of constant, robust indicators applied across the nation. In addition there has been no organised collection of standard data between State of the Environment reports on which to base analysis of trends.

Uncertain outcomes and emerging issues

Uncertain outcomes arose because of poor data or lack of data to test some indicators chosen to illustrate the knowledge about or condition of heritage places. This is the first time that Register of the National Estate and State and Territory heritage agency databases have been used for aggregate studies and for the selection of places from which to measure trends in condition since 1996. However such databases are not yet consistent or comprehensive, and have thematic/geographic gaps, making them difficult to use to identify trends. This introduces uncertainty into the reported results overall. Nevertheless, issues are emerging for consideration in future environmental reporting.

Loss of historic heritage places continues, at an uncertain pace, as a result of:

• urban redevelopment, such as main street redevelopments and loss of functions due to shopping centre constructions,
• urban consolidation affecting the heritage character of older suburbs,
• abandonment of rural structures because of changing technology and new markets or products,
• public building redundancy caused by the movement of client population, especially in rural areas, asset rationalisation and mergers, and
• loss of cultural landscapes through changing rural use patterns.

Heritage collections are not generally perceived as relating to heritage places in which they are located, yet that is a primary interest for State of the Environment reporting. For museum curators the object or collection may be significant for many reasons other than its place of origin. The archival or scientific value is not related to their place of origin but rather to their story, as can be seen with dinosaur fossils in a museum rather than in situ at Lark Quarry or Riversleigh.

Community support for heritage is difficult to gauge statistically from data during this reporting period: however, there has been an overwhelming media emphasis on nation-wide 'green' issues, such as forests or salinity, in comparison to only local coverage of specific heritage place issues. These individual heritage place issues have lacked coordination from peak interest groups because of the diffuse types and locations of heritage advocates. The exception has been the development of community interest in Centenary of Federation cultural heritage projects.

There is very little government funding or sponsorship for community involvement in historic heritage conservation. This is a result of a deep divide between professional heritage practitioners and volunteers. The lack of integration of effort or recognition of what we each have to offer has severely weakened the cultural heritage movement and may in part explain the discrepancy in funding between natural and cultural heritage. However, the growth of local heritage groups and the demand for protection of local heritage, exemplified by the Save Our Suburbs movement in large cities, indicates support for community involvement.

The health of heritage is also measured by the demonstrated concern which the community has for heritage, which is not always expressed through registers. In fact, this growing concern by communities to look after their own heritage could make centralised registers less relevant and less necessary as enforcement tools, although they will go on having other uses.

The outcomes of the integration of different aspects of Indigenous heritage conservation are uncertain. Though much progress has been made in the positive integration of customary and scientific aspects of Indigenous heritage, in some areas there remains a wide perception gap, and some hostility, between Indigenous people and researchers and land managers working in this area. The connections between language, land connection and movement of Indigenous people need to be investigated because there are differences of view about the extent to which such movements and developments affect Indigenous connection with traditional land and traditional sites.

The movement over the last decade within the heritage profession of recognising landscapes is not reflected in community understanding or government administration, which largely continue to separate Indigenous, historic and natural. The only practical way to protect those linkages is by identifying significant landscapes, be they natural or cultural, rural or urban. The approach of listing individual places versus the recognition of those places in their broader context is yet to be widely advanced as an alternative approach.

All States and Territories have heritage place conservation legislation across the three environments, but this is not uniform in type, provisions or use. The closure of the Register of the National Estate under proposed new Commonwealth heritage legislation would leave a vacuum in measuring trends using existing information, as it is the only source of national data across the three environments.

Documentary and archival records have not been considered in the brief for this report, yet they are fundamental tools in understanding the cultural significance of places. The link between archival storage, accessibility of records and heritage places needs to be examined further, and a method found to ensure that those records are not lost.

An historical context is fundamental to all aspects of reporting on the condition of the Australian environment - atmosphere, land, inland waters, coasts and oceans, biodiversity, and human settlements - so that trends can be observed and an historical framework can be constructed for integrating the results of monitoring the condition of those significant places.

Key threats to the sustainability of natural and cultural heritage

Sustainable heritage means that the nation's heritage is respected and appreciated by Australians and international visitors; that the use of, and visits to, heritage places and objects contribute to the social and economic well-being of the nation and its constituents without detriment to the heritage resources; and that the integrity of the heritage resources is never jeopardised. Yet there exist some significant threats to the sustainability of Australia's heritage, as follows:

Natural and Cultural Heritage: key threats to sustainability in 2001.

Issue	Detail	Comment
Knowledge about heritage places and objects	Surveys have been undertaken but the resulting data about heritage places has not been assessed for registration	Integrated assessments will give a more holistic view of our heritage. Integrated identification and conservation of all heritage values on any particular piece of land is required
Physical condition of heritage places and objects	Little quantifiable data available and no national monitoring system is in place to assess the condition or health of heritage places	Demolition, clearing and incremental losses continue. Heritage assistance programs at the local level are inadequate but could assist assessments
Neglect of cultural values of all types in natural areas	Indigenous heritage places can be conserved effectively only in situ and as part of the natural environment of which they are an integral component. Protocols not being always complied with, thus lack of sustainability of the heritage resource	Integrated conservation planning which provides for the protection for all values is essential. Cultural landscape framework will assist in this integrated assessment of all values for a place
State of traditional Indigenous languages	The number of Indigenous languages and the percentage of speakers has continued to decline, although there is some language revival around one South Australian region	There are an estimated 55 000 Indigenous language speakers. Only 17 Indigenous languages are regarded as 'strong'. Lack of speakers in young age groups is a concern
Survival of heritage in areas of significant population change	Many places are under significant threat from urban expansion, redevelopment and rezoning on urban fringes and from neglect or abandonment in rural areas	Statistics reporting losses are poor, especially for rural areas
Disposal of heritage properties	Government reorganisation in all jurisdictions has resulted in redundant assets that have heritage value	Loss of function has resulted in changed and lost heritage values for many places
Community involvement	There has been a declining involvement of people in historic heritage and an increase in natural heritage or environmental issues. Indigenous communities are participating more in heritage protection	As heritage becomes more professional in its methods and employment patterns change to shift and untenured work, there are less skilled volunteers available
Impact of tourism	Government policies encourage tourism for its revenue but there are negative impacts from physical pressures on the heritage resource and from inadequate interpretation of the heritage values of places	Lack of monitoring of impacts is a continuing concern. Lack of evaluation of visitor understanding of heritage values of tourist places
Ignorance and lack of passion and vision for the future	Heritage, like beauty, has a subjective element to it; however, widespread ignorance of Australian settlement history, Indigenous history and basic ecology means that many citizens are unable to make contextual judgements	Heritage becomes a business and less able to inspire citizens about the privilege and responsibility of managing the only continent in the world occupied by one nation - Australia!
Changing legal and administrative arrangements for heritage conservation	Failure of national leadership to date to establish a set of minimum standards for the identification, listing and conservation of heritage places	Gaps in the identification and conservation of heritage places if implemented before State, Territory and local systems are developed to fill the gaps left by the demise of the Register of the National Estate
No development or testing of models of sustainability applicable to heritage places	Places are only sustainable as heritage sites if adequately funded and protected so that their values are known and respected	Lack of monitoring of pressures affecting sustainability of historic heritage especially in urban areas

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