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Indicator: NCH-03 Process of listing, area and distribution of identified historic heritage places

Data

Number of Cultural and Natural places on the World Heritage List
2005

	Cultural	'Mixed' Natural and Cultural	Natural	Total
Total World Heritage List (in 137 State Parties)	628	24	160	812
Australia	1	4 (cultural values being Indigenous)	11	16

Source: UNESCO 2005, World Heritage List, viewed 22 Mar 2006, http://whc.unesco.org/EN/list/

• Distribution of World Heritage Listing Areas post and pre 2001 (Word - 67 KB) 

Source: DEH (2005) Commonwealth Heritage List database
GA(2005) Australia, Coastline and State Borders
Data used is assumed to be correct as received from the data suppliers
Map produced by ERIN
© Commonwealth of Australia 2005

Number of Historic Heritage Places listed in the National Heritage List (NHL) as at 31 December 2005

	Number of Historic places	Total number on NHL
New South Wales	3	4
Victoria	9	11
Queensland	0	1
Western Australia	1	1
South Australia	1	1
Tasmania	3	3
Northern Territory	0	0
Aust. Capital Territory	1	1
External Territories	1	1
Total	19	23

Source: Department of the Environment and Heritage 2006, Derived from the Heritage Database, viewed 22 Mar 2006, http://www.deh.gov.au/cgi-bin/ahdb/search.pl

• Distribution of all places listed on the National Heritage List December 2005 (Word - 58 KB) 

Number of Historic Heritage Places listed in the Commonwealth Heritage List (CHL) as at 31 December 2005

	Number of Historic places	Total number on CHL
New South Wales	98	105
Victoria	33	37
Queensland	14	19
Western Australia	11	21
South Australia	6	7
Tasmania	14	15
Northern Territory	12	15
Aust. Capital Territory	79	83
External Territories	34	48
Total	301	350

Source: Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2006

• Distribution of all Listed places on the Commonwealth Heritage List December 2005 (Word - 63 KB) 

Number of Historic Heritage Places added to the Register of the National Estate (RNE) between 31/12/2000 and 31/12/2005

	Number of Historic places	Total number on RNE
New South Wales	83	97
Victoria	14	28
Queensland	7	16
Western Australia	5	29
South Australia	27	35
Tasmania	10	21
Northern Territory	14	25
Aust. Capital Territory	41	43
External Territories	3	3
Total	204	297

Number of Historic Places in the Register of the National Estate
Australia - 1995-2005

	Historic 1995	Historic 2000	Historic 2005	% increase 1995-2000	% increase 2000-2005
ACT	122	169	193	39	14
NSW	2 671	3 020	3 136	13	4
NT	102	147	157	44	7
Qld	632	737	739	17	<1
SA	735	1 165	1 204	59	3
Tas	1 144	1 183	1 210	3	2
Vic	2 166	2 334	2 431	8	4
WA	846	958	972	13	<2
Total registered	8 433	9 740	10 042	16	3
External Territories A	15	37	42	147	14
Total interim listed	74	135	23
TOTAL	8 507	9875	10 107	16	2

^A Includes Australian Antarctic Survey

Source: Data for 1995 and 2000 from Australian Heritage Commission 2005; and Data for 2005 from Heritage Division, Department of the Environment and Heritage 2005.

• Distribution of all areas listed on the Register of the National Estate (PDF - 4346 KB) 
• Distribution of listed places on the Register of the National Estate (PDF - 3427 KB) 

Number of Historic Places Listed in State/Territory and Local Government Heritage Registers
Australia - 1995-2005

State and Territory heritage registers.				Local government registers
State or Territory	1995 A	2000	2005	2005
ACT	37	47	150	No local government listings
NSW	626 B	1254 C	1 498	23 721 D
NT	33	98	175	No local government listings
Qld	929	1 160	1 440	na
SA	1 973	2 146 E	2 195	4 500
Tas.	-	4 790	5 525	Included in State figure
Vic.	1 140	1 794	1 992	100 000 F
WA	281	742 G	1113	17 000
TOTAL	5 024	13 160	14 148	Full extent not known

^A The figures are taken either from data provided by the states and territories, or from Marshall and Pearson (1997), which includes mostly 1994 figures.
^B Number of Permanent Conservation Orders, June 1993.
^C The NSW State Heritage Register (SHR) was created in April 1999. At its commencement, existing state government agency registers were bulk transferred onto the SHR.
^D Does not include places listed as part of conservation areas.
^E 2,047 places were also listed in local heritage lists, but the degree of duplication is not known.
^F 100,000 includes properties covered by overlay controls.
^G A further 15,600 places are identified in the Western Australian Heritage Council's Place Database, including Municipal Inventory listings.

Source: Derived from Heritage Chairs and Officials of Australia and New Zealand (HCOANZ) submission to Productivity Commission Inquiry into the Policy Framework and Incentives for the Conservation of Australia's Historic Heritage Places, 12 August 2005

• Submissions to Heritage Inquiry 

Source: Relevant State and Territory sources
LGA Regions © 2005 MapData Sciences Pty Ltd, PSMA
Local Government areas inside cities are not visible on a continental scale
Data used is assumed to be correct as received from the dtat suppliers
Offshore islands have been accounted for, but not displayed
© Commonwealth of Australia 2005
Map produced by ERIN, DEH Canberra 2005

Numbers of shipwrecks by State and Territory
Australia - 1995-2005

State / Territory	Total in Historic Shipwrecks Register*			Total in Database
	1995 (75 years)	2000 (75 years)	2005 (75 years)
NSW	1391	1418	1456	1980
NT	n.d.	n.d.	n.d.	153
QLD	974	998	1015	1244
SA	247	266	282	786
TAS	636	661	682	1014
VIC	450	465	480	797
WA	885	1036	1061	1429
Norfolk Is.				0
Christmas Is.				0
Cocos Keeling Is.	1	1	1	1
TOTAL	Register 4584	Register 4777	Register 4977	Database 6469

Notes:
* Based on year wrecked; shipwrecks automatically enter Register on the 75th anniversary of their wreck under the Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976
n.d. no wreck date given; others are entered into the Register before they are 75 years old because the Minister has declared them significant.

Source:

• National Shipwreck Database 

What the data mean

In 2004, the first Australian historic place was inscribed in the World Heritage List. The Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, was acknowledged for its universal values as exhibiting an important interchange of human values over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town planning or landscape design.

As of 1 January 2004, Australia has changed the way it protects its national heritage places. New laws that came into effect on 1 January 2004 combine the most successful elements of the current system with a number of new elements including:

• a new advisory body, the Australian Heritage Council
• both a National Heritage List and a Commonwealth Heritage List
• retention of the Register of the National Estate

The two newly created Lists continue to grow as assessment processes are completed on nominated historic places. At the end of December 2005 there were 19 historic places entered in the National Heritage List and 301 historic places entered in the Commonwealth Heritage List.

The Register of the National Estate continued to be added to until the end of 2003 and, while places were added from each state/territory, the overall rate of added places is a quarter of that between 1995 and 2000.

Changes in heritage and planning legislation in the last decade have meant an increasing delegation to local government, of which there are some 700 across Australia, to identify and protect heritage places of local significance. This is not the case in all states / territories and sometimes data is awkward to access making it difficult to know the full extent of such listing and protection and to report on it uniformly. It is, however, clear that the proportion of places of local heritage significance is some 15 times higher than those found to have state level significance.

Australia has several other lists of identified heritage places. The best known are the lists established in each state / territory by the National Trust of Australia. These were established prior to heritage legislation in Australia, for example the first was started in 1947 by the National Trust of Australia (NSW). At that time, they indicated community awareness of heritage places, especially the built environment, and these lists had and still have to some degree considerable suasion force with decision-makers and the general community. These lists are being updated in most cases. The data of the numbers listed is not provided here, but can be accessed via the National Trust websites [see below].

Other heritage lists tend to be drawn together on specific categories of heritage, such as by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the various state / territory chapters, Engineering Heritage Australia, with a scheme of plaquing important engineering heritage, and various groups interested in 20th Century Architecture, such as DOCOMOMO.

Process of listing historic heritage places

No analysis has been done for this report of the listing process, but at the national and state / territory levels of government, potential heritage places are identified by a variety of means, including nominations from the public and expert heritage studies based on historic themes, geographic regions, of local government areas.

In the case of the historic environment, there is an increasingly parallel process by national and state levels of government to assess such nominations or lists of indicative places, all having similar significance criteria against which nominations to registers are assessed. Whilst nominations are initially reviewed and assessed by expert heritage agency staff, there is some variation in the roles and independence of heritage councils, some having the power to decide on listing, others advising the relevant minister.

Shipwrecks

The data show the number of known shipwrecks that automatically receive protection in the Shipwrecks Register once they are 75 years old. Others that are less than 75 years of age may be included based on heritage significance assessment.

Area of identified historic heritage places

The area of identified historic heritage places cannot be identified as the data is consistently not available. In most cases the area of a listed historic place is not given in the register database, simply the street address, in other cases a registered place consists of several hundred individual buildings such as suburban precincts, for example in the ACT, 12 inner city residential precincts cover over 1200 residences.

Data Limitations

This indicator is a proxy for our knowledge of Australia’s heritage. As we understand and study heritage places more, new places and items are assessed and included on protective statutory lists. This indicator provides some limited trend information on how many heritage items are listed for protection as compared to 1996 and 2001 State of the Environment (SoE) reports.

The numbers of heritage places included in lists or registers gives no indication if the lists have captured all appropriate items, if monitoring is adequate enough to ensure that items are removed from the list if they are destroyed, and if the protection offered by the statutory list is adequate and effective.

It must be noted that the various levels of heritage registers and lists are not mutually exclusive and the same heritage place can be on heritage registers at both national and state levels, as well as local, and for different reasons.

The reason for the decline in the rate of listing heritage places is not known as analysis has not been done to show whether this is a real uptake of heritage places and values in each state / territory, or whether it is the result of a reduction in the level of identification studies and surveys, assessment rate of indicative places from such studies and nominations, as there has been no analysis of the rise or otherwise of nominations, and the reasons for this, such as a lack of resources.

No analysis has taken place of the diversity of categories of heritage places listed, as the states and territories do not have uniform ‘descriptors’ of categories of places, such as ‘dwelling’, ‘office building’, ‘industrial complex’, ‘ruin’ or ‘cultural landscape’. It is therefore not possible to report on whether there are trends in the types of places being listed. Similarly, whilst there have been increasing numbers of studies of the heritage of ethnically diverse communities, it is not clear at what rate the heritage identified in these studies is being entered into heritage registers.

There is a lack of consistency in the types of heritage listed in heritage registers from state to state some only listing the historic environment, primarily built structures, whilst others include Indigenous heritage places, natural environment and also heritage objects. Overall there is a trend for heritage registers to include other forms of heritage, including heritage objects. Nonetheless, the lack of consistency in heritage recording across the states and territories makes uniform reporting very difficult.

This data does not indicate how many unidentified wrecks are in Australian waters, nor the rate of additions to the database of previously unknown wrecks from historic, maritime archaeological survey, research and public notification. The 1996 SoE Report noted that of some 5000 shipwrecks recorded by 1995, only some 15% had been located.

The data does no show how many shipwrecks younger than 75 years have been assessed as of heritage significance and added to the Register from the database.

The data does not show shipwrecks in state/territory waters that are protected and listed under state/territory heritage legislation.

Data for shipwrecks in state and territory waters are held by the relevant state or territory authority and were not analysed.

Issues for which this is an indicator and why

Natural and Cultural Heritage — Knowledge of heritage - Listing processes, number and distribution of identified heritage items (places and objects) 

Knowledge of heritage includes not only knowing the location of places and objects with heritage values but also understanding those values. Knowledge of heritage is important for the identification, assessment and adequate representation of heritage values.

As we understand and study heritage places and items more, new places and items are assessed and included on protective statutory lists. This indicator provides limited trend information on numbers and distribution of heritage places and items that are listed for protection.

Other indicators for this issue:

• NCH-01 Process of listing, area and distribution of identified natural heritage places 
• NCH-02 Process of listing, area and distribution of Indigenous heritage listings 
• NCH-04 Process of listing, area and distribution of significant heritage objects 
• IW-34 Examples of deterioration of condition of wetland vegetation 
• BD-02 Conservation status of nationally significant species and ecological communities, compared with previous years 
• BD-04 Listed threatened species or ecological communities for which recovery action is showing stable or increasing populations 
• BD-07 Examples of Indigenous knowledge of species and ecological communities and their utilisation for management by Indigenous and non-Indigenous managers and for other purposes by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people 
• IW-10 Assessment of river condition indices 

Further Information

All Australian heritage registers can be accessed via Australian Heritage Places Inventory , although this may not be as current as the State / Territory register databases themselves.

World Heritage List

• World Heritage List 
• Australia's World Heritage

Australian Government registers

• Australian Heritage Database
• National Heritage List
• Commonwealth Heritage List
• Register of the National Estate
• Australian National Shipwreck Database

State / Territory heritage registers:

Australian Capital Territory

• ACT Heritage Register 

New South Wales

• State Heritage Register
  NSW State Heritage Register 
• State Heritage Inventory
  NSW State Heritage Inventory 

Northern Territory

• NT Heritage Register Performance Information for Departmental Outputs - Output 1.9 Parks and reserves 

Queensland

• Qld Heritage Register 

South Australia, searched through Australian Heritage Places Inventory

• Australian Heritage Places Inventory 

Tasmania, searched through Australian Heritage Places Inventory

• Australian Heritage Places Inventory 

Victoria

• Victorian Heritage Register Online 

Western Australia

• WA Heritage Register 

Non-statutory Heritage Lists

National Trust of Australia has separated entities in each state / territory, they can all be accessed via its peak body, the Australian Council of National Trusts

• National Trust of Australia 
• Royal Australian Institute of Architects, with separate chapters in each state / territory
• Royal Australian Institute of Architects 
• DOCOMOMO Australia