How Much Heritage Is Enough?

How many heritage listed items do we actually need to maintain a living cultural history? When is a building of such historical value that it must be maintained in its present form, even if privately owned, so that the community can physically experience it, as opposed to maintaining the historical record through video and still images?

There are 56 houses in Sydney which are listed on the National or State Heritage Register. If you look at the list, there are some properties from the early colony, such as Elizabeth Farm and Old Government House. These are of great cultural and historical significance. They need to be maintained in situ, which they are.

The above two examples are government owned. Having in effect been turned into museums, they are now more than they were. School students visit on excursions.

Not all of the 56 properties are government owned. Boomerang, for example is owned by Lindsay Fox. Private ownership is not unreasonable. The owner must maintain the property according to the standards of the heritage listing. They are well aware of the requirements when making the purchase. In fact, having wealthy owners living in and maintaining some of these historically significant properties benefits the nation as a whole, since they are likely to spend more doing so than a budget cutting government.

56 properties of cultural and historical significance can easily be maintained by a combination of the taxpayers and a few wealthy individuals seeking social elevation.

But what about all the local heritage listings? There are 20,000 listed “items” in NSW. Not all of them are houses of course, but the listed houses number in the thousands. Almost all are privately owned.

One such house is Camden Lodge at 102 Burlington Rd, Homebush. It’s on 2770m² and is currently owned by the Mayor of Auburn, Ronney Oueik. It also burnt down in “suspicious circumstances” after Ronney Oueik’s development application was refused by Strathfield Council.

I have no sympathy for Ronney Oueik. He knew, or should have known at the time he bought the property what the implications of the local heritage listing are. His DA clearly didn’t comply, since it proposed demolishing the house. Then the house mysteriously burned down one night. The Sydney Morning Herald said it: “does not suggest that Cr Oueik or members of his family are suspected of any involvement in the fire”. Not officially suspected, that is. Based on the (albeit circumstantial) evidence, you can form your own opinion. I know what mine is.

Now Cr Oueik has threatened to turn the house into a Muslim prayer hall if his post fire DA is refused. He’s saying: I know you don’t like us. I’ll put the most confronting Muslims I can find next door to you, and as many as possible. See how you like that, you Anglo, heritage society fuckwits.

Great ethical principles there, Ronney: casting your fellow Muslims as the punishment to be visited upon people who oppose you. And this bloke is the mayor of Auburn.

The threat has the street’s residents all riled up, but it’s unlikely he could see it through. Strathfield may be close to Auburn, but it isn’t like Auburn. Apart from a still sizeable proportion of residents from an Anglo-Saxon background, the demographics are heavily Italian Catholic, with many people of Chinese and Korean descent, as well as an increasing number of Indians. None are great supporters of Muslims, who comprise less than 5% of the population. So good luck getting your rezoning application through Strathfield Council.

Hopefully Strathfield Council will call Ronney Oueik’s bluff. Sufficient would be a simple statement that a Muslim prayer hall on the site would not be allowed because of zoning rules, which will not change due to the heritage listing. Even at a conservative cost of capital of 6% p.a., Ronney Oueik is losing $150,000 per year on the purchase price of $2.5M. Hopefully, he’ll either have to remediate the site or sell it at a large loss, although it will probably be an expensive lesson unlearnt.

In this country, the way to settle differences of opinion over heritage listings and development applications is by providing evidence to the Land and Environment Court, not by arson¹ and threatening to dump a great, steaming bucket of Islam on your neighbours’ doorsteps. If you think the Liberal Party is a vehicle for buccaneering property developers, you’re in for a shock, Ronney. It has plenty of conservative members who like their heritage listings.

In general, there are too many private residences with local heritage listings. All it takes to get one is a sympathetic assessor and a small, but active local heritage society. These are often people with too much time on their hands who want the area to remain as it was 50 years ago when they moved in. Unfortunately, that requires a very large number of privately held properties to be maintained to externally mandated standards, coupled with significant restrictions on the owner’s right to develop their property in ways similar to most of their neighbours, not to mention a reversal of the past 50 years of immigration.

In one way, it is good to maintain as much as possible a few “heritage” properties in each local government area to show the new arrivals what the area was like and that the community values this cultural heritage. They act as subtle cues in favour of assimilation. They are saying: It does not matter whether you do not grasp the historical significance of this property to the dominant culture of this country. This is for us. It can be for you too, when you have understood and valued the societal structures which made this into the country to which you asked to come.

I don’t mind some of my taxes being used for this purpose via tax deductions for extraordinary maintenance of the properties, but there is a limit and it is not large. A few, key properties, not several dozen in each LGA. The more properties we add to local heritage registers, the less “unique” most of the additions will be. That is an excessive impost on both taxpayers and the property owners for diminishing cultural returns. The Land and Environment Court needs to take a more sympathetic disposition toward the imposts on owners of local heritage properties and their arguments in favour of overturning local heritage listings in some cases.

¹ I’m not implying any arson in the Camden House matter, however there have previously been “suspicious fires” in other, completely unrelated development applications by unrelated individuals.