Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me pleasure to rise and speak today about the Parliamentary Friends of History and Heritage. We had our first meeting yesterday. I am very pleased to advise that 23 members of parliament and senators agreed with our prompting to join the Parliamentary Friends of History and Heritage. Yesterday, I was joined by my co-convenor, Mr Laurie Ferguson, the member for Werriwa, and I thank him for his contribution and his interest in this, and his bipartisan support of the work we have before us. Can I also acknowledge Minister Greg Hunt, who has been very supportive of this initiative and I welcomed his attendance yesterday at our initial meeting, and all my parliamentary colleagues, some of whom were apologies yesterday.

Our special guests included Mr Scott McAlister, the president of the Australian Council of National Trusts; Professor Don Garden, president of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies; also Professor Elizabeth Vines, the president of ICOMOS Australia. I also had Mr Dallas Baker AO, who is from my electorate in the beautiful town of Lachlan who is the immediate past president of the Friends of Deal Island. It was great to have him there.

I am very pleased to advise that we have two patrons that have agreed to participate with our Parliamentary Friends group, Mr Peter FitzSimons, whom many would know, and also Mr Les Carline. Both are authors of note and they have agreed to be the patrons for our group. I look forward to opportunities when they will address the parliamentary friends group in the future.

The charter of our group is to raise public awareness of history and heritage—natural, Indigenous, cultural and built heritage. It is all around us. It is part of who we are as a nation. It is our story. It is our national identity. In my electorate alone, I have five of the 11 national convict World Heritage sites at Woolmers Estate in Brickendon, Darlington on Maria Island, the coalmines on the Tasman Peninsula, and—the one that is perhaps most well-known to most Australians—Port Arthur. There are enormous opportunities around heritage and history tourism opportunities. I was very pleased to see that the minister has given the parliamentary friends group a wonderful opportunity to nominate properties that we as a group decide could be considered for assessment by the National Heritage Council. It is a great opportunity.

Particularly, in the time I have left, I want to talk about one of the other charters for our group, which is to establish a national heritage and arts lottery. This is overdue. It is something that works extremely well in the United Kingdom. There are no impediments and there seems to be bipartisan support—and I thank the ALP for that—to see something that will provide additional funds to community groups and arts groups all around our country to protect our natural and built heritage.