Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Again, I think we are getting into arguments around the edges about the nature of how this will operate. The intention from the government’s point of view is to ensure that there is an open process. If decisions are taken, they will be gazetted and it is clearly understood publicly that that is the case. It is hard to envisage a situation where something could occur with a memorial of this significance. An example I could think of would be perhaps a natural disaster such as the complete destruction of the memorial with the decision being taken that it is not appropriate to rebuild at a location. But I cannot think of too many examples.

The nature of what is intended, which goes off the criteria that are there, is that there is no doubt that these are memorials which will be maintained into the future. The intention with this bill is that the authorities that are currently responsible for them will continue to be responsible for them, in many cases as they have been responsible for them for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. There is the question of what might happen in the future with regard to other applications for national memorial status. There is no doubt, having heard from a number of speakers on both sides of the House, that individual members of parliament have a strong belief that there are memorials in their electorates that are worthy of consideration for national memorial status. I would say that that is true; there are certainly some that are. There are others that I think probably are of enormous significance in themselves that do not meet the criteria we are talking about. That is something that will be tested by an application process. It will be an application process where, as I said, the results will be clear and public and the circumstances are that the debate will be considered on that basis.

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