The balance

help fund heritage works for buildings of statewide significance.

Submissions should be evaluated by an independent panel of experts and payments should be made as grants, matched funding or interestfree loans to heritage organisations and, in appropriate cases, private owners.

Significant heritage buildings owned by the various government agencies should be transferred into a new historic buildings authority, which would be responsible for maintenance, conservation, interpretation and promotion.

It would need significant extra funding (at least $3 million to $5 million a year) but would then be able to employ the skilled specialists needed to do the job.

A single authority would help rationalise the wasteful duplication of organisations with heritage functions.

Key convict sites, such as the Richmond Gaol, should be transferred — with adequate funding — to the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority, which already has responsibility for the Female Factory site in Hobart.

This would allow a single, expert organisation to promote the whole of Tasmania’s convict story, rather than only one part of it.

None of this is at all expensive. The extra annual cost of perhaps $10 million is little more than a rounding error in the context of a $6 billion State Budget. But the cost of continuing with the status quo is very much more. Martyn Goddard is a public policy analyst who lives and works in Hobart.