E&OE….
Topics: Consideration of Queen Victoria Markets for National Heritage List, wind farms.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Someone who knows all about this is the Environment Minister, regular on the program. Greg Hunt, good evening.
GREG HUNT:
I just want to issue a blanket denial for that sort of wicked accusation from you. Anyway Tom, how are you?
TOM ELLIOTT:
No, I just thought you might have done chemistry at school or something like that.
GREG HUNT:
Well, look the accusation that we had a still using grapefruit rind when I was living on a kibbutz, I can neither confirm nor deny 30 years ago.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Did you live- you lived on a kibbutz did you?
GREG HUNT:
I lived on a kibbutz when I was 18 for a year. And it's just an accusation that I can never confirm, if whether or not we had our own grapefruit juice still.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Oh well, that is interesting, we might have to do some research into that. Now look, Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor, is often on Neil Mitchell's program on 3AW and his latest thing is that he wants, you know, to rebuild the Victoria Market. I think it involves a multi-level car park and 24 hour a day stalls and I mean, all sorts of things – I don't really understand it.
And in front of me I have a media release from you – well, from your office – saying it's going to be assessed for the National Heritage List. So does Robert Doyle want to knock it down and you want to preserve it?
GREG HUNT:
No, no. The actual proposal for heritage listing came from Robert himself. So the vision that we actually share is the QV Markets have been there for, you know, 140 plus years and people go there, they love them. Robert thinks that they can be better but also the history can be better acknowledged. It's one of the great international, not just Australian, examples of continuous occupation, continuous trading, of a really living history.
And what he wants to do is have it National Heritage Listed and to have that as a pathway towards a possible World Heritage Listing. The World Heritage List has all sorts of things, obviously such as, you know, the Taj Mahal and the Barrier Reef. But in places like Lima and in Peru, a lot of the old city is World Heritage Listed and it's a living actual environment, not just a monument.
TOM ELLIOTT:
So what other buildings that we might know of around the world are heritage listed? So you mentioned the Taj Mahal?
GREG HUNT:
Well, in Melbourne the Exhibition Buildings and Carlton Gardens…
TOM ELLIOTT:
Yeah.
GREG HUNT:
…are World Heritage Listed.
TOM ELLIOTT:
And other examples overseas? Sydney?
GREG HUNT:
In Sydney, you've got the Opera House, obviously, the Taj Mahal, you have Old Paris. It used to be that they had individual places but now they have Old Paris itself, which is listed. So it doesn't in anyway freeze a place or a site. What it does do is it gives it a status. It allows things to be updated but not the essential character to be destroyed.
TOM ELLIOT:
Do you think – could I ask you in – as part of your being a Minister for the Environment, do you really think the – I mean, the Victoria Market is a very nice place but is it up there with the Taj Mahal, the Exhibition Buildings, the Opera House or Old Paris?
GREG HUNT:
Look, these things are on a scale. What you've got to show is that there's what's called an Outstanding Universal Value. That means that it's the best of the best and there is a very strong case that certainly it should be added to the National Heritage List but that also it may be one of the best examples in the world of a continuous outdoor, operating open market dating back to the 19th Century.
So, look it's obviously not the Opera House or the Taj Mahal. It's a cultural place, it's an operating, living link with something which was two centuries ago in terms of the 19th Century and I think for Melbourne it would only be a very, very good outcome if we could certainly have a National Heritage Listing but potentially, getting the international Logie or the Oscar for the heritage world.
TOM ELLIOT:
Alright, couple of other quick questions, now the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has come out and said the big windmills used to generate the electricity are ugly. You're Minister for the Environment, do you agree?
GREG HUNT:
Look, I'm less fussed about these things. That's the honest answer. You know, he likes Picasso, I like Dali. Everybody has their own views on these things but there shouldn't be any problem with people expressing those views. For me, I'm more relaxed and less fussed about it but I'm not remotely troubled about people having views and having strong views pro or against.
TOM ELLIOT:
Actually, just on this, this is completely out of the blue but there is one of these windmills in your electorate in Hastings behind the bottle shop at the one of the main crossroads leading into Hastings…
GREG HUNT:
Kings Creek Hotel.
TOM ELLIOT:
That's right. I have never, ever seen it operating. I have never seen the blades turning around. I mean, does it actually work?
GREG HUNT:
So the answer there is it used to work, they haven't had it online to the best of my knowledge for quite some time. I remember talking with the owners about it a couple of years ago and it ran into some problems and in the end they decided it wasn't going to be economic…
TOM ELLIOT:
Because…
GREG HUNT:
…for them to put it back online. I might be – it might be overtaken by recent events but I haven't heard anything since I last spoke with the owners of the pub.
TOM ELLIOT:
Because, I mean, you can be a bit so-so about the look of a windmill but at least if it's functioning you could say well, at least it's generating clean electricity but I mean this one is doing nothing.
GREG HUNT:
Well, it was put up as a single windmill in an urban environment and I think they just discovered that the costs of operating didn't stack up against any income that they might generate. So, that's where they're at after they had that problem with the actual mechanism.
TOM ELLIOT:
Greg Hunt, Federal Environment Minster, thank you for your time.
GREG HUNT:
Thanks Tom. See you later.
(ENDS)