Making heritage a national responsibility: the Commonwealth and the National Estate 1969-1974

The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the National Estate published in 1974 is a symbolic highpoint of national engagement in cultural heritage and effectively paved the way for establishment of the Australian Heritage Commission and the Register of the National Estate. The events which lead up to this breakthrough are less well known. Heritage conservation entered the arena of public policy only gradually from the 1960s. At the national level, our main focus, it was championed by Tom Uren and Gough Whitlam whose vision for Australian cities and regions linked heritage to a broader Commonwealth mandate. Influential in their thinking was the American precedent of federal involvement in conservation. This paper explores the years leading up to and immediately following the 1972 Federal Election and formation of the Department of Urban and Regional Development – with its often overlooked role in heritage conservation – in 1973. In reflecting on the more recent neo-liberal dismantling of extensive national involvement in heritage conservation, we trace the rise and fall of the concept of the National Estate.