We note Mr Neish was employed by the NSW National Trust last year after leaving his position as general manager of Parramatta City Council in the wake of a massive public outcry about the ridiculous heritage listings being proposed by that Council on modest 1960s brick bungalows.

The appalling heritage approaches Neish unsuccessfully sought to apply at Parramatta and his obdurate refusal for real world considerations like costs to owners to be taken into account when heritage listing or de-listing form a significant part of the reasons why owners of heritage listed properties in NSW have become more organised in our opposition.

The facts conveniently omitted by Neish and Allen in your report are that an independent Federal Government Productivity commission Inquiry Report into Heritage released in mid 2006 made damning findings about the poor, highly subjective quality of heritage listings and made many recommendations for reform. Heritage specialists and heritage organisations who made submissions and gave evidence to them raised extremely serious issues about how the heritage listing system was being abused and rorted – as did owners of heritage listed properties.

Given these alarming findings, what was the then NSW Planning Minister Frank Sartor supposed to do? Look the other way, pretend all was well and continue to pander to those that created it? He thankfully commissioned an Independent Expert Panel to conduct a Review of the NSW Heritage Act. All interested parties were able to make submissions. Our organisation – the Society of Heritage Owners NSW – and affected owners did so, along with a variety of other heritage organisations. We identified decades of extremely serious heritage abuses, asked for them be reformed and, after taking all submissions into account, our arguments turned out to be far more persuasive than those from the “everything is peachy just as it is” brigade. The heritage delisting reforms Mr Neish critiques are reforms we strongly welcome. Heritage fanatics have had an uncompromising ideological stance on this issue, which has now collapsed under the weight of 30 years of operating the system their way. Why? Because of the terrible abuses and because it does not work.