EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage
Regulations (Amendment)
STATUTORY RULES 1990, NO. 116
The main purpose of the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 (the Act) is to retain in Australia those significant cultural objects which would represent an irreplaceable loss to the nation’s cultural heritage if exported. The Act and associated Regulations came into effect on 1 July 1987.
The Act provides for a National Cultural Heritage Control List of categories of objects that constitute the movable cultural heritage of Australia and are subject to export control to be prescribed in Regulations.
The existing Schedule was amended in 1988 to provide a more comprehensive National Cultural Heritage Control List and amend the protection afforded to Aboriginal material.
The new amendment to Part VI of the National Cultural Heritage Control List in the Schedule controls the export of all steam propelled vessels within the category “object of water transport”, instead of limiting it to those vessels built in Australia before 1930 or in use in Australia before 1920. The amendment was necessary to protect vessels produced during the last twenty years of steam technology, from 1920 to 1939. During this period Australian ingenuity and expertise in marine architecture and engineering represented the most sophisticated development of steam propulsion.
The National Cultural Heritage Committee, established pursuant to the Act, recommended this amendment.