The issue

As brought out above (4.4–4.5) the CBH is a singular resource. While being property which is owned and managed like other real estate, government claims via ‘heritage tenure’ of its cultural quality, which it proposes to conserve for the public, contemporary and prospective, means that the owners of the property can only manage it subject to constraints. But while the cultural element is taken by government in this way, the heritage is not singular in being a public good any more than the general built environment. In both the interior of the property is clearly private (one person's consumption precludes the consumption of the same unit by another) with the exterior being public (one person's consumption does not reduce its availability to anyone else) and once the good is provided to the public gaze the producer is unable to prevent anyone from consuming it.

The responsibility for the singularity clearly falls at the door of government, acting on behalf of the community. But government does not pick up the tab for all extra costs. Their impact falls on the property owners, private or public. Here is something of an anomaly. By definition, conservation is promoted and undertaken for the benefit of a wide contemporary public, often foreign to the country in which the heritage is to be found (visitors and tourists) and also for the benefit of the future generations.