The National Trust of Queensland placed the Brisbane Dental Hospital and Queensland College of Dentistry Building, alias The Palace, on the National Trust of Queensland Register in April 1997. This action generated no statutory consequences. Within days, the trust nominated The Palace for listing on the Queensland Heritage Register. Under the terms of the Queensland Heritage Act 1992, this nomination could have impeded an imminent $2-million redevelopment within The Palace. Two years later, the Queensland Heritage Council entered The Palace on the Queensland Heritage Register. This procedural delay was unusual and occurred in an era of post-Fitzgerald bureaucratic reform, federal cutbacks to funding for public dental services, tenuous political control of state government and widespread community support for heritage protection. The authors use historical methods to disclose and analyze hitherto inaccessible evidence relating to the delay in the listing. They argue that, against a backdrop of potential controversy, a small band of networked, organized and resolute administrators and Palace-based personnel, achieved the redevelopment. Astute tactics, concurrent rebuilding of health infrastructure, ministerial resolve, the nature of the act, public demand for dental services, the timing of the redevelopment and the political circumstances influenced the outcome.
Keywords: Brisbane Dental Hospital and Queensland University Dental College Building; National Trust Queensland; Queensland Health; Queensland Heritage Council; Queensland Heritage Register.
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