Is the 'heritage' capitalised? (I'm not sure if that's an accounting
term which translates - in British Accountant English, it means to put
something on the books in the same way that the money in the bank,
stocks and shares, etc. are) anyway, if it's capitalised, a good
trustee/public servant will want to look at the performance of that
asset against other assets - like money in the bank, shares, etc.  If it
isn't making close to the bank rate, then turn it to something which is!

So how to make heritage pay .... the first line of attack is to ensure
that the 'heritage value' rather than the 'asset value' is what's being
talked about - if the owners of this land are thinking of it as being
'just like' any other bit of land they own, then you are on to a looser!
But if they start thinking of it as a 'heritage resource' - something
which contributes to the social fabric, mental well-being, and perhaps
even, indirectly, economically to the community, then the fight becomes
winnable.  If the land _has_ been capitalised, you might be able to turn
that to your advantage by using the cash value of the land as match
funding in a joint project with somebody (i.e. giving the land to
someone else, or moving it into inalienable status, thereby writing the
value of the land off the books).  If the community has lots of building
land available, then by writing the value of this land off its books, it
can attract additional resources in without any pain but the paper loss.

How to exploit the 'heritage value' is very much a matter of reducing
expenditure and maximising income, while at the same time stressing how,
in value-for-money terms, money invested in the heritage gives a better
return on the social inclusion / mental health / etc. front than does
money invested elsewhere.  I don't like doing the third bit: I live in a
rich country, and it is based on the premis that we can't afford both
historic sites and modern jazz orchestras, that we can have either
volunteer sports coaches or we can have oral history recording teams.

There's an uphill battle to be fought, because getting the hard figures
to prove the heritage value case is very expensive - and if your
paymasters aren't happy with the money they're spending on day-to-day
upkeep, they may be very, very reluctant to additionally fund studies
which will show that they should keep spending that money, or maybe even
more!  Your best bet may be to find case studies where it's already been
done  - I don't know Australian politics at all - how likely are
politicians to listen to evidence from the UK or US?  To take in
research done in big cities like Melbourne and Sidney (in both, I think
museums have done value-of-heritage work)?

Thirdly, there is the stewardship argument: not for us, but for our
children. Emotive, but it works!

Best wishes

Pat
(who reassures herself that the decisions may be bad, but they're the
result of a democratic process - benign dictatorship lead by me is only
superficially better)
--
Pat Reynolds
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   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)