ABORIGINAL CULTURAL
HERITAGE BILL
649. Ms J. FARRER to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs:
I refer to the McGowan Labor
government's election commitment to empower Aboriginal voices in the
draft Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill that is currently out for consultation.
Can the minister advise the house
what this proposed bill would mean for Aboriginal people and their power to
make agreements about activities that may impact on their cultural heritage
sites?
Mr B.S.
WYATT replied:
I thank the member for Kimberley
for her question. Last week, we released the draft Aboriginal Cultural Heritage
Bill for further comment. This is the final consultation phase of an over
two-year period of consultation about a regime to replace the Aboriginal
Heritage Act 1972. In 2017, we started the review with a consultation paper.
Over that time, we had 550 people participate in 40 workshops, and we received
130 submissions for phase 1. That resulted in the discussion paper released in
2019 and 15 other information sessions, 35 workshops and 70 further
submissions. That resulted in the draft bill that has been released, and we
will continue our stakeholder engagement about that bill. With the bill's
release, nobody should be surprised of its contents. I want to make some
broader comments, but I thank all those who have put in submissions and been
part of this process. This taken a long time, but necessarily so.
When the 1972 Aboriginal Heritage
Act went through the Parliament in 1971–72, it was nation-leading.
Coming out of the theft of the Weebo stones in the goldfields, Western Australia
passed that act. It has barely changed over the last nearly 50 years. It is now
considered very much out of date and inappropriate. Over the years, governments
of both persuasions have tried to modernise the Aboriginal heritage regime, but
for reasons along the way have not been successful.
This bill seeks to embed the
Aboriginal heritage regime in the native title regime of Western Australia, and
that is important, because in Western Australia the native title architecture
is now very well established. The vast majority of what we call prescribed body
corporates—that is organisations that hold native title—are in Western
Australia, with 66 in Western Australia. The intent is to ensure that we can
prioritise the protection and management of Aboriginal
cultural heritage by saying these are the people who need to be spoken to,
these are the people with whom there needs to be an agreement with on
land use. We have seen very recently with the tragedy at Juukan Gorge that the
procedure that exists, what is known as a section 18 procedure, is woefully
inadequate for consideration of sites of varying significance. We have exactly
the same process regardless of the land use, but also regardless of the
significance of the site. By way of example, the process that Rio Tinto went
through for a section 18 consent for Juukan
Gorge is exactly the same process that any local government would go through to
repair a retaining wall on the Swan
River; that is, there is one site that is not contentious in any way, shape or
form and another that clearly is. That is no longer appropriate. We will
have a tiered approval system, depending upon the significance of the locations, but also the nature of the land use
proposed to take place on country. I have made the point that, as we all
are aware, the federal Parliament has a joint
parliamentary committee examining what happened with Juukan Gorge. I made the point there that if the commonwealth
government genuinely wants to have a positive impact on Aboriginal heritage
outcomes, the best thing to do is fund its native title system better. To be
honest, now the established representative bodies, also under the Native Title
Act, are coming to the end of their work in Western Australia, so we can
transition that budget, but also perhaps get some extra funding to the
prescribed body corporates. That is how we will get much more engaged
Aboriginal people and much fairer agreement-making between Aboriginal people
and proponents, whether they be a mining company, governments or whoever it
happens to be.
The
consultation period is tailored to a lot of those organisations that have
provided submissions. From 21 September, we will move around Western Australia
for workshops and public briefings so people are very, very familiar with what
is being proposed. The important thing is that with the removal of the section
18 process, with the removal of the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee that
currently exists, we are saying that it is up to Aboriginal people to make the
call, make the decision, on what sites are important to them, which, to be
honest, by way of aside, takes place already
with those good agreements, those land-use agreements. We are now valuing
Aboriginal heritage the way it should
be done. I think it is fair to say that all members have seen the global
reaction to what happened at Juukan Gorge, and what is clear now, member for
Kimberley, is that the world has a genuine and deep interest in the history of
Australia, and, importantly, Western Australians and Australians have an
opportunity now to embed the value of Aboriginal heritage in agreement-making
that should have been and has been taking place for some time.