Divisive New Cultural Heritage Laws

Whose land? Well, that’s the million-dollar question. It’s becoming a bit of a grey area in Western Australia. Western Australia’s new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws that seek to protect culturally significant sites came into effect 1st July 2023. Already, they’re causing confusion and outrage among farmers who feel like they no longer have control over their land anymore. Around five or six hundred farmers gathered on Monday in an Outback shed to oppose the divisive new laws.

Today Show host, Karl Stefanovic, commented on the meeting: “It takes an awful lot for a farmer to leave their land to protest. I mean, that’s how ticked off they are.”

National Party leader, David Littleproud, who also attended the meeting, commented on the new laws: “A farmer can’t dig if he wants to desilt a dam and lift more than 20 kilograms of dirt without getting a cultural heritage survey, which is about $120 to $190 an hour, $1200 a day. If you’re talking fence lines, you are talking kilometres. It will have the power to prevent developments or redesign developments. This is an overreach. We’ve worked hand-in-hand with Indigenous Australians, but I can tell you, particularly in pastoral areas that are an intrinsic part, all this is doing for an overreach of these Labor governments is dividing us when just some common sense can prevail. Pastoralists actually do respect the cultural heritage there. We all want to preserve it and protect it, but not by overreaching.”

If you look at the government’s online fact sheets about the new laws, you can see that the costs can be quite high, averaging $100 or more per hour depending on how senior a figure you need to identify the cultural significance of your land. Well, ‘your land’ – that’s becoming quite questionable. For example, a Senior Aboriginal Consultant can cost around $1200 a day. I wish I got paid that much. Not to mention administration fees of 15%, and if your land is considered to be in a very remote location, be prepared to pay an extra 20%. It sounds like a bit of a cash grab if you ask me.

But wait! There’s more! You have to pay for their accommodation and meals, their vehicle fuel, airfares, taxi travel, everything! This sounds like the best job in the world! Obviously, if farmers have to pay more money to maintain their farms, you can expect food prices to go up in this already cost-of-living crisis.

David Slade, a livestock farmer from Mount Barker was also at the meeting and commented: “If we’ve got a cultural heritage site on our farm, we have to pay for the surveys – well, we don’t get any benefit from it, so why should we pay for their surveys? I’m aware of survey quotes exceeding $100,000 for otherwise straightforward farm works such as sinking a bore on already cleared land. We’re talking on land that’s been cleared for 50 years. Cultural heritage is intangible, you can’t see it, you can’t feel it, but someone says it’s there, and you can’t argue about it. There’s no recourse on this. You can only go to the high court, which is completely out of the league of any farmer to challenge any ruling. This just drives a massive wedge between everyone.”

According to the Act, section 92, if you cause serious harm to Aboriginal cultural heritage, for an individual, you can be imprisoned for up to 5 years, or fined $1 000 000, or both! Or if you’re a corporation, you can be fined $10 million! And it doesn’t have to be on purpose. If you look at section 93, serious harm to Aboriginal cultural heritage, including by accident, well you’ll have to cough up half-a-million dollars, or $5 million if you’re a corporation. So if you accidentally drive your tractor over an ancient ant hill that had cultural significance, well, tough luck pal! Pay up!

Okay, I’m done. What do you think about these new laws?

ABORIGINAL CULTURAL HERITAGE ACT 2021 INFORMATION
https://www.wa.gov.au/organisation/department-of-planning-lands-and-heritage/aboriginal-cultural-heritage-act-2021

LOCAL ABORIGINAL CULTURAL HERITAGE SERVICE FEES
https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2023-06/20230426-lachs-fees-guidelines.pdf

THE ACT ITSELF
https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/statutes.nsf/RedirectURL?OpenAgent&query=mrdoc_44477.pdf

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn