Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The purpose of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Amendment Bill 2005 is to make amendments to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and to the Aboriginal Land (Lake Condah and Framlingham Forest) Act 1987.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 preserves and protects places, areas and objects of particular significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It contributes to this protection at the national level, but is available concurrently with the laws of most Australian states and territories. In 1987, however, it was extended to include a series of provisions that would apply specifically to, and only in, Victoria. These provisions serve the national framework for Indigenous heritage protection, at the state level, but they also stand in the way of state legislation being put in place by Victoria for this purpose. All other states and territories have legislation to protect this heritage. The Victorian government wrote to the Australian government this year to explore how this obstacle could be removed to allow proposed new Victorian cultural heritage legislation to be put in place.

This bill proposes to amend the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 to remove the Victoria-specific provisions. The Australian government legislation will then provide the same level of protection in Victoria that it provides for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage in other parts of Australia. Pursuant to the amendments contained in the bill, the Victorian government will then be able to administer Aboriginal heritage protection directly through its own new legislation, as is the case for all other Australian states and territories.

The Victoria-specific parts of the Australian government legislation will not be removed, however, until a time to be set within a 12-month period. This will allow their repeal and replacement by the proposed new Victorian legislation in a coordinated fashion and prevent any lapse in protection for Victoria’s significant Aboriginal cultural heritage.

The consequential amendments to the Aboriginal Land (Lake Condah and Framlingham Forest) Act 1987 contained in the bill remove references to the Victoria-specific provisions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984. The consequential amendments would remove an exception to the obligation upon two Aboriginal landowner corporations to not disclose information about sacred or significant places without the appropriate permission. After the amendment, the obligation to protect the information about sacred or significant sites will continue without exception.

The bill makes other changes to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 that are needed to ensure that Australians continue to have opportunities to see, in Australia, significant Aboriginal cultural heritage objects that are owned by institutions overseas.

Museums and other cultural institutions in Australia are often entrusted with objects under contractual and other loan arrangements for temporary exhibition in Australia. Overseas institutions are reluctant to loan material unless they have the protection of a certificate under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986, to allow the return of the important objects to the lender and owner overseas. Recently, the return of a number of loaned Aboriginal objects was prevented by declarations made under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984. This occurred even though a certificate to allow return had been obtained under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986. The objects were eventually returned, but only after court proceedings. Uncorrected, this kind of uncertainty would discourage overseas institutions from ever allowing items from their collections to be exhibited in Australia.

The bill provides that a certificate allowing the return of loaned cultural heritage objects cannot be overridden by a declaration under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984. In this way, it will help to secure the framework for future international cultural exchanges of benefit to Australia.

The bill also provides for technical amendments to be made to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 to bring it into line with the Legislative Instruments Act 2003. These amendments help clarify which class of instruments contained in the act are non-exempt legislative instruments for the purposes of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003. I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and I commend the bill to the House.

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