Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

In rising this evening to address the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Amendment Bill 2005 I note, as I have said on many occasions over the last 12 months, that this debate has been a long time coming. It draws further attention to the fact that now more than ever we have a government that is tardy when it comes to legislation, lacks a commitment to the legislative process and has no respect for the parliament or the people of Australia, whom we represent. It is a very strong statement about the arrogance of this government. I say that because it is now more than three years since then Senator Hill, who was also a minister, gave undertakings that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Amendment Bill would be ‘brought into the Senate as quickly as possible’.

Senator Hill has long departed the Senate and I must say that, if they were in a hurry with this bill, I would hate to see them if they were not in a hurry. It is three years since the minister gave that undertaking. By any reasonable person’s definition three years is hardly as quickly as possible, especially as these amendments before the chair this evening do not make any great drafting demands. They are simply about giving greater certainty to international cultural loan arrangements, and so they should be. They bring administration of heritage protection in Victoria in line with other states, which is an appropriate decision. They also provide consistency and clarity with respect to the Legislative Instruments Act 2003.

This bill does absolutely nothing to more properly protect the Indigenous heritage of our country. That is why there is significant criticism by the opposition of the bill before the chair this evening. I note that the bill does nothing to address the broad weaknesses in Indigenous heritage protection under the Howard government. The bill certainly falls short of addressing the issues canvassed by the 1996 Evatt inquiry into the Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984.

Many of my colleagues on the opposition side of the House have already addressed the range of issues in their contributions to this debate. Those that particularly interest and concern me relate to the establishment of independent Indigenous cultural heritage bodies run by Indigenous people as representatives of their communities. I am a longstanding and great believer in promoting self-determination for Indigenous communities. On many occasions in this House I have talked about the need for economic empowerment to replace the cycle of welfare dependency and despair that permeates many of our remote Aboriginal communities. I have talked about the need for real investment by both the government and the private sector in Indigenous communities so as to ensure we do something substantial about the creation of real jobs and real education and training opportunities.

I remind the House yet again this evening that one in two Australians living in Northern Australia will be of Indigenous descent by 2020. These people are the future workforce for Northern Australia. Just think about it: the pastoral industry, agriculture, forest plantation, mining and tourism, just to refer to a few key employment opportunities for our Indigenous communities between now and 2020.

I am, therefore, pleased to report to the House that I now see many companies recognising this and appropriately embracing the potential of Australia’s Indigenous citizens. Just as economic self-determination is important for Indigenous communities, so too is self-determination when it comes to the protection of Indigenous heritage. I intend to address a few of these issues this evening because it is about challenging some people who like to make speeches about these issues but, when it comes down to giving the Indigenous communities some real power, they like to run away from their responsibilities. It is all about all talk and no action.

Therefore, I remind the House that I have said on a number of occasions that for far too long special interest groups—antinuclear campaigners, antimining campaigners, antiforestry campaigners—have used Indigenous communities to peddle their own short-term political gains based on ideology. That poses a very serious question which is central to this debate: what have Indigenous communities got in return? Certainly not jobs, certainly not better education for Indigenous kids, certainly not better health, certainly not better training and certainly not better resources for cultural knowledge systems or cultural heritage protection. The simple fact is that Indigenous empowerment is not in the interest of some of these so-called special interest groups—they are about paternalism. Predictably, when I raised this issue in September this year in another debate in the House, Friends of the Earth wrote to the Australian Financial Review and have since written many letters to many newspapers attacking my position. I say ‘predictably’ because the fact is that Indigenous communities are awake to the Friends of the Earth and their green colleagues. This is a threat to their political base. It is about time we nailed this debate for what it is. It is not about Indigenous empowerment and self-determination; it is about the political base and the political future of some environmental NGOs and the Greens.

In that context, I simply refer to the debate about this bill in the Senate. The House needs to look no further than the Greens amendment to this bill, which interestingly proposes an independent review of the repeal of part IIA of the Aboriginal heritage act. The Greens in that debate have nominated one member of a four-member committee to represent the Indigenous community—one member! The other three are so-called experts in various aspects of Indigenous heritage. They know better than the Indigenous community! The fact is that the Greens want left-wing ideologues in control, not Indigenous people, clearly flying in the face of the Evatt recommendations for Indigenous control of their own heritage.

So on the one hand you have the coalition, which does not care about Indigenous heritage at all. This is evident, I believe, from the tardiness in introducing this bill and its failure to admit any serious shortcomings in Indigenous heritage protection today. We also have to be concerned about the other extreme of this debate. There is the government on the one hand, but let us talk about the other extreme. You have the Greens and some environmental NGOs who care about Indigenous heritage only if they can use it for their own short-term political gain to stop mining or forestry or to shut down industry and take away people’s jobs and Indigenous opportunities of the future.

The green movement never let the facts stand in the way of a good story that they like to peddle from time to time. I go to the letter from the Friends of the Earth to the Financial Review, which talks about:

... the indefensible and racist situation where the Roxby Downs uranium mine in South Australia is exempt from the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act.

Let us deal with a few facts. That statement is simply not true. As I said, never let the truth or honesty come between the Greens and their friends, the environmental NGOs, and a good story. The truth is that Roxby Downs, or Olympic Dam, is subject to indenture legislation put in place in 1982 to clarify the rights, responsibilities and obligations of both the operators and the government. That is about sovereign risk and security of investment, which is about making sure that Australia remains a place that is attractive for investment because of security and safety for investors. Except as specifically provided for in this indenture, and this is the key to it—it is a very transparent indenture—the operations are subject to all the requirements of all the laws of South Australia. At the time of the finalisation of the Roxby Downs (Indenture Ratification) Act, the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1979 had recently been enacted by the parliament, but a different act was already in the process of formulation. This act did not come into force for another six years. It became the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988. It was therefore logical for the government and the operators to agree that, in order to provide the project with a reasonable level of regulatory certainty to ensure the investments, the 1979 act would apply to the original project area defined in the indenture as the Stuart Shelf area.

Let us go on and deal with a few other facts. The fact is that Olympic Dam is subject to not one but two state Aboriginal heritage acts. One covers the mine lease and the wider Stuart Shelf area. The other covers areas beyond that on which there is infrastructure, such as powerlines and water pipelines. The fact that Olympic Dam is covered under the two acts makes no practical difference to how Aboriginal heritage is managed but it is protected in all areas of operation and, more importantly, BHP, which now owns Olympic Dam, is absolutely committed to this process.

Before the last expansion of Olympic Dam in the mid-1990s, the mine operator, then Western Mining, signed an agreement with native title claimants to deal with both native title and heritage issues. As a result, Aboriginal heritage has been managed in a manner supported by the claimants. It might not have the support of Friends of the Earth and its fellow travellers, but it has enjoyed the support of the Indigenous communities.

I go to the current proposed expansion process. To facilitate the current proposed expansion, I am sure that BHP will negotiate in good faith towards a new agreement with the claimant groups, and so they ought to, because that is what they are seeking to do as a company Australia-wide. I simply say that in my opinion BHP Billiton has a good track record in this area. One of the recent projects it was involved in which went to heritage work was work undertaken near Onslow, Western Australia, for the Pilbara liquefied natural gas project—something very important to Australia, given its export potential.

The work undertaken provided local Indigenous people with archaeological field skills and it also recorded valuable information for the Western Australian heritage database. It also created a new opportunity for the Indigenous community, which they grabbed with both hands. Only a few of the Indigenous people had been involved in something like this before—I suppose we are not surprised at that. So this opportunity was a worthwhile learning exchange between them and archaeologists, as well as an opportunity to establish a strong relationship between the LNG project team and the local Indigenous community.

So what is the result? Previously, the Aboriginal community had not been exposed to these opportunities, but as a result of this some of the younger Aboriginal people got new opportunities in life. It was also an opportunity for the elders through this process to teach the younger generation about their history. A film crew accompanied a team for part of this time so that the Pilbara experience can be used for future induction and cultural awareness training of construction crews—a win-win for everyone.

While we are talking about the Pilbara, I note the comments by my colleague the member for Kingsford Smith about Woodside’s proposed Pluto project on the Burrup Peninsula. Like BHP, which is in fact one of the North West Shelf venture partners, Woodside has a longstanding record of heritage protection on the Burrup Peninsula, where it has operated LNG and domestic gas facilities for some 22 years on behalf of the North West Shelf venture. The Pluto project will be Woodside’s first attempt at going it alone in the LNG business—a mammoth undertaking for a home-grown Australian company distributing profits to predominantly Australian owners. This project, if it proceeds, will provide employment for thousands of people and boost the Australian economy by some $18 billion. It will bring in $8 billion in taxes for schools, hospitals, roads, public services and infrastructure. But it is also a very important project in itself.

Interestingly, this is another project that, broadly speaking, has the support of Indigenous communities but not the support of their white cousins in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne. Certainly, the traditional owners have signed an agreement with Western Australia that supports the industrial zoning of the Pluto sites. It is important to remember that 27,000 hectares of the Burrup rock art precinct is already set aside for conservation. The Pluto development will occupy just a tiny fraction—one per cent—of this area. There are about one million engravings and thousands of cultural heritage sites in the whole precinct, yet only 115 engravings fall within the Pluto development area.

Let us deal with a few facts yet again. It is the intention of Woodside to avoid or relocate all of them. It is my view that the competition between industry and cultural heritage should not be addressed through an argument over whether to list or not to list. The real issue is to recognise that we can have multiple land use values of listed places that should be properly managed through the use of regulation, statutory management plans and conditions on developments. There is no doubt in my mind that these places with really special environmental and heritage values—and in my view the Burrup Peninsula is one of these—should be properly listed and recognised for those values. Any fair-minded person would support such a proposition. But there is also no doubt in my mind that, if those places have other very important values—for example, nationally significant economic and strategic values; and, again, that is my view when it comes to the Burrup Peninsula—there is a need to find a way to protect those values as well.

We as a community can have multiple land use values and we can manage them properly so that heritage is protected but sustainable economic growth that underpins our national wealth can still occur. It is time to stop the scaremongering and tell the truth. It is time for industry and environmental stakeholders to move closer to the middle, to accept listing but also development, and to concentrate on management practice that best protects heritage values and allows sustainable development to occur in the interests of the nation’s continuing wealth.

Indigenous communities need heritage protection but they also need wealth creation and the opportunities that flow from such wealth creation so as to overcome the huge social problems that confront them as communities—something that we like to talk about in the inner city suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and every other capital city of Australia, but something most of those people who make the speeches do very little to actually progress.

At a time when Australia faces a severe skill shortage and desperately needs more people participating in the workforce, it is an indictment of this government that Indigenous employment lags so far behind mainstream levels of participation. Indigenous employment, education and training, and business and community development opportunities should be key considerations in all mining approval and management plans. It is also a responsibility of industry itself and of all levels of government in Australia to progress this objective.

Today some estimates put the cost to government of Indigenous unemployment at $1 billion per annum. The cost to the Australian economy in lost productive output associated with Indigenous unemployment is estimated at another $3 billion and related social welfare expenditure and forgone tax revenue is a further $3 billion. It is, therefore, smart from a government point of view to work out this partnership with the private sector, because it involves serious revenue issues confronting the current government.

As I have said in this House before, not only is it shameful in the 21st century that a modern developed and wealthy society tolerates the level of Indigenous unemployment and social disadvantage that this country tolerates but also it is costing Australia $7 billion a year. What a challenge—to actually do something on the ground and to do something for revenue so that we have more money to spend on other priorities.

Notwithstanding the unforgivable human cost, imagine the financial cost to Australia of Indigenous unemployment by 2020 if we fail to properly address the incredible social disadvantage faced by these people. Aboriginal heritage protection is a vital part of the framework for rebuilding self-reliant and proud Indigenous communities, but it must go hand in hand with greater action to provide education, training and jobs for the future. Sadly, this bill does very little for the advancement of Indigenous people or the protection of their heritage. In that context I simply say that not only is the government to be chastised but some of the environmental NGOs and the Greens should be chastised for their lack of understanding of the real issues confronting the Australian community with respect to these challenges. I commend the second reading amendment to the House.

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