Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the government's response to the Juukan Gorge disaster and to highlight the risk that we run of seeing a repeat of a similar experience for traditional owners and of the loss of cultural heritage that we saw in Western Australia in my own backyard—the Blue Mountains World Heritage area. I have spoken many, many times in this place about the mixed feelings people in my community have about what any downstream benefits of the proposed raising of the wall of the Warragamba Dam might be, but in the wake of the Juukan Gorge response it's important to focus on another part of the consequences of the plan. The environment minister has made it clear that what happened in WA should never have happened, and nor should it happen in the Blue Mountains World Heritage area.

The specific place we're talking about is what is left of the Burragorang Valley and surrounds. As Wilderness Australia explains:

The southern Blue Mountains is an extensive and rich cultural landscape belonging to the Gundungurra People. The rivers, waterholes and mountains of the Blue Mountains landscape tell one of the most intact and documented dream-time stories in Australia—the epic battle of tiger cat (Mirrigan) and snake (Gurrangatch) which formed the southern Blue Mountains.

When Warragamba Dam was built in 1960, it flooded most of the Burragorang Valley, and with it was lost a large proportion of the cultural heritage and Dreamtime stories of the Gundungurra people. If the dam wall is raised, many remaining sites of this story, including Indigenous archaeological sites, creation waterholes and cave art, will be destroyed.

What everyone wants to see is a thorough and detailed assessment of all of this before any decision is made about the project. To date, the quality of the work by the proponents of the scheme, WaterNSW, in assessing the potential impacts has been panned. As elder Aunty Sharyn Halls describes in the Gundungurra Aboriginal Heritage Association response to the EIS, one example is the inconsistent figures about what would be impacted; a number ranging from 174 to potentially a thousand, with little on-the-ground analysis.

The latest analysis by the proponent, having been required to do more work, is even more damning. WaterNSW's own report says that the plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall would cause 'irreversible harm' to Aboriginal cultural heritage. Its revised rock art analysis identifies additional sites and information about them. It says that there are 30 newly identified rock art sites that contain both typical and atypical motif styles, and 'include some rare sites with significant numbers of motifs and engravings'. The number of motifs presents at each site varies from one to 14.

The report goes on to say:

A number of rock art sites are linked to the Gundungurra cultural landscape which demonstrate the strong connection and interconnectedness between tangible archaeological sites, such as rock art sites, and the broader landscape, with its associated intangible values.

In a bit more detail, it says, the key results of the updated impact assessment are:

It says most of these sites will also be affected in a cumulative way, 'Of them, six are considered to have nil to low resilience against inundation.'

The report says:

such as the stories I talked about earlier. This is what they say is going to be a consequence.

Let's summarise that. The report finds more than 250 sites of cultural heritage would be affected, including dozens of new sites, which include forms of rock art that are not commonly represented regionally, and the report's conceding there's likely to be far more culturally significant artefacts outside the area that's actually surveyed.

UNESCO has raised concerns about this project's impact on World Heritage, and WaterNSW's own report talks about this. It says: 'The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area is one of the largest and most intact tracts of protected bushland in Australia and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000.' While the area affected contains only 304 hectares of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, which is a small percentage, it contributes overall to the cultural values as it's a cultural landscape with a 'rare and representative example of the interconnectedness of tangible and intangible values'.

Here we have, finally, this report recommending the impact that it will have. UNESCO has said it expects the EIS to fully assess all potential impacts on the outstanding universal values, including Aboriginal cultural heritage. This is the context of why I welcome, so strongly, the support by the Albanese government of the recommendations in the Juukan Gorge report, particularly recommendation 3. I want to go through this recommendation—and remember this recommendation has been agreed by the Australian government—which says:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government legislate a new framework for cultural heritage protection at the national levelThe legislation should be developed through a process of co-design with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

This new legislation should set out the minimum standards for state and territory heritage protections consistent with relevant international law (including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People UNDRIP) and the Dhawura Ngilan: A Vision for Aboriginaland Torres Strait Islander Heritage in Australia

These minimum standards include things like:

On that point, Kazan Brown, another traditional owner, points out that WaterNSW did not permit her and her daughter, Taylor Clarke, to attend the archaeological survey which informed the entirety of the assessment of archaeological significance of the area proposed to be damaged by the project.

The recommendations in this report that have been accepted by the government, which include 'an ability for traditional owners to withhold consent to the destruction of cultural heritage', are key to ensuring that we protect an area that has incalculable value. The way that this process has been managed by the New South Wales government has created extraordinary distress, and I welcome the acceptance by this government of the following recommendation:

The Commonwealth should retain the ability to extend protection to and/or override decisions made under inadequate state or territory protections that would destroy sites that are contrary to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples consent.

These are the things that may help us have a good outcome in the current processes that we're working through. Our traditional owners deserve it. They have lost so much of their culture heritage. As a parliament, we often—every day, actually—say we pay respects to elders past and present and we acknowledge the leaders of today. Well, this is a tangible way to show our respect for and acknowledgment of their culture.

Debate adjourned.

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