Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

This Labor government is failing the tourism industry: increasing visa costs, blocking airlines from adding more flights and cutting funding to Tourism Australia, all on the back of a pandemic which tore the heart out of tourism. At the very time when the industry needs this government's support more than ever, Labor is turning its back on them, and we are seeing the weaponising of Aboriginal cultural heritage laws by Labor governments around the country, blocking landowners from developing their own property for tourism. The prospects for the industry just grow bleaker.

As a case in point, I want to draw the attention of the Chamber to an egregious case currently taking place at Lake Tyrrell, in my electorate. Prior to the pandemic, Lake Tyrrell drew tourists from all over the world, which was a massive benefit to the local community. Landholders Murray and Maree Allan made an application to the Buloke Shire Council to develop some of their farmland into a small tourist park, to provide accommodation to visitors. This sounds like good news for the local tourism industry because it is. In 2017, as part of their planning process, the Allans were informed by the Labor Victorian state government that they did not have to prepare a cultural heritage management plan to investigate any implications around Aboriginal cultural heritage on the land. Consequently, they continued development and have so far invested over half a million dollars on the project—their retirement savings.

In the meantime, the council received $2.58 million in state funding and $2.9 million in federal funding to build a viewing platform over the lake for the benefit of visiting tourists, which was opened in 2020. This platform is right next door to Murray and Maree's farming property. Around the same time, the local Aboriginal land council corporation expressed interest in the development of an ecotourism precinct to serve tourists in the area. So far so good: more infrastructure and amenities to accommodate tourists, to the benefit of everyone. But, when the Aboriginal land council's trail ran cold on the prospects of their own project, their focus fixed on the Allans. Even though the Allans had been scrupulous in following the proper processes, in June 2021 they were suddenly and unexpectedly issued with a stop work order from the state Department of Premier and Cabinet—the same department who had given them authority to proceed without a cultural heritage management plan in 2017.

For reasons known only to five self-professed elders, they decided to object to the Allans' tourist park development on cultural heritage grounds, four years after it was announced. There has been no archaeological evidence of tangible Aboriginal items found at the site. In July 2022, Tanya Plibersek, the federal Minister for the Environment and Water, received an application from these same elders to protect Lake Tyrrell, under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, using newly published cultural heritage maps that had suddenly expanded to annex the Allans' tourist project on their land. Meanwhile, the Allans are left in limbo with more than half a million dollars sunk into the project, with roads, power and water supply already installed but every prospect that the federal minister will cancel it on the most tenuous cultural heritage claims you can imagine. No public information has been made available to the general community, and opponents of the application have until just 15 September to make submissions against it.

Far be it from me to say so, but, from the outside, this application looks arbitrary, wilful and even cynical. I'm in the corner of my farming constituents on this issue and will fight the opportunistic seizure of private property rights through the double-dip Aboriginal heritage state and federal system. As we approach the Voice referendum, which, if successful, is bound to lead to calls for treaties and reparations under Labor, this case is a forewarning to the tourism industry and private landowners of what to look forward to. I urge the minister to fairly and reasonably consider this case.

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