Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Grayndler has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying before question time on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Amendment Bill 2005, this kind of uncertainty, uncorrected, would discourage overseas institutions from ever allowing items from their collections to be exhibited in Australia. Australia’s reputation as a borrower of cultural materials was damaged by a series of declarations under the Victorian provisions of the act in 2004-05 that stopped Museum Victoria returning Aboriginal artefacts to the UK lenders, despite a certificate under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is an example of an overseas institution which owns and displays Aboriginal artefacts. The Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas collection contains more than 11,000 pieces, including 40,000-year-old rock paintings and Aboriginal artefacts dating from the 18th century to the 20th century. Another is the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in Middlesbrough, England. It houses the largest collection of its kind outside Australia, comprising mostly artefacts donated by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of Australia. The British Museum in London has a substantial collection of ethnography dating back to 1798, including weapons, tools and hunting equipment. It was this institution which was embroiled in the previously mentioned incident.

The amendment ensures political correctness does not go mad and damage our international reputation or deny us the opportunity to experience visiting exhibitions. Yes, protecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage is important; but it should not automatically have precedence over actions which benefit all Australians. I commend this bill to the House, but once again I underline the fact that exploration and mining and the resources industry generally are vital for the continued vitality of the Australian economy and the welfare of the people of Australia. It is also vital for future generations of Aboriginal people.

These resources are primarily located in remote areas of Australia that have a substantial population of Aboriginal people. The main bugbear for these communities today is the fact that they have no outlet for real employment. There is also the consideration that presently there is very little readiness and preparedness for job training for specific tasks within the resource development industry. A future change of attitude amongst the populations of those Indigenous communities would see full attendance at educational institutions during the primary years, building a foundation of education that would allow them to go on to secondary school and hopefully in some cases tertiary education. That would change the tide and allow the resource developers in remote Australia to employ a substantial part of their workforce from those desert communities. This would present a whole new opportunity for employment and all of the self-esteem that comes from being financially independent—something that is sadly lacking at present amongst the general style of desert community.

In commending this bill to the House, of course I have reservations. I know that this proposed act will be used by many to filibuster, to obfuscate and to generally get in the way of the opening up of land for the development of mineral deposits—remembering that 6.5 per cent of the economy of this nation is contributed to by the resource development sector. It is vital that we maintain an understanding of that issue, an issue that is dear to the hearts of the majority of my constituents within the Kalgoorlie electorate.

Far too often I hear stories and solid evidence of various claimant groups making varied decisions about the significance of particular areas of country, such as one group insisting that it is vital and that large sums of money will have to change hands before approval can be given, and then, when negotiations are completed and the exploration company believes that it can legitimately move into country to explore it, because it has approval to do so, at the eleventh hour the company will be thwarted by yet another claimant group insisting that the wrong claimant group was called to advise on the significance of that country and that another heritage survey must be carried out. Of course, that survey will involve, yet again, the payment of persons to carry out a survey. Those persons will need to be supported, in every way, financially for the duration of that survey.

All of this leads to many prospectors walking away from country that they have legitimately taken exploration leases on, and for Australia that means that greenfields are possibly left undiscovered. The impact on the Australian economy in the long term is phenomenal. We have it on good authority that, for a greenfield to come into production, it often takes 25 years from the date of initial exploration. We do not have 25 years to wait for so many of those very important and very rich resources that are being developed and marketed today. We do not have 25 years to wait for future developments and future discoveries; we need to start that process now. Impediments to the process of exploration and the development of greenfields should be addressed. There are many. We suffer from a playing field here in Australia that is not level. We need to have a process whereby exploration is encouraged by investment in the exploration industry—a share known as the flow-through share would enable that to be encouraged. (Time expired)

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the short time available in this debate before the adjournment debate, I rise to speak on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Amendment Bill 2005. I will make some general observations about history. Understanding the past and learning the connections that run from the past to the present enables people, and the institutions that they grant power and authority to, to better understand and make sense of the present and to make decent laws in the present which reflect their understanding of the past.

But when you see the past through the prism of ideology you are unable to do that. That is the big issue that lies in this bill before the House because, if you see the past through the prism of ideology, as the Prime Minister consistently does on Indigenous issues, then what you are attempting to do is to make the past malleable. If there are a set of certainties attached to it that you do not agree with then you try and make the past malleable. This is the stuff of the ‘Thought Police’, a phrase that was brought to prominence in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and referred to by the Prime Minister quite recently in his speech to the Quadrant magazine anniversary dinner.

I was intrigued that the Prime Minister should refer to Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four given this legislation before the House and its character, because the subtext of this legislation is the Howard government’s fixation with the reconfiguring the past to suit its present prejudices. That particular way of treating legislation—which is both implicit and explicit in this Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage protection bill—needs to be commented on, noted and understood not only by those in this parliament but also by those who are listening outside as bills are debated in this House. This legislation needs to be looked at in the context of the amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which we have also debated in this House. When that legislation came into the House, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, the member for Flinders, assured us in his second reading speech that that legislation strengthened the protection of the environment. It does no such thing. In fact the government even voted against a climate change action amendment that we wanted to see made to that legislation.

Debate interrupted.