Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will be supporting this amendment, because we believe that there are legitimate concerns, which were raised first by the Central Land Council, regarding the impact of a sunset clause, which would effectively see an automatic ceasing of those declarations after 10 years. The minister says, ‘We are going to seek to change these things by regulation.’ He has already told us that this legislation is one step on a journey which appears to be of some 1,000 miles—a process which has now been some 10 years in the development. So it is a very tiny step that he is speaking of. It is more like a crawl than a step, I would suggest. We had the Evatt Foundation saying some 10 years ago that there needed to be certain action taken. We heard from the minister—I think it was Senator Hill at the time—that urgent action would be taken.

Three years later we have this pretty inadequate, pretty miserable, piece of legislation before us which effectively leaves out a whole series of matters—and I will come back to that in a moment. It is clearly identified, and agreed, that if no action is taken there are declarations that will automatically cease after 10 years. We are supposed to rely upon the good word of this government and an incompetent minister who is obsessed with his own political fortunes and who seeks to use heritage legislation in such a way as to advance the political interests of the Liberal Party. We are supposed to accept assurances from the government that in these circumstances some other administrative actions will be taken. I think it is straightforward. There is an opportunity here for the government to put its money—and, more importantly, its votes—where its mouth is and to support this amendment.

The Evatt inquiry in 1996 made some recommendations—for instance, respecting customary restrictions on information, including gender restricted information. There is nothing in these amendments dealing with that. Other recommendations included protection from disclosure contrary to customary law, restrictions including guidelines on the kind of information that courts can seek and exemptions from freedom of information laws. There is nothing in this legislation about that. Another recommendation was for guaranteed access rights to sites of recognised significance for those recognised as being allowed to do so under customary law. There is no action on that. There was a recommendation concerning minimum standards for state and territory cultural heritage laws, including automatic blanket protection for sites which clearly fall within those arrangements. There is no action on that. The establishment of an Aboriginal cultural heritage agency of Indigenous cultural heritage bodies controlled by Aboriginal members representative of Aboriginal communities with responsibility for site evaluation and administration was also recommended. There is no action on that. Of course there was an inclusion for the protection of aspects of Indigenous heritage, including intellectual property. That is something that this government is not interested in. There have been calls for the government to fulfil its previous commitment to consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities on a broad range of amendments to the act. We have already heard from the minister—they are going to consult after they have passed the legislation.

It is clear that where the Commonwealth has direct responsibility in these matters no action is to be taken. This government has had tremendous opportunities through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act but we have only seen one declaration in 10 years. There has been limited involvement in Indigenous heritage issues with regard to the administration of heritage provisions of the other important legislative instrument available to the government, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. This is despite the fact that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act has much greater capacity to protect Indigenous heritage than the EPBC Act. Under the EPBC Act the government places considerable emphasis on the national significance of any particular site. This government has interpreted that to mean that a particular Indigenous community is not eligible to have its views taken seriously unless it can be established that there is general agreement within the community that there should be protection of those Indigenous communities and their heritage sites. So there are areas of extreme importance which are not given any protection in terms of the National Heritage List until such time as the local powers that be agree. That puts a veto power into the hands of people who have demonstrated time and time again their hostility to the protection of national heritage. We are told that the answer to this problem is to rely on a secret review and the government’s goodwill to change this situation by way of regulation.

If you had a decent minister or a government with a decent program actually committed to national heritage, you might be a little more tempted to take them at their word. But, given the appalling record of this minister—his incompetence; his blatant and repeated examples of taking partisan political views to protect the powers that be, particularly in the more remote parts of this country; working behind closed doors to stitch people up—you would have to say that those assurances are not worth a dob of glue. The government’s word on national heritage is not worth a dob of glue and we are told that we should rely upon them to come up with some shifty arrangement behind closed doors, some sneaky little deal, to protect this situation. Frankly, the Central Land Council has put its collective finger right on this. If nothing is done then there is an automatic cessation of declarations in 10 years. That exposes Indigenous people to the will, whims and chicanery of some of the worst shysters in this country, who are protected by the ministers on that front bench.