Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, but the legislation does not say that. We are left to trust that the regulations will. I was with Senator Siewert up at Karratha last year, looking at the Burrup. There was one place there which tourists could readily access. Signs pointed to where you could park and where you could go and look at the rock carvings in a very vast area. There were warnings asking people to respect the area and so on, and I was horrified to see that the places most proximate to the tourist parking areas had been defaced. One only has to look at other accessible human and natural heritage places around the country to see how some people cannot help but leave their mark. It is a reaction to their fear of mortality.

I am concerned that in removing the permit system and opening up these communities to whomever might come, the sacred sites will be a source of attraction to the curious, those who do not respect Indigenous culture—they are not few in number—and souvenir hunters. I want to know what it is in this legislation that is going to protect those sites now that the government is opening them to the greater threat of invasion by people who simply do not understand the significance of them to Indigenous people.