Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for Trade and Tourism (Senator Farrell) about THRIVE 2030.

I want to thank the minister for giving some of the answers that I asked in my question. I'm pleased to see the government are taking the opportunity to invest in the tourism sector seriously, both after the disruptions of COVID-19 and after the bushfires and floods that we've seen across the country. These, in fact, have hit the tourism industry quite hard.

We are slowly seeing recovery, in some aspects. Some borders are opening and starting to welcome people, both domestically and internationally, here to Australia. It's a perfect time for this government to invest in a sector which is, essentially, what THRIVE 2030 is about. As highlighted by the minister, and the reason I asked this question, this strategy relies heavily on First Nations tourism. First Nations people have experiences that cannot be held anywhere else, and Minister Farrell referenced the unique aspects of First Nations culture.

In order for us to invest in First Nations tourism and empower First Nations people to share culture and stories with tourists, it's critical that we ensure that First Nations people are the owners of that information—that they operate their own ventures, have control over what can be shared, where they can take people, what's sacred and what they can provide in that experience to people. This is because not everything is appropriate to be shared, particularly around culture. It's only First Nations people that know this information, so it's important, when we talk about the aspect of cultural heritage protection, that it be legislated and in a way that we can protect it.

Cultural heritage is at the heart of any First Nations or First Peoples tourism industry. It relies on sacred sites. It relies on songlines, dance, song, art, bush foods, botanicals, medicine and other practices, which are appropriate to share, but it doesn't allow anybody to culturally appropriate it. If we don't legislate it, if we fail to include it in our trade negotiations, it just becomes words on paper. It becomes a strategy where everyone goes to Sydney and all the ministers have a lovely little gathering where they stand up and say how wonderful it is. It doesn't actually protect cultural heritage on the basis of creating a thriving tourism industry that empowers First Nations community. It's also for their health and wellbeing and the connection to country that this provides. We need a good legislative framework in order to do that.

In First Nations communities we don't see ourselves as separate to nature. This is why, the week before last, I was at the World Indigenous Tourism Summit. I was talking to people from around the globe about the experience of sustainable tourism and how we can ensure that we are providing economic, environmental, social and cultural factors to protect our cultural heritage, so that the experience at Juukan Gorge—the destruction of the 40,000-year-old rock-shelters in the Pilbara, in my home state—is at the forefront of people's minds.

There were international headlines about how tragic this was and how the system failed at all levels to protect First Nations cultural heritage in this country. I had the opportunity to sit on the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia, which published a report on this. The report was basically what I asked Minister Farrell about: when are we going to see those minimum standards included in legislation and good regulatory frameworks that allow cultural heritage to be protected in this country? Without cultural heritage being protected, we have nothing to show people when they come here. We have nothing. We have a set of rocks reduced to rubble. We can say, 'That's where it used to be.' We need to fix that. Funnily enough, the interim report's title is Never again. Never again should it happen that we are in this situation.

When I asked the question regarding UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the ratification of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage—twice—I didn't get an answer. I look forward to working with this government, though, in continuing to pursue First Nations cultural heritage and tourism in this country.

Question agreed to.