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

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Blayney Gold Mine Bill 2024 proposed by the opposition. I first want to go back to what section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protection Act represents: cultural heritage. Having a cultural heritage linkage in this country is about identity. It is about existence. It tells a story of where people came from, where people lived, where they camped, the place they have a connection to in that country. Section 9, section 10 and section 12 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protection Act are all important elements of that. They give us the right to contest decisions, the right to alert the government of the day, the minister of the day, that ancestral remains exist in a place, that there are sacred places that may not be recorded, and stories—the intangible and tangible cultural heritage that may exist and that may have never been recorded because people have not had the opportunity to do that or may not be aware of the processes by which they're able to do it.

We know that in this country there are many native title determinations that are still coming down the pipeline. I'm not a native title lawyer, but my claim group have been through the native title determination process twice in the High Court, and the thing I did was pay attention. I paid attention to the amazing amount of archaeological material and stories from my ancestors, from my old people, gathered during that time, recorded by anthropologists and held in trust by lawyers through our claim group. All of these stories allowed us to prove to the High Court that we had a linkage through our cultural connection in Noongar country to one of the largest cultural blocks in this country, an amazing part of the south-west area of Western Australia. Now, within that, we had the opportunity to have a conversation about what should be protected and what land came back. There's a settlement process, settlement of the native title, a determination—and there is even a recognition act in the Western Australian parliament that recognises Noongar people—that said 'always was, always will be'. It's that conversation.

There's a conversation that is batted around in this place and even outside, in the media, that we should stop having those conversations. We should stop acknowledging that this land belongs to First Nations people. It's never going to stop. We're going to keep acknowledging that that's what happened—that sovereignty was never ceded in this country, because it was not. It has not been. And, if you paid attention to any of the things during last year's referendum and read the Uluru Statement from the Heart, you'd understand that sovereignty is a spiritual notion. It is about the way we care for country. It is about the way we care for everything in the environment and the unique biodiversity that this country has and always has had in relation to that.

Before I came to this place one of the things I did was work as a policy officer. I thought to myself, 'We're going to keep having this conversation in this place because the opposition are absolutely on a one-way ticket for this election to keep bandying this issue around, to keep dividing the nation, to keep baiting people in a conversation to divide and to tell us that we are not important.' They think that they proved that we shouldn't have progress in this country after last year's referendum result. Okay, the Voice was won. Well done! Great campaign! But we're moving on. How about truth-telling? How about agreement making so that we can resolve the unfinished business of this country? How about that?

Cultural heritage is right at the heart of that. I know of plenty of section 10s that are on the minister's desk, still awaiting approval. But in this instance, for Kings Plains and the declaration attached to that section 10, Minister Plibersek has taken the opportunity to protect that area, as did—you heard from Senator Green's contribution—the previous minister for the environment, Ms Ley, in the other place. In her duty as the minister she chose to, under section 10, protect this area. It's consistency, right? When we make laws in this place, we should think about their durability, not that they're just going to last one government. If you're the alternative government, either side of this chamber, and you're going to keep that game up, then you're actually going to have to think about how this is going to be applied when you're not the minister or in power.

I went back through, as I said, some of the policy that exists. This bill is talking about the section 10 protection of our cultural heritage against a tailings dam, a tailings dam that's attached to a goldmine. So the project will still go ahead; they just need to find an alternative place because of the cultural heritage that exists at those headwaters. But I thought I would go back and have a look at the leading practice policy for tailings management on DISR's website, and guess what? It comes from September 2016 and is still current, which means that this government never updated it. Lo and behold, if I go to page viii of the introduction, guess who signed off on it? Matt Canavan. Senator Canavan, when he was the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, signed off on this Leading Practice Sustainable Development Program for the mining industry.I see Senator Canavan will come on later in the speaking list.

But what's interesting is that section 5.1 of this document actually talks about 'land tenure and use, including cultural heritage areas'. Wow! So this is the opposition's policy, followed by the government. They are following the law and the policy around tailings management and consideration of—lo and behold!—heritage areas. Section 5.1 also talks about 'social, recreational, commercial and heritage values that may be affected by the TSF'. So the area in which the minister has made a determination is based on the 'social, recreational, commercial and heritage values'. Well, imagine that! Imagine the government and the opposition having the same policy and following that legislation and it being consistent. That's the determination she's made, which makes this whole bill ineffective. They are seeking to overturn something that's been made by one of their own, Senator Canavan, when he was the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia.

But let's get to the really important part that Senator Duniam mentioned: sovereign risk and how foreign investment and economic development in this country are at risk because investors don't want to come here. Well, guess what? Here's the newsflash: 86 per cent of the mining companies in this country are already foreign owned. So don't come in here and talk about 'made in Australia' and all this sovereign wealth for Australia. No, that's a myth, and you need to cut that out. That's ridiculous. You are talking about attracting foreign investment here. You're supposed to be here to represent Australians.

Then you want to talk about how cultural heritage should be destroyed—'Let's just get rid of it.' We've been down this track. As Senator Green said, the A way forward report about Juukan Gorge was an international news story—46,000 years of history, culture and connection for the PKK people, who had their rock shelters blown up by a mining company in this country, who had no remorse, having already been told that they shouldn't be within the perimeter to do blasting in the first place. But what's happening is the sheer ignorance because of the power of the resources companies in this country.

You come in here and talk about the red tape, the green tape and now, as Senator Hanson mentioned yesterday, the black tape. Guess what? Here's a reality check. We are not going anywhere. We are not going to stop fighting to protect our country. We are not going to stop fighting to protect our identity. It is about time we settled the unfinished business of this nation, and that's what the A way forward report recommends. The recommendations when I sat on the northern Australia committee were very clear: it is time for truth-telling and time to fix the gag clauses of these mining agreements. Just recently we heard about another one, the BMIEA on the Burrup Peninsula, where Woodside want to make sure they can extract gas until 2070, ruin the wonderful rock art of the Murujuga area and make sure that those traditional owners never have a say and are unable to protect their cultural heritage. So we are seeing Juukan Gorge 2.0, and, if this bill gets up today, that's exactly what's going to happen.

The speakers that will come in here after me today will talk about land councils, so I want to go to the point Senator Duniam made about land councils, because I think that's just unbelievable. My colleague Senator Shoebridge, a senator for New South Wales, spoke about this last time this was up, in relation to the OPD that the opposition tried to get up last week. On the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, anyone can be a member. If you're an Aboriginal person, you can be a member of the land council. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act in New South Wales empowers the land council to do the following: to administer the New South Wales ALC account and mining royalties account. Well, well, well; these are the people at the top of the tree. These are the people that, in fact, members of the opposition and those from the crossbench were criticising in here while they were chatting away during the division yesterday. These are the people who are at fault or responsible for all the things that they want to talk about, but they want to back them in when it suits them. When it suits their narrative, they're happy to back those people in—and we will see that right here on the chamber floor today, so keep watching, folks. They are also granted funds for payment of administrative costs and expenses for the local Aboriginal land councils.

I know people that have moved—Murri people from Queensland, other Koori people from other areas. In fact, people from my home state of Western Australia moved to New South Wales. They had a phone call from the Aboriginal land council saying: 'Would you like to become a member? You're a landholder who bought a house here.' That goes against the whole principle of cultural heritage and your connection to that country. There are stories, as I said. There are identifiable sites, connection and identity that exist.

You can't just, because you're a blackfella, go and live in somebody else's area and start claiming that you can sell it off because you want mining royalties—you absolutely cannot, and you should not. The opposition come in here and argue that they absolutely should, for Regis Resources—that Regis Resources should just bulldoze their way through and set up a tailings dam, even though we learnt our lessons with Ranger and Jabiluka about the danger of the waste from these areas. Tailings dams are not properly regulated, and this piece of policy that lies around on the DISR website is not up to scratch; it's not fit for purpose. The Minister for Resources in the Labor government should look at that, because right now we are continuing to see the toxic waste from these mining projects seep into the water. On top of that, the opposition are ignoring the farmers who are worried about 60 per cent of their water being taken by this mine. So here's the hypocrisy right here today.