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

I withdraw. I'll rephrase my comments to say that investors' wishes are put before traditional owners. Well, guess what? We're constituents, we are now citizens of this country and we too have rights. It's not about capitalism. It's not about putting money first. I know it is for some parties in this place. I know that that is your view, and that's your prerogative. But investors must listen. Investors have a guide already around business investment.

Investors know this, yet in my home state of Western Australia they want to flout the rules. We're a mining state, and they love to get around them. In fact, they wound them back because of the pressure of the coalition during the Voice referendum. You must have been clapping your hands about that one. Our cultural heritage laws went so far back that they went right back to the Dark Ages, where you could get a section 18 and you could blow up caves. You could continue to ram through mining trucks and destroy our country with little to no impact and no consciousness that you are drilling into the soul of First Nations people by doing that. You have no consciousness. That's the sad bit about all of this.

People can stand in this place and say we should just let investors and developers clear land. Who cares about that? Well, we do. Our 65,000 years of culture, history, language, people and connection to all of that are about our skies, our water, our country, our cultural practices and our totems. Before all of this technology came along we actually had our own sophisticated systems. We actually were able to follow kinship systems, the totemic systems of marriage, to make sure we didn't mix our bloodline. But since what happened 200-odd years ago we've now been developed and indoctrinated into thinking that we just let people through the floodgates. Let's open it up because that's exactly what this motion says. It says let's just open it up and unlock the land because, according to this motion, we're locking up every piece of land in this country. Well, I don't think that's true.

I know that my colleague here Senator Shoebridge made a wonderful contribution yesterday about McPhillamys goldmine in his home state of New South Wales and what that means. We can fan off a list of places and of orders that have been issued across Australia. That's because the law of the land actually existed before colonisation. I'm not here to give everyone a history lesson, but clearly we just have to keep saying the same things over and over again. It's like the definition of madness in this place. No-one understands why there is a protocol. No-one understands that the rock art that exists at Murujuga is the first handprint in the world. There is law and culture connecting that land, which was part of the desert before. There is a songline there that connects a trade route that people have walked for thousands of generations. But no; let's just open it up! Let's give it to the gas companies, according to these mob on the right side of the chamber. You want to talk about transparency and accountability? Let's have that conversation. Most of these companies don't even understand what that looks like.

Every Senate estimates—Minister McAllister will vouch for this—I'm on the opposite side of the table asking questions about cultural heritage and saying: 'Where are the new laws? When are we going to be there? Are they drafted yet? Are we further down the line?' I know Minister McAllister tells me, 'We're still consulting.' For three years, we've been in this hold pattern, but we're not going to make a referral to the environment and comms committee so that we can continue to have conspiracy theories batted around by the coalition.

Let's talk about treaty; let's go there. Treaties are about settlement. Treaties are about reconciliation. Treaties are about getting us a fair deal because we were invaded and colonised. I don't know how many different ways it's going to take for us to keep saying that. The truth-telling—which, again, the coalition asked questions about in question time yesterday—and the makarrata commission will help you all to get educated. It'll help you to understand through the truth-telling why it's so important to have a treaty. In my part of the country, there are actually two treaties already. Two settlements already exist in Noongar country and in Yamaji country. In fact, it was the settlement brokered through the Barnett government, a Liberal government in WA, that did that. It's a treaty. It is an agreement, and every single day across this country there are agreements which unlock land for development.

You might want to do your homework in relation to Indigenous land use agreements and what they actually mean, because, while you're saying that a treaty is not progressive and isn't about reconciliation, it actually is. It's about reconciling the nation and giving us a fair deal, because the land and resources in this country belong to First Nations people. Of course we want to share that. Of course we want to contribute to the GDP of the country. If Senator Price participated in the JSCATSIA economic inquiry that's already been happening, she may have heard some of the evidence that was quite clear about economic development for our nation. You cannot continue to come into this place and say, 'They just want to keep people on welfare.' That's not actually true. In the inquiry, there was substantial evidence around business development and economic opportunities for First Nations people across the country. Now we have a draft report about that, and I'm really happy, because it shows people how progressive things have been when we actually work together and get this done.

One of the biggest areas of contribution to economic development in this country is tourism. Do you know why? It's an export service to the world that we, as the world's oldest living, continuing culture, contribute to. We're able to showcase that every day. Australians should be proud of that. We should share that. We should share that our nation is so proud to be part of the oldest living culture in the world. We can showcase that through tourism. I'm proud to have the tourism portfolio, where I can encourage our tourist operators across the country to work hand-in-hand with First Nations people. They're already doing it. They're already creating economic pathways across this country.

But they don't have to destroy country. They don't have to destroy the water. They don't have to stick in a tailings dam in order to achieve that. They're doing wonderful things. In my home state of WA, that's exactly what they're doing. The Tourism Council WA even provide a cultural tourism award. This is such an amazing, amazing venture and is a joint partnership that goes into the heart of how we can reconcile this nation if we walk together—but we have to tell the truth first. And the truth is where the transparency and accountability will come from, not this slapped together motion. 'Let's have an inquiry and then make sure every investor and every corporate and developer in the country can come in and talk about how they're being stopped.' They're not being stopped. This group of people just want to remove the red tape. They've already said that. They have, as an election platform, 'Let's remove all the green tape, all the red tape and even the black tape, now; let's remove it all and just open the floodgates, unlock all the land'—so everyone can just bulldoze their way through it and destroy it.

Well, you know, in our part of the country, our communities can't even drink their water because it's already contaminated. Nitrate, uranium, gold tailings—it's all there, and this is the destruction that it causes. There is the poverty that continues—one of the highest rates of poverty in the OECD, in a high-GDP country like Australia. You only have to go to the town of Roebourne, 40 kilometres away from one of the biggest ports in our country, that exports billions of dollars of iron ore every day—and yet, just across the road from that, Murujuga can't even be protected under section 10, cultural heritage, and we heard that today in question time when Senator Thorpe made that statement.

It is an indictment on this place when we get people bringing in motions like this. They want to continue to deny the truth, to continue to push the barrow that investors are getting a raw deal. What—because they're getting pulled up about cultural heritage? They already have a booklet. They already have the regulations—the laws, even—that dictate that they're not supposed to do things without free, prior and informed consent and that they are actually supposed to consult communities. And they never do—in some of those instances, they never do. They send an email and make a few phone calls. That's what we heard in the Barossa case, because that's what they did to the Tiwi Land Council: they made four phone calls and sent two emails. And Senator Duniam knows that; that's why he's smiling right now, because they know that the EDO made sure that the full Federal Court knew that that's what Santos called 'consultation'.

Now, this is where, on the protection of our cultural heritage, the rubber hits the road, because you're saying, 'No, no, no'—