You are all aware that the new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 (WA) is still in force, at least I hope you are, as nothing has gone through Parliament yet to reverse it.
Which means all the fines and all the requirements to have the local elders out to kick the dirt before you crank up the grader or the posthole digger have not gone away.
Not that you would know that if you tapped into the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage web site, as they have pulled down the info on how to respond to the new Act but offer no advice of how to respond to the political limbo we are currently in.
The problem is the new Act is still live and could remain so well into next year if the State government runs into problems with its amendments with an Opposition that has woken up to the politics of the issue.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the Premier has no such powers to pardon lawbreakers as the law is the law, until it is changed.
True, there is a Bill sitting in parliament to wind up the new Act and go back to the old Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972, but the government is yet to bring on either the Repeal Bill or the disallowance motion for the regulations for his Majesty’s loyal Opposition to (finally) do their work and hold the government to account.
Why the delay? Word is it’s the State Solicitors Office that are struggling to take us back to 1972 as the world has moved on.
Someone explained it to me like this. It’s like putting everyone into a time machine and taking them back to 1972 and then expecting them to get excited about rocking away to Rocket Man by Elton John or Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie, both big hits of that year.
For time travellers who have gone through the evolution of music since then, think, punk, disco, electro, stadium, hip hop, world, grunge, rap etc. We are aware the world of music is so much bigger than it was back then.
It’s hard to go back to the past when you have been living in the future. Same with the law.
It’s impossible for the government to claim that we can simply go back to the old Act because so much has changed as the level of awareness has grown over time.
Today, heritage has expanded across large segments of the state, with 40,000 sites, growing by thousands each year and we have government maps at the click of our phones that can highlight any claimed heritage sites on our farms.
Quite how the government will get around the problem of every backyard coming under heritage claims is yet to be explained, recall the 1100m2 exemption in the new Act.
I suspect they wish they had stuck with the new Act and given further exemptions for farmers who have cleared and disturbed land plus sorted some of the miners’ issues.
No doubt the government won’t be in a big hurry for a bruising debate during the final days of the Voice debate, but the clock is ticking, time constraints mean they are running out of sitting weeks to get the old Bill back up and running this year.
When you combine the complexities of going back to an old Act, the pressures from the Indigenous lobby, the silence of the miners, the demands of the ideological left on the state Labor backbench, the off the record discussions with the property developers, the historic views of Premier Cook and Minister Buti not to mention the bureaucrats who have invested so much into the old Act, then farmers have every right to be suspicious that maybe we are not heading back to a world of business of usual as promised by the Premier.
Remember, there is no promise made by the government that heritage creep will be kept under control. In fact, they have promised to spend millions to fund the search for more of it, and with the amount of new information now available, it’s hard to see how we can use the old get out of jail defence of pleading ignorance which exists under the old Act.
Now, I’m only speculating, and the Premier might still come through with his promise of nothing to fear, which if he does, he should be roundly lauded by conservative voters who should recognise that the hardest thing to do is hit reverse and roll over your own mob.
But just be aware it won’t be easy for the government to take us back to 1972 and business as usual for farmers. The heritage genie is well and truly out of the bag and it’s no longer rocking to songs from an era we can all sing along to.
If the old Act is applied to the letter of the law without large carve outs for quarter acre blocks and freehold farmland, then I can’t see how we can avoid going back to square one of being captured by needing to undertake some form of due diligence and heritage surveys.
What’s the takeaway? Don’t go disturbing any land where heritage may exist as nothing has changed from July 1, but change is coming. Let’s hope we like the new song when it comes out.
Related stories: Captain Cook fighting for political inheritance; Cook Government to scrap cultural heritage laws; Minister for Heritage, we have a way out; The true cost of heritage; Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act update: WAFarmers; Aboriginal Cultural Heritage – Western Australian farmers react to the new law; Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 (WA) – Have you got any culture?
