Clarity urged over Heritage Act’s future

Whispers the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act will be scrapped by the State government just over a month after its implementation have been met with varied responses from parties across the state.

As of Monday morning, the State government has not confirmed what is widely believed – that the contentious laws designed to modernise protections of Aboriginal culture in WA will be repealed.

But the government is one of few parties involved which hasn’t commented.

WAFarmers was among the first to issue a formal statement late on Friday evening, declaring the laws scrapped with a slight dig at all sides of politics.

“The hardest thing for any government to do is admit it got it wrong,” the statement read.

“No doubt WAFarmers’ campaign over the past two years has made a huge difference.

“We were one of the few lonely voices saying this was heading in the wrong direction back when the Liberals and Nationals waved the legislation through two years ago.

“Since then, we have repeatedly warned the government that this was never going to work across the freehold farming estate and that the new model of Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Services (LACHS) was ripe for abuse.”

LACHS have been a point of contention over the course of the rollout.

The laws hinge on the bodies, which are designated by government to be local representatives for Aboriginal culture, to make paid assessments of certain work planned on blocks above 1,100 square metres and its potential impact on culture.

When the laws were introduced, no Aboriginal organisations had received LACHS designation. At time of writing just three have been announced with a number in the application process.

One applicant, Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation, was caught in a furore when its ex-CEO David Collard was accused of leveraging confusion around the act to prevent a tree planting in the City of Canning as part of a dispute over federal funding.

The incident further stoked lingering flames of discontent around the legislation which the government was accused of rushing through parliament by the Liberals and Nationals.

The government has insisted the laws were co-designed with industry and traditional owner groups, but parties on all sides have questioned the level of meaningful consultation.

That includes the National Native Title Council, with chair Kado Muir telling Business News the organisation was “confused and shocked” by rumours of the scrapping.

“We were opposed as Traditional Owners and Aboriginal people to the Act at the outset and hoped to have a genuine co-design of legislation,” he said.

Mr Muir said the farming lobby hadn’t realised the state’s pre-existing cultural heritage laws applied to it as much as the new ones did.

“Penalties for destruction of cultural heritage were a positive in the soon to be repealed legislation. Focus needs to be on protection – not on approvals, not the voice, not land tenure, it is protection of cultural heritage,” he said.

“Section 18s need to go back through a process of review so Aboriginal people affected have an ability to have a say.”

Mr Muir said NNTC had no confidence in the government’s ability to deliver on cultural heritage protection.

“There is no confidence whatsoever,” he said.

“It demonstrates this state is captured by big industry, and the farming lobby basically runs the state.

“I don’t have any confidence government will be able to deliver us a system of laws that will protect Aboriginal cultural heritage.”

On the politics side, both the Liberals and Nationals had vowed to scrap the legislation if voted into power in 2025.

Opposition leader Shane Love called on the government to clarify speculation around the scrapping, which first emerged on Friday evening.

“West Australians deserve clarity and transparency from their government – they will not get this from a WA Labor government which continually ignores reason,” he said.

WA Liberal member for Mining and Pastoral Neil Thomson was the facilitating member on a Pastoralists and Graziers Association petition in the lead up to the introduction of the laws which attracted close to 30,000 signatures. 

The party’s leader, Libby Mettam, said in a statement on social media that the implementation had been botched.

“This is a huge backflip from Roger Cook, and an even bigger win from all those Western Australians to stood up and voiced their concerns with these laws, which were unfair and unworkable,” she said.

The State government is yet to confirm any move to scrap the Aboriginal cultural heritage laws.