We need less red, green and black tape to promote development, job growth and wealth creation

Cultural heritage legislation, or black tape, is adding significant cost and time delays to projects. We should be concerned about activists misusing the laws to run their own hidden agendas.

Aboriginal cultural heritage laws are been hijacked by activists seeking to block developments from housing subdivisions to large-scale mining projects.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is under fire for vetoing a $1bn goldmine in the NSW Central West on Indigenous heritage grounds, a decision that will cost the state about $200m in lost taxes and royalties and cost the local community 800 well-paid jobs.

So harebrained is this call that NSW Premier Chris Minns hasn’t allowed his Labor allegiance to stop him from demanding answers from Plibersek, answers she has thus far failed to deliver.

Minns called the decision absolutely wrong and disappointing and quoted from a statement from the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council, which has “cultural authority” over the area, and does not object to the gold mine.

Tanya Plibersek is under fire for vetoing a $1bn goldmine in the NSW Central West on Indigenous heritage grounds. Picture: Gaye Gerard

NSW Premier Chris Minns called Ms Plibersek’s decision wrong and disappointing. Picture: Nikki Short

Indigenous leader and former NSW Aboriginal Land Council chair Roy Ah-See told me Plibersek’s decision was “the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cultural and heritage matters” and that such laws were being misused by activists with their own “hidden agendas”.

“The decision beggars belief, I’m dumbfounded as a Wiradjuri traditional owner and coming from country I’m annoyed, I’m lost for words … it’s crazy,” he said on Sunday morning.

“We’ve got these groups that are pinning the colours of red, black and yellow to their mast and then coming out and saying that as a way to run their own hidden agenda.”

Cultural heritage legislation, or black tape, is adding significant cost and time delays to projects around the country.

In Victoria, residential property developers are waiting upwards of 18 months for approvals from local Indigenous groups, making some projects commercially unviable and further increasing the cost of housing.

We need less red, green and black tape to promote development, job growth and wealth creation. We also need further investment, particularly in the regions, to close the gap.

Ah-See blames a lack of economic opportunity for the plight of many in the Indigenous community.

“The biggest killer of Aboriginal people is not drugs and alcohol, it’s welfare dependency and absolute poverty,” he told me. “In order to lift our people out of that we need economic empowerment.”