Environment Minister Sussan Ley sends high-ranking bureaucrat to investigate Kakadu National Park conflict

A high-ranking environment department bureaucrat has been sent to the NT to investigate the roots behind the ongoing conflict at Kakadu between traditional owners and management.

A HIGH-RANKING environment department bureaucrat has been sent to the NT to investigate the roots behind the ongoing conflict between traditional owners and management at World Heritage icon Kakadu National Park.

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Kakadu’s board of management, made up of 10 Aboriginal traditional owners who represent Kakadu clan groups, earlier this month declared the relationship with Parks Australia brass untenable and demanded they resign.

The crisis, borne out of numerous allegations against management, includes history of poor communication with tourism operators, the handling of a 2019 helicopter crash in the park, and uncontrolled burns and bushfires in the World Heritage site in the past year.

Sussan Ley. Picture Gary Ramage

This prompted Environment Minister Sussan Ley to call for an urgent report into the park’s problems, which involve communication breakdowns, dangerous fires and a helicopter crash, according to leaked internal correspondence.

Ms Ley, who lives in the NSW border town of Albury, has vowed to come up to the NT to meet with stakeholders.

For now, a spokesman for the minister confirmed the department’s first assistant secretary Jody Swirepik had been sent to the NT.

“ (Ms) Swirepik is currently on the ground in the NT as the minister’s personal representative to listen to stakeholders and gain a deeper understanding of the issues we need to resolve,” he said.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s fiscal outlook, released this week, revealed more than half of the $233.4m recently committed to improving infrastructure in national parks across the country won’t be spent until 2021/22, with $56.7m to be spent in 2022/23.

The funding includes $51.4m to renew and replace essential services infrastructure, including water, electricity and sewage in the Mutitjulu community in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.