Defending authentic heritage

A proposal by seven federal Coalition MPs for all cultural heritage claims to be examined independently and forensically for factual accuracy should be adopted for the sake of Indigenous people, their economic opportunities, and cutting unnecessary green and red tape across the nation.

The Arapiles Declaration, made in the wake of the row over rock-climbing bans at Mt Arapiles in Victoria, was led by Nationals MP Anne Webster, the federal member for Mallee, and signed by her leader David Littleproud, opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, senators Bridget McKenzie and Jonno Duniam, and MPs Dan Tehan and Michael McCormack.

The declaration comes after cultural heritage bans at Mt Arapiles cost Parks Victoria chief executive Matthew Jackson his job and forced an independent review into the organisation’s failures and future. For five years, John Ferguson reports, Parks Victoria oversaw a secretive process that destroyed Victoria’s reputation as an international rock-climbing destination and pitted Indigenous people against climbers.

The initiative is also timely after several other problems have erupted over the issue of cultural heritage. The taxpayer-funded Environmental Defenders Office has been ordered to pay gas company Santos more than $9m over the EDO’s failed attempt to stop the offshore Barossa gas project 260km north of Darwin. Green activists fabricating dreaming stories to suit their own agendas was deeply insulting to Aboriginal people, as Senator Nampijinpa Price said.

And mining company Regis Resources will take federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to the Federal Court over her decision to heritage-list part of the $1bn Blayney goldmine site near Orange in NSW on the advice of a rebel Indigenous group. The Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council did not object to the project. But one of the minister’s reasons for blocking the tailings dam site was the blue-banded bee dreaming, raised last December in a ­submission by a member of the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal ­Corporation.

Signatories to the Arapiles Declaration also have cited closures at Mt Warning in northern NSW and at Uluru and restrictions to Lake Eyre in South Australia as examples of where the system requires tightening or analysis. Issues of cultural heritage are too important to be compromised by sloppy, ideologically driven processes and green agendas.

That’s why Anthony Albanese was right to overrule a deal between Ms Plibersek and the Greens to establish an environmental watchdog that would have included a climate trigger. Further opportunities for activists to abuse processes to stymie developments for no good reason are the last thing communities need.