WA heritage officers contacted Rio Tinto over Juukan caves meeting

WA’s state heritage department officers contacted Rio Tinto after meeting with traditional owners in their bid to save the Juukan caves.

WA Aboriginal Affairs and Lands Minister Ben Wyatt has said his department did not contact his office about the meeting. Picture: Colin Murty

Serious questions are emerging over Western Australia’s heritage department, triggered by an admission that the department’s senior officers contacted Rio Tinto, not their own minister, after meeting with a traditional owner group in their bid to save the now destroyed Juukan caves.

Five days before the 46,000-year-old rock shelters were destroyed, the director and team leader of heritage operations in the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage met with advisers to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Native Title Group (PKKP), via video link on May 19.

The issue of Rio’s Brockman mine was raised and the PKKP asked if the section 18 consent to destroy two Juukan caves — obtained by Rio in 2013 — could be revoked. The officers said no.

“Subsequent to the meeting, the department contacted Rio Tinto to ensure they were aware of the meeting with PKKP advisers,” according to a parliamentary response to an upper-house question filed this week on the department’s handling of the issue.

WA Aboriginal Affairs and Lands Minister Ben Wyatt has said his department did not contact his office about the meeting.

The performance of the state heritage department has also been questioned by another native title group fighting heritage threats at Fortescue Metals Group’s Queens Mine expansion in the Pilbara.

The Australian revealed on Saturday that the Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation, representing custodians of Fortescue’s mine area, feared the “next Juukan caves’’ was imminent, due to a section 18 consent obtained by Fortescue to destroy a 47,500-year-old rock shelter and an even older site with evidence of human habitation.

A section 18 consent allows Mr Wyatt to override heritage considerations and sign off on mining projects.

Wintawari Guruma’s native title manager Aaron Rayner says two significant developments have not been relayed by the heritage department.

He said he was contacted by Fortescue on Wednesday and told the company no longer needed to destroy the younger of the two rock shelters. “Fortescue has verbally confirmed that it has removed the rock shelter from its section 18 application,’’ Mr Rayner said.

“It has not provided the traditional owners with any details about how the site will be protected from the impacts of its mining operations.”

He said Fortescue also contacted the corporation last Friday to alert it to the discovery of a previously unrecorded engraving site on its Queens mining tenement.

University of Western Australia archaeologist Peter Veth, who has collaborated closely with Aboriginal groups across northern Australia, says Australia must step up to the challenge of urgently needed heritage reform.

Fortescue’s chief executive officer Elizabeth Gaines said the company's primary objective was “to work on a cultural heritage avoidance basis”. She said Fortescue had worked with its native title partners to identify and protect more than 5000 places of Aboriginal cultural heritage.