Article by James Morrow courtesy of the Daily Telegraph.
Farmers across Australia fear the federal government is hiding plans to introduce controversial Indigenous heritage laws that could prevent them from building a fence or disturbing their land without expensive approvals from local Aboriginal groups.
The concerns come in the wake of new rules in Western Australia that require permission for any activity that involves digging more than 50cm deep or moving more than 20kg of soil on any property larger than 1100sq m.
Individuals who damage a cultural heritage site face penalties of up to $1m, while corporations can be fined up to $10m.
“We are already inundated with this sort of legislation,” said Jamie Warden, a fifth-generation farmer who raises sheep, goats and cattle and farms crops on around 6000 acres of land outside Walgett in northern NSW.
He said a new approvals regime would be “nothing more than a money grab”.
“We wake up in the morning and decide if something needs to get done, and then we get it done,” he said.
“If we need to build a fence, we build the fence, but this sort of thing could delay us for months even on a simple thing like that.
“There wouldn’t be a farmer around here who doesn’t want to see Aboriginal people in the area get ahead, but these rules are the sort of thing made by bureaucrats and environmentalists who have never spent time on the land.”
An options paper recently released by the Albanese government proposes a series of national laws to govern the preservation of Australia’s cultural heritage.
National Farmers’ Federation vice president David Jochinke said farmers were being made to pay the price for the 2020 destruction of significant Aboriginal heritage sites by mining company Rio Tinto.
“Everybody is now hyper aware and hyper sensitive … but the reality is … the Indigenous heritage overlays that are being talked about (are) a complete overreach,” he said.
“If the WA model was to be rolled out, there would be immense uproar.”
Nationals leader David Littleproud, who attended a meeting of 600 farmers in WA last week, said the laws had created “a whole lot of fear and anxiety”.
“The federal government is sitting on this,” he said.
“They intend to impose a cultural heritage act on a national level but are waiting until after the Voice to do it, which is making people suspicious. They need to give confidence that the WA laws will not be the benchmark.”
Environment minister Tanya Plibersek said there would not be “a Commonwealth takeover of state heritage regimes.”
“An options paper is not government policy,” she said.
“We are working with First Nations groups to consider updates to the existing national laws. This process is in its early stages We will also be consulting closely with business, farmers, environment groups, and many others.
