This Labor Government ..
From
The Daily Telegraph
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act applications mainly target resources projects not renewables
Indigenous heritage protection applications are “heavily distorted” towards mining projects over renewable schemes, documents show. See the map.
Exclusive: Indigenous cultural conservation claims have been targeted at 30 mining and pipeline projects but just two renewables proposals since 2012, an investigation reveals.
A full list of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act applications during that time also shows many individual resources developments have been hit with multiple objections.
And, according to the records obtained by this masthead using freedom of information (FOI) laws, some complaints are withdrawn only to be strategically reactivated at a later date.
In all there have been more than 40 applications against the 30 proposals to extract gold, coal, gas and other deposits; there has been one opposing wind turbines and one protesting a solar farm.
Shadow Environment Minister Jonathon Duniam said: “It is curious that these claims are heavily distorted towards stopping mining projects whereas renewables projects like wind farms and solar projects, that take up swathes of space, are mostly untouched.”
The resources industry argues the heritage protection system has been hijacked and no longer works properly – for Indigenous Australians or project proponents.
Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) CEO Warren Pearce said the Albanese government was “changing the way” heritage protection decisions were made.
“It’s sending a shockwave through the mining industry and also investors,” Mr Pearce said.
Certainty had “gone out the window” since Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek made a heritage protection declaration in August against Regis Resources’ $5 billion McPhillamys gold project near Orange in NSW, he said.
The project had state and federal approval but was sent back to the drawing board because Ms Plibersek found a proposed tailings dam would damage an area of cultural importance in the blue-banded bee dreaming story.
The Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council and NSW Aboriginal Land Council did not support the heritage protection application, made by a single Wiradjuri elder.
Mr Pearce said the McPhillamys decision “really surprised people because they (Regis) had done everything they were supposed to”.
Regis has said it will take up to 10 years to identify and gain approval for an alternative tailings site. The company has filed proceedings in the Federal Court seeking a ruling that Ms Plibersek’s order was “legally invalid”. It wants the decision redetermined by a different minister.
Minerals Council of Australia CEO Tania Constable said that through the McPhillamys decision, the federal government had undermined investor confidence.
“Heritage protection laws have increasingly been weaponised by activist groups, often funded by taxpayers, to delay or block mining projects,” she said.
“This is not what these laws were designed for.”
Among the applications covered in the FOI document release was one by the Environmental Defenders Office “on behalf of” six elders against a Santos gas pipeline slated to run to the west of the Tiwi Islands.
The application was withdrawn in February this year, in a move Ms Plibersek’s office said was not related to the dismissal – in a scathing judgment a month earlier – of a Federal Court case brought by the EDO on behalf of Tiwi elders over the pipeline.
While few heritage protection applications end up being granted, Mr Pearce said nearly all take more than a year to resolve.
Some resource project proponents are still waiting for decisions on applications lodged in 2021.
Funding can fall over during the wait, Mr Pearce claimed.
The government argued that a pending application did not delay or stop work.
Ms Plibersek’s spokeswoman also said the rate of new heritage protection applications “has halved under Labor”.
The documents released under FOI show that between 2012 and the middle of this year, there was one application against a renewables proposal – a failed bid to stop a Tasmanian wind project.
However, in July, Queensland’s Bigambul Native Title Aboriginal Corporation applied to protect an area near Goondiwindi from construction of the Gunsynd solar farm.
The existence of the application is being made public for the first time today.
This masthead repeatedly attempted to contact the corporation and the owners of the Gunsynd project, Singapore’s Metis Energy. Further detail of the application was requested from Ms Plibersek’s office but nothing was provided.
Comment on the trend within heritage applications was sought from the First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance.
Housing developments and government infrastructure projects are also the target of applications, but not in the same volume as resources projects.
Future Labor PM? Easy on the make-up, nothing really can be done.