Exemptions for the New Laws

Our land? I’m still not quite sure. Western Australia’s new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws introduced this month which aim to protect culturally significant sites are literally hundreds of pages long. I’ve provided links below if you really want to look through them, but they’re not written for the average person to understand. They are legal documents. What I just showed you was just the contents page. It literally took me 36 hours to read through the entire Act. I’m joking. But it did take me a couple of hours just to skim through it.

Unsurprisingly, landowners, such as farmers, are confused and outraged over these new laws. They said they’re even willing to march at Parliament House in Canberra to voice their concerns. The new laws essentially force farmers to pay for costly surveys whenever they wish to do basic farm works such as erect a fence, or create a new track, or sink a bore. It’s hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per day depending on who needs to inspect your land. You just better hope that you don’t need the CEO to come out, because they cost $2100 a day, and you have to pay for their accommodation and meals, and travel expenses as well! Oh, it’s a moneymaking business, this one. You’d think if the true intention was to protect Aboriginal cultural sites, they’d make it as cheap as possible for farmers, or even free. But instead, some of these people are getting paid as much as, or more than a surgeon! And why should all these costs be dumped on farmers anyway? It’s almost like the government want the farmers to quit. Where would we get our food then?

Also unsurprisingly, these new laws have strengthened the ‘No’ vote for the upcoming Voice referendum, which if passed, would result in the creation of an Indigenous advisory body to parliament. If these current laws are a sign of things to come, then of course, people won’t have a bar of it.

Despite the new laws being confusing and hundreds of pages long, you better obey! Because if you don’t, you could potentially go to prison for five years, and have to pay a fine of up to one million dollars!

But just to be open and honest about the new laws, after skimming through them myself, there are a whole bunch of exemptions. Luckily, the government have created some handy fact sheets with all this information. Most notably, residential lots less than 1100 square metres are exempt, so that’s pretty much most residential land. For farmers, they’re basically allowed to maintain existing infrastructure and firebreaks without permission, as well as replacing fences, running livestock, and cropping on established farms.

The government also provide a specialised fact sheet for farmers and pastoralists. They refer to these laws as simple and fair, but from what I’ve heard from the farmers, they’re anything but!

ABORIGINAL CULTURAL HERITAGE ACT
https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/statutes.nsf/RedirectURL?OpenAgent&query=mrdoc_44477.pdf

FACT SHEETS, GUIDELINES AND EXEMPTIONS
https://www.wa.gov.au/government/document-collections/aboriginal-cultural-heritage-act-2021-fact-sheets-guidelines-and-exemptions

LOCAL ABORIGINAL CULTURAL HERITAGE SERVICE FEES
https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2023-06/20230426-lachs-fees-guidelines.pdf

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn