'Completely unacceptable': Greens senator criticizes Coalition's proposal for penalties regarding heritage applications

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Coalition plans to overhaul cultural heritage legislation have drawn sharp criticism from the Greens, with the minor party emphasising the need to protect Indigenous cultural sites.

On Tuesday Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price announced plans to change heritage laws if the Coalition won the election, claiming Labor had destroyed opportunities for major projects.

“Our proposed changes would be … to introduce a national interest test in terms of cultural heritage,” she told Sky.

“We want to ensure that … we will deal with frivolous and vexatious claims in a way where we’re applying penalties for those.”

Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says cultural heritage laws need to be overhauled. Source: AAP / MICK TSIKAS/AAPIMAGE

Senator Price also argued current laws were closing off the natural environment, saying conversations she’d had with rock climbers at Mt Arapiles in northwestern Victoria were “very heartbreaking”.

“Speaking to the rock climbers here also is that there is such a deep want to understand our cultural heritage … which I think speaks to what it means to be proud to be Australian,” she said.

When asked what safeguards would be put in place to avoid a repeat of an incident like Rio Tinto’s destruction of Juukan Gorge, Senator Price said a sub-committee of federal Cabinet Ministers would scrutinise project proposals.

However, the policy announcement drew sharp criticism from Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, the party’s First Nations and Heritage spokeswoman.

“Creating a penalty to say they are vexatious is just absolutely disgusting,” she told NITV News.

“I think the Coalition need to go back to the drawing board as they are in a free fall in their current political campaign.”

Greens argue more needs to be done to protect heritage

Part of the Green’s election commitments include a pledge to establish a Land and Sea Country Commissioner within the environment portfolio, and to introduce legislation protecting Indigenous cultural heritage.

Senator Cox argued heritage laws in Australia are far too weak and more needed to be strengthened to ensure an incident similar to Juukan Gorge never happened again.

“It is up to us as part of the parliament and as politicians in this country, the political leaders, to ensure that here are adequate protections of all of those cultural heritage elements and we can’t do that if we keep denying that it even exists,” she said.

The Greens Senator emphasised the importance of respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, and understanding the significance of heritage.

“Cultural heritage comes from Dreaming stories, it comes from artwork, it comes from people’s intangible cultural heritage narratives and they’re really important,” Senator Cox said.

“They haven’t been recorded as part of history, and again we go back to why truth telling is so important.”

Truth telling and Treaty on Greens agenda for next parliament

Since the defeat of the Indigenous Voice referendum, action on the remaining two elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart – truth and treaty – have stalled.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has firmly ruled out any further action on a Voice to parliament, and the Labor Party has avoided discussing issues of truth telling and treaty making.

Meanwhile the Coalition, which opposed the Voice referendum, remains strongly opposed to truth telling and treaty making.

Senator Cox told NITV the Greens was still committed to pushing for a Truth and Justice Commission, with their election platform pledging $250 million for the project.

“We will bring on that bill again in the 48^th Parliament later on this year for a vote on the Senate floor,” she said.

“It is this particular time we absolutely need truth telling and then we move on to agreement making to treaties in this country so we can have peace, we can have healing, and most of all we can have First Nations justice.”