Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, I want to start by thanking the member for Braddon, Mr Garland, for bringing on this very important motion in this very important time. We’ve heard today, but also over the years, a lot of promises, a lot of planning and not enough action.
I want to bring to the House’s attention a document that was tabled in July 2021 entitled Aboriginal Heritage Act 1975: Review Under s 23 – Government Commitment in Response to the Review Findings. On page 4, it says that there needs to be a review and amendment of the assessment procedures under two important non-statutory processes for public land – the reserve activity assessment and the expressions of interest for tourism opportunities in national parks, reserves and on crown land. This government walked away from the much-needed RAA process reform just a few days ago, yet in this document, as part of the reforms that are needed, that is cited as something that needs to happen. That is incredibly disappointing. It also mentions the expressions of interest process which is not anything other than a political policy from the Liberal Party. They have chosen to continue with this despite evidence in their own document that they tabled.
But it’s not just that that’s been highlighted here. I want to also point to the Reactive Monitoring mission report that came from the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). That is the side of the World Heritage Committee that focuses on cultural values. Our Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is the highest rated on this because of its natural and most importantly cultural values. That entire site is a living landscape that was home to the Palawa/Pakana people for thousands of years. As part of the recommendations of the Reactive Monitoring mission in 2015, recommendations 12 and 13 were for two different reports on the cultural heritage values inside the World Heritage Area.
Fast forward to 2021, there was a state of conservation report on the TWWHA done by UNESCO, the IUCN and ICOMOS.
Recommendation 7 is:
Also urges the state party – that being Australia and Tasmania – to avoid any development on the property before a detailed plan for a comprehensive cultural assessment is implemented.
Where is it? It’s still not here. The trouble with this also is that in 2022, just a year after this state of conservation report came out, the TWWHA was retired from state of conservation reporting. We have now lost that opportunity for the scrutiny from these international bodies, and it should be on this government to also be prioritising getting the TWWHA back on that state of conservation reporting cycle. Not least to ensure that there is additional federal support for the state government to be able to implement all the recommendations that it should have done from that 2014 reactive monitoring mission.
All developments that are happening inside our parks in the World Heritage area should be done so with the assessment and the approval of the Aboriginal community in Tasmania. However, even since all of these reports – even the one on the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1975 that the minister himself tabled in July 2021 – we haven’t seen any of that happen, let alone walking away from the RAA. Projects such as the huts on the South Coast Track have continued to be pushed along. They’re still getting updates from that every six months.
I also want to touch on Lake Malbena. That’s currently going through the EPBC process, and that is waiting on more information based on the cultural landscape assessment. There’s a fair bit of confusion about that assessment that has, or indeed has not been provided to the federal department. We wrote to the then minister for Aboriginal Affairs, yourself, in April 2025 outlining what it would actually mean for the Aboriginal community in terms of what had been referred to the federal department regarding their cultural heritage assessments. They weren’t involved in it. They don’t know what’s in this assessment that’s supposedly had been sent to the department, yet it’s their culture. What actually is it that the department has been provided with?
Of course, we’re not calling for that to be released to us, as the Greens. We want it to be released to the Aboriginal community whose heritage it actually belongs to. It is not up to the proponent of the Lake Malbena proposal to be having that information and holding it, and it is not up to the state or federal government not to be sharing that information with Tasmania’s Aboriginal community.
We highlighted in the April letter that not engaging with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community on these documents, we – the Greens – believe is contravening the Aboriginal Heritage Standards and Procedures, which state that as part of the Aboriginal Heritage Assessment Report, Aboriginal community consultation must be undertaken. Yet, it hasn’t.
There was an election after we sent that letter, so I received a response from the Department Secretary, Mr Jacobi, while we were in caretaker mode. That stated what had been provided to the federal department, that they were aware of, and that the last interaction with Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania was a desktop review in 2018. We know since then something else has been provided, so why wasn’t it done? Why wasn’t that shared with Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania and why on earth can’t it be shared with anyone in the Aboriginal community who actually request it?
I just want to highlight something that the Department Secretary said in his response:
Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania provided the federal department with some information of the Aboriginal Heritage Register about nearby heritage sites and values (noting that none related specifically to Halls Island, where there is no registered Aboriginal cultural heritage).
It’s probably not registered in the way that it fits on the colonial-style register that’s been sought out for this system, because the entire TWWHA is a living landscape, and there’s no way that Lake Malbena isn’t part of that culture, because it absolutely would be.
We call on the state government and the new minister to do everything possible to ensure that the reports that have been provided on this proposal – which has gone through your government’s EOI process, gone through all the approvals, through the RAA process that needs reforming – are made available. We urge you to do all that you can to work with the federal government to ensure that the cultural heritage assessments the Tasmanian Palawa people are seeking are actually released to them.
In the motion, we’re talking about the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1975, and I also want to mention that we need to see reform on the Nature Conservation Act 2002 so that there can actually be an Aboriginal‑managed National Park in this state. It is unacceptable that we don’t have one. We could have had Kooparoona Niara up a few years ago, and we couldn’t because the land tenure and part of the act needed amending. We’ve known that since then, and what’s been done? Nothing, again. Plans, promises. We haven’t even begun putting the things in place, let alone the talk of rushed legislation. The primary steps haven’t yet been taken. It’s simply not good enough.
Mr Bayley and Dr Woodruff also spoke on the destructive four-wheel drive tracks through Takayna, the government’s proactively investing $10 million in. Not to mention, those four-wheel drive tracks have to go through the Reserve Activity Assessment (RAA) process, the non-statutory process that needs reforming, as is in the Aboriginal Heritage Act review. The $10 million could have gone into making Takayna a national park, if we’d done all of these other things that have been on the agenda for years that we knew that we had to do. Simply the actions haven’t been taken. $10 million – a Takayna Aboriginal-managed national park, a Kooparoona Niara managed national park. Instead, this government chose destructive four‑wheel drives through a living cultural landscape.
I also want to speak on the Spero-Wanderer Wilderness area, the Southwest Conservation Area – an under‑protected area that, again, under reforms to these acts, if we had done the right thing, could see the proper perpetual protection it actually deserves.
Finally, all members will have today received an email on new research that’s been done in terms of how well we incorporate Aboriginal people across this country into emergency preparedness. We know that the land management knowledge that Aboriginal people right across this country have is absolutely critical in managing landscapes, in helping us mitigate climate change and emergencies. In that emergency preparedness report, there are three criteria and Tasmania scored poorly on all three. It’s simply unacceptable, but the fact is we know what we have to do. We just have to choose to start doing it.
