Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak to the Juukan inquiry report, tabled today. I want to acknowledge the traditional owners, elders and land defenders who not only took the time to come and speak to the inquiry but also opened up their lands for us to come and visit, to see for ourselves. I'd like to acknowledge their resistance, their fight and their ongoing connection to country, land, culture and song, which are all affected. As we heard through the inquiry from those people, it is not just about a piece of land; it is about a piece of us. We are no separate to our land, our water and our animals; we are the same as. We don't own them and they don't own us; we care for one another and we protect one another. We don't look at our animals and our land in the way that the colonisers do—that is, to dig up, destroy and make as much money as they possibly can in a very quick, short time. That won't sustain you for thousands of generations, like it has sustained us, but we'll see about that, hey!

I want to acknowledge all those people who were involved, and I also want to acknowledge my colleagues on the committee. There were people who knew about the destruction, who'd been personally affected by destruction on their own lands, and there were also people who got a greater understanding of what this means to people on the ground. I think people in places like this lose track of what is happening to communities and everyday people out there. It was an exercise for people to gain some empathy; instead of doing the training around it, they can create some empathy of their own by hearing real stories.

As we know, in May last year the incredibly magnificent Juukan Gorge caves on the country of the PKK were destroyed by mining giant Rio Tinto. It sent a shockwave not only through that country and those people; it sent a shockwave throughout the world. It was compared to Notre Dame. It's as simple as that; it is our place of prayer, it is our place of connection and it is our place to speak to our ancestors and our country, the same way a Christian would go to church and speak to their God. Our gods, our waterways, our mountains—that's who we pray to. That's who we connect to, because that's what's going to keep us alive at the end of the day.

During the inquiry we heard from so many First Nations people and communities about the struggles they face around the country—not just in WA, not just at Juukan. Right across this country we heard stories of destruction, stories of dodgy deals and stories of mining companies coming to communities saying: 'We'll give you a four-wheel drive. We'll give you some money for your family. Just sign here, uncle, aunty, brother.' I saw it with my own eyes. The con job that goes on in these communities is unconscionable, illegal.

So I acknowledge the struggle that our people are facing out there with these dodgy deals and the coercion that goes on to manufacture the consent—these so-called consultation processes. Consultation—may I remind everybody in this place, particularly the government and Labor—is not consent. The word 'consultation' is different to the word 'consent', okay? Be clear about that. You have no consent to destroy any part of this country. You've never been given consent because there's never been a treaty. So you can't say: 'But I consulted. I went to the land council. We had a meeting. We got buses there. We paid for people'—the same old story that you hear, the con job. You know which family is blueing which family, so you just get the one that's going to agree. Come on. We're awake up to that. It's the 21st century. There are a lot of blackfellas educated out there, and we know exactly what you're up to.

The inquiry clearly showed how broken our heritage protection laws are in this country. They not only fail to protect in most instances, but they are even designed to favour the developers and the miners. I wonder if the system's really broken at all, or is it that the system was actually designed for the developers, and the blackfellas come later, because we are on the bottom rung here in these lands? Miners and those developers who want to destroy country get given this really high precedence, and the blackfellas are on the low rung. We see that all the time. It's not going to happen anymore, not on our watch anyway.

Traditional owners should be the ones making the decisions over their country, otherwise stop doing acknowledgements to country and getting your welcomes done. The system does not provide for adequate consultation and consent and the possibility to say no to a proposed activity. The system doesn't even allow this to happen. It encourages coercion. It brings division into our communities, and in the end it is the minister, not the traditional owners, who has the last say on what happens to our land. Hello? The minister says what happens, not the traditional owners? Talk about being part of the colonial project!

The committee recommends that a national framework be developed so that we can better protect our cultural heritage, which at the end of the day is yours too, if you opened your eyes and connected with it some more. The whole process needs to be First Nations led. We need to start putting First Nations people at the centre of any decision-making, and we need to be careful of the word 'co-design', because it's not. Come on. That's just another gammon word. 'Gammon' means 'pretend' in blackfella way. Co-design is a bit gammon. It's not really talking to us; it's telling us how you want to do it. Free, prior and informed consent, which Senator Dodson raised and which came through very clearly in the inquiry, is what we have to look at, not co-design.

May I also say that neither Juukan nor any other site in this country would have been destroyed if we had a treaty in this country. You know we've been at war against the first people of these lands for more than 240 years. There has never been an agreement to even settle this country. That really questions the legitimacy of this government and this whole place, doesn't it? Until we have a treaty, we have so much unfinished business. It's time to mature as a nation and come on this journey to protect everybody.