“There are people who are worried they are going to get fined for doing things that are normal farm business.” “I think farmers are definitely worried about that being the case - continually on the grip getting approved every time they want to do something,” he said. Mr Hassell said farmers were concerned about the potential for the scheme to become a shakedown racket. Under the fee guidelines, one senior Aboriginal consultant - defined as “an Aboriginal person who is recognised within their community as being senior and as having higher levels of knowledge, expertise, skills and authority in relation to ” - can charge up to $160 an hour, or $1200 per day.Ī LACHS chief executive can charge up to $280 an hour, while “other expert service providers” can charge up to $300 an hour.Īn additional 20 per cent loading may apply to very remote areas, while costs such as travel, accommodation and meals “may be included in a fee structure”. The landowner will be required to pay the LACHS to assess their application. Tier two allows for up to 20 kilograms of material, disturbing up to 200 square metres of ground or excavating to a depth of one metre, while tier three includes activities such as blasting or drilling. So-called tier one activities do not require a permit but the landowner must take steps to “avoid or minimise harm”.īut any maintenance or demolition that involves removing more than four kilograms of material, disturbing more than 10 square metres of ground or excavating to a depth of more than 50 centimetres may require a permit from the LACHS. You can’t do a survey on your place and have it marked out forever after because someone can come along later and say this is a spiritual place.”Ĭhalla Station in WA’s mid-west Murchison region. “The challenge we’ve got is you can see cultural heritage when it’s a burial site or meeting place, but you can’t see spiritual stuff - that is subject to change. “There wouldn’t be a grower in the state that doesn’t want to protect Aboriginal cultural heritage,” he said. The state government has defended the changes, saying it comes after years of “extensive consultation”.īut WA Farmers president John Hassell said landowners feared the “open-ended” system could be abused. Penalties for damaging a cultural heritage site range from $25,000 to $1 million for individuals and $250,000 to $10 million for corporations, as well as jail time. Under a complex three-tiered system, anyone on more than 1100 square metres of land will be required to apply for a permit from their LACHS before carrying out certain activities, such as digging fences, planting trees or clearing tracks. The key change under the new Act is the establishment of Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Services, or LACHS, which will be responsible for determining whether an activity will cause “harm” to cultural heritage. Locals have warned that the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021, which comes into effect on July 1, could bring economic activity to a halt while empowering a vast new layer of bureaucracy to “hold businesses to ransom” with costly red tape. Farmers in Western Australia are furious about sweeping new cultural heritage laws that will require them to pay an Aboriginal consultant up to $160 an hour to obtain permits to do anything on their land that might disturb more than 50 centimetres of soil.
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