INDIGENOUS GROUP HAD NO SAY IN TASMANIAN WILDERNESS AREA PLAN (The Guardian) Tasmania’s peak Indigenous community body says it was not consulted in a draft plan to drastically change the management of Tasmania’s wilderness world heritage area, and was denied permission even to see a draft. The draft management plan, released on Thursday after a leaked report was obtained by the Australian, cites concerns raised by Indigenous Australians as one of the key reasons to remove the word “wilderness” from descriptions of the area, and replace it with the word “remote”. Advertisement The Tasmanian Greens said the plan, which allows for logging of “specialty timbers” and rezones part of the wilderness world heritage area to allow for private development, was a clear breach of international guidelines. Greens MP Nick McKim told Guardian Australia the party would refer the draft plan to Unesco’s world heritage management committee. The report makes extensive reference to the need to promote and enhance Indigenous heritage, proposes a “joint management arrangement” and a dual naming policy, and establishes a cultural business unit intended to assess and catalogue Indigenous heritage sites. Advertisement It also repeatedly states that the report was developed “in consultation with Aboriginal people”, and includes a foreword from a Tasmanian elder, Aunty Patsy Cameron. But the Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation (TAC) says it was not consulted when the draft report was being drawn up. The executive officer of the TAC, Heather Sculthorpe, walked out of her only meeting with the environment minister, Matthew Groom, in December. “He said that he wanted to discuss it but there was no discussion, there was telling,” Sculthorpe said. “Some Aboriginal individuals have been involved, but the community certainly hasn’t been involved … It’s a case of ‘find someone who’ll say what you want to hear’.” The TAC is involved in a legal battle with the Tasmanian government over a decision to reopen coastal 4WD tracks in the Tarkine. The tracks were closed in July 2012 after a report found 4WD use was causing extensive damage to Aboriginal sites in a national heritage-listed Western Tasmania Aboriginal Cultural Landscape. “We don’t have a lot of faith in [the government’s] respect for Aboriginal heritage,” Sculthorpe said. Sculthorpe told Guardian Australia the TAC had not had time to read and discuss the draft management plan as a community, partly, she said, because its requests to see an early copy were denied. “How can you have something talking about working with people that you won’t even show your draft plan to?” she said. “They’re talking about adopting a Palawa name – our organisation is the language body and no one has even asked us if we want that.” The 1.58m-hectare Tasmanian wilderness world heritage area takes up a quarter of the state and contains forests, lakes, mountains and rivers that are largely free from development. It also has some of the oldest areas of continued human occupation in the world, with sites dating back 35,000 years. The draft management plan cites cultural sensitivities as a key reason to stop describing the area as a “wilderness”, saying that term is “problematic to Aboriginal people” because it “wrongly implies” it is a landscape empty of human culture. It says cultural values have been sacrificed in the past in the name of preserving natural values, and proposes the area be nominated as a cultural landscape to the Unesco world heritage committee. Sculthorpe said while the word “wilderness” has been used in the past to deny Aboriginal occupation, it was a “semantic debate for academics” and should not be used to justify allowing more activity in sensitive areas. “We agree that there are some places where there should be no helicopter, no boats and no 4WD tracks. So if that’s agreeing with the use of the word ‘wilderness’, then so be it,” she said. The Hodgman government has already taken expressions of interest from tourism developers interested in building in the world heritage area. According to the draft plan, development will be allowed if it meets ministerial approval. McKim said the government had so far refused to divulge any details about what type of developments had been proposed, or where they might be. “Matthew Groom is coming to Tasmanians and Australians and saying, ‘I am a Liberal minister, trust me to decide what a sustainable development is,’ ” he said. “Matthew Groom thought the Gunns Tamar Valley pulp mill was a sustainable development.” McKim said the Hodgman government was rapidly gaining a worse environmental reputation than the former Labor premier Paul Lennon, who granted the failed pulp mill project development approval. McKim said the draft management plan appeared to be an attempt to water down the values of the world heritage area after Unesco’s world heritage committee took less than 10 minutes in June 2014 to dismiss an Australian government application to de-list 74,000 hectares of forest. That is the area open for specialty timber logging under the draft management plan. It was part of the 170,000-hectare extension to the world heritage area submitted as part of the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement in 2013, which was ripped up when the Liberal party came to power in March and replaced with the Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Act 2014. “They certainly seem to be walking away from wilderness as a concept, which is bizarre given the huge number of visitors who come to Tasmania each year and say that they want to experience the wilderness,” McKim said. Tasmanian Labor’s environment spokesman, Craig Farrell, said he supported “greater access and sensible, appropriate tourism projects” in the world heritage area, and called on the Greens “and their supporters” not to “sensationalise” the proposal. The plan will be open for public consultation from Monday.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 09:39:43 +0000
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