WA’s heritage laws debacle a drag on the Voice

The root cause of Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in 2020 was an egregious failure by the world’s second biggest mining company to properly consult the traditional Indigenous land owners, the PKKP people.

To supposedly prevent a repeat of the Juukan disaster, the West Australian Labor government under former premier Mark McGowan legislated the controversial Aboriginal Heritage Act in 2021. Those laws, which have been in operation for five weeks, are now to be repealed following an outcry over the onerous burdens imposed on non-Indigenous land owners, especially farmers.