By Sharon Collins
PERTH — The perception of Australia as an uninhabited land ("Terra nullius"), which is how it was approached by European settlers, was recently overturned by the High Court in the Mabo vs Queensland case. However, the Mabo decision has had no impact at all in WA. The old Swan Brewery debacle has proved that recognition and respect for Aboriginal heritage does not exist in this state.
It has taken 204 years for our Anglo-Australian legal system to recognise that Aboriginal people occupied this continent, and held title to this country at the time of the European invasion.
But the fear and contempt for Aboriginal people and culture, which perpetuated the lie of "Terra nullius" for more than two centuries, is deeply institutionalised and far from quashed.
It is no coincidence, that the two most opposed developments in this state, in which the government has maintained a relentless, even ridiculous, course of action, have been on Aboriginal sacred sites.
The government's intransigence over the Old Swan Brewery redevelopment, like the infamous Noonkanbah dispute, is testimony to the desperate (and expensive) measures it is prepared to take to dismiss the heritage of Aboriginal people.
When determining its course of action on the brewery issue, the government choose to ignore:
- three Supreme Court rulings which found the site to be of Aboriginal significance under the Aboriginal Heritage Act and that the redevelopment of the site should not proceed;
- the WA Museum's Aboriginal Cultural Materials Committee's recommendation against redevelopment because of the sites significance;
- a majority decision of the state Legislative Assembly (28 to 26) against redevelopment of the site;
- a High Court ruling which found that the Aboriginal Heritage Act protected Aboriginal sacred sites on crown land in the metropolitan region, such as the Swan Brewery site;
- the WA National's Trust two refusals (1986 and 1990) to classify the Old Swan Brewery complex as a heritage site because of the difficulty determining its age and authenticity;
- the Aboriginal protest camp on the brewery site throughout the summer and winter of 1989;
- 44 elected Aboriginal representatives (ATSIC regional councillors) from Perth, Wheatbelt, Murchison, Goldfields and the south-west joined the Swan Valley group's call for the government to abandon the redevelopment plan);
- a Westpoll survey which found that 78% of West Australians opposed the redevelopment;
- a Trades and Labor Council work ban on the site in support of Aboriginal protest;
- the 70 people arrested in support of protest between 1989 and 1992;
- the social justice commissions of the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting Churches, which opposed the development.
In spite of all this, Premier Lawrence maintained that the redevelopment must proceed and that she was prepared to alter the Aboriginal Heritage Act to ensure that it did.
She demonstrated the government's blatant contempt for Aboriginal culture by proposing amendments which the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting Church social justice commissions claim "desecrate Aboriginal heritage and are designed to give greater protection to mining companies and developers than to Aboriginal people".
As it turned out, the government devised a backdoor strategy to force the beginning of the development without having to wait for these amendments to be passed.
The heritage minister, Fremantle MLA Jim McGinty, put out a special edition of the government Gazette under Section 38 of the Heritage Act, which excised the Swan Brewery precinct from the precinct of any law, town council, metropolitan regional planning scheme and the Aboriginal Heritage Act.
So whatever is left of the Aboriginal Heritage Act after the proposed amendments are passed, can be totally undermined by the (Building Preservation) Heritage Act. Thus the legislation which was intended to uphold our state's recognition and respect for
Aboriginal spirituality and heritage has been virtually annulled.
It is profoundly ironic that this devastating act of betrayal of Aboriginal people and their culture has been at the hands of McGinty, who, in his maiden speech to parliament, said: "Rather than maintaining a preoccupation with the important and powerful people of our society ... I will endeavour during my term in this parliament to ... enhance the welfare of the Aboriginal people of this country. In this context the Old Swan Brewery dispute needs to be reconsidered. In my view it is a social justice issue rather than a simple question of whether one ought to preserve the old building."
Alas, the "old building" (of dubious heritage value) has won the day. As has Multiplex, the developer, which will convert the site to seven restaurants, an art gallery, a museum and an adjacent three-storey car park.
Judges Deane and Gauldron wrote in their ruling on the Mabo case that the pursuit of economic development "spread across the continent to dispossess, degrade and devastate the Aboriginal peoples and leave a national legacy of unutterable shame".
The actions of the WA government show that this legacy is growing rather than diminishing with time.