TRANSCRIPT ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE Inquiry into the establishment and effectiveness of registered Aboriginal parties Melbourne — 27 February 2012 Members Mr T. Bull Mr J. Pandazopoulos Ms J. Duncan Ms L. Wreford Mr D. Koch Chair: Mr D. Koch Deputy Chair: Mr J. Pandazopoulos Staff Executive Officer: Dr G. Gardiner Research Officer: Dr K. Butler Witnesses Ms J. Sizer, chairperson, Ms T. Currie, chief executive officer, Mr R. Abrahams, cultural heritage adviser, and Mr C. Edwards, manager, community services, Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative. 27 February 2012 Environment and Natural Resources Committee 62 The CHAIR — Ladies and gentlemen, we will take the opportunity to reconvene our hearing, and in doing so I welcome the Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative, being represented by Ms Tracey Currie, the chief executive officer, Ms Jodie Sizer, the chairperson, Mr Reg Abrahams, the cultural heritage adviser, and Mr Craig Edwards, the manager of community services. Welcome to you all. We thank you very much for making yourselves available to join us today. It has been a long day, but I can assure you your submission and presentation is as important as the first one. Thank you again for joining us. In saying that, I also advise that all evidence taken at this hearing is protected by parliamentary privilege as provided by the Constitution Act 1975 and further subject to the provisions of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003. Any comments you make outside this hearing may not be afforded such privilege. All evidence given today is being recorded. All witnesses will be provided with a proof version of the transcript in the next couple of weeks for their information. Tracey, I welcome you as CEO to begin with the presentation. Ms CURRIE — I will hand over to the chairperson, and she will do the lead-in. Ms SIZER — Thank you, Tracey. Thank you for the opportunity to come and speak. I know this is part of an ongoing process in which you have already received our written submission, but we welcome the opportunity to come and have a discussion to try to put forward our views, as they are unique to our community in Geelong and Wathaurong country. I formally commence by acknowledging the traditional owners, paying my respects to their elders, past and present, and thanking them for allowing us to meet on their lands today. I come in my capacity today as chairperson of Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative. I have sat in this position for 14 or 15 months. I also come with the perspective of a Gunditjmara woman. My family ties originate in south-western Victoria, but I was raised in Wathaurong country in Ballarat. With all of those different perspectives and my work in various community roles I come forth to bring information specific to Wathaurong Aboriginal Cooperative, but with that bit of context as well. I am sure you are aware, having read the various submissions, the information that formed the original act and the information that has come to inform this review, that Victoria is quite unique in the characteristics that make up our contemporary Aboriginal communities. That is largely owing to our historical settlement and the colonisation that has taken place. Geelong itself has its own story, which you will hear about over the next 30 minutes or so, and in particular I would like to draw your attention to our community, which has a complex and sophisticated community structure. There are many community groups that hold knowledge and that work with us to advance our community’s development. We are here to put forward the suggestion that when you are considering a new model under cultural heritage you take into account the sophisticated structure we have within our communities and that there may be more than one possible source of knowledge in any one area. By looking at our current structure you can see we have only one nominated representative Aboriginal party. We are here to bring forward the case that there may be a model that considers that there may be more than one structure. The cooperative itself has held the role of custodian of the land. In our 30 years of establishment we have spent a number of decades as custodians of that land. In that capacity we bring forward a lot of knowledge that we have as inhabitants of this area. This knowledge will assist in the progress of our people, which is our primary objective and aim. We are asking that we broaden the scope to bring together the many areas of knowledge that we have, particularly the knowledge we have within the Aboriginal cooperative in Geelong. We have knowledge not only about cultural heritage but also about economic and community development — knowledge that we think can enhance the current processes across the state. We have a relatively low population across a huge span of geography in Victoria, and we feel it takes different types of knowledge to bring together the best outcomes for our people. When the conversation comes to our country we acknowledge and respect the place of traditional owners. There may well be more parties that can come to the table that have reason to join the discussion to negotiate the best outcome for Aboriginal people. I also want to bring to your attention — and we will come back to this later — that another unique characteristic of Victorian communities is that we have the Victorian Charter of Human Rights. It is specifically within that charter that we pay attention to Aboriginal people and our right to practise our culture. I think that highlights a relevant point: here in Victoria only 15 per cent of our population lives on traditional land. With that in mind, and with all of the historical context that has been established by previous governments, we need to have legislation that gives us direction on how we can work together as communities despite that only 15 per cent of 27 February 2012 Environment and Natural Resources Committee 63 our population lives on traditional land. We need to allow for negotiation and a working-together approach to get the best outcome for our people. My fellow speakers will set out some specific examples, and hopefully that will set the context for us. The CHAIR — It is appreciated. I just picked up a minute ago that you said you hoped to express your views over the next half hour or so. Regrettably we only have another 25 minutes. We have to run a very tight schedule to complete the day. I just wanted to bring that to your attention. If the presentation is completed within that period of time and we have a few minutes at the end for some questions, that would also assist the cause. Ms SIZER — I will hand over to Reg. Mr ABRAHAMS — I am also a Gunditjmara person. My elders and family come from Heywood in the Portland area. I have been living in Geelong for over 27 years. While I have lived in that area I have practised cultural heritage. I have worked with archaeologists and shown the youth in the community about stone artefacts, culture and so forth. It has been a great venue for us to get some people off alcohol and drugs into the workforce, and we use culture as a basic learning tool in that we hope some of the people going down the wrong track take a look back at their culture, and we try to invest in their progress as being an Aboriginal person and working in that field. I think at the moment that has been taken off us. We have had 27 years of experience. We have made a formal protocol with the City of Greater Geelong, and that was probably about 12 years ago. That was the first protocol within Victoria, probably the second in Australia, and it had guidelines to the management of cultural heritage within the city of Greater Geelong region. They are the kinds of things. We always acted as custodians because of the history of Geelong. In the old newspapers it sort of said everyone had died off, and it was not until recently, probably less than 20 years ago, that people actually found a reconnection with that family that lived in the Geelong area, said to be Wathaurong. I had some talks the other day in which I said if some of these people had come forward and been traditional owners 50 years ago, 30 years ago, we would not be in the predicament that we are in today. It is all these new social things that actually are why we are here, I suppose. It has sort of been forced upon us as well. With that, we probably have about 350 community members in the Geelong region. We are familiar with and we have an understanding of all the local and community issues — the landscapes, the sites and all of these. I used to run probably 12 guys on a part-time basis, working with archaeologists. We have the knowledge of the landscape. We have the knowledge of where all of these sites are, and now we start seeing buildings going up and other developments and we have not got a say. It is just like we know that there was an Aboriginal site 3000 years old just beside them, and now we do not even get contacted or have no relative say in any matter at all. I suppose with the new legislation also there is a place where archaeologists do due diligence reports. These due diligence reports are about people’s knowledge.