Grasping Box-Tickers Are Scamming Us All

They’re just taking the piss now, aren’t they?

It’s a story Good Oil readers will be only too familiar with: grasping ‘indigenous’ groups springing hitherto-unknown ‘sacred sites’ wherever there happens to be a chance of making a fast buck. But our mob are making Māori who claim to have found a magical taniwha under a bridge or by a development (which, coincidentally, can be placated by big ol’ piles of koha), look like amateurs.

Even a grasping mob trying to claim ‘guardianship’ over the entire New Zealand foreshore would blink at the latest shenanigans of our box-ticking ‘Aboriginal’ activists. A fringe bunch of play-actors, in borrowed possum-skin cloaks and ochre, first came to public notice when they were allowed to scupper a billion-dollar gold mine on the basis of a made-up bit of oogabooga nonsense about bees.

Now they’re upping the ante, trying to claim the iconic Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit: home of the Bathurst 1000. On what basis? It’s a ‘sacred site’ – all because someone scattered ‘Uncle Billy Possum’s’ ashes there. Not long ago in the ‘Dreamtime’ – three years ago.

No, I’m not making that up.

The fringe Indigenous group that brought down the billion-dollar Blayney mine project has laid the groundwork for an unprecedented legal bid to declare the peak of Mount Panorama, overlooking Australia’s iconic motor racing circuit, a sacred site, after a former member’s ashes were scattered there.

The Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation, which launched a successful last-minute effort to scupper the goldmine last year, has sought to register the peak as a state heritage site, after it held a smoking ceremony and scattered the ashes of former member Uncle Brian Grant there in late 2022 […]

In an extraordinary ongoing dispute, the Wiradyuri group wants the site deemed “significant”, while Grant’s family have made inquiries about a federal order that would place restrictions over public access to one of the mountain’s best viewpoints and prevent any new development on it.

The chutzpah of these troughers is beyond belief. If this gets passed, it’ll mean that any box-ticking white ‘Aborigine’ can have a piss-up on some prime real estate and call it a ‘sacred site’.

This has only got so far because previous governments – including so-called ‘conservatives’ – allowed it.

When former Liberal environment minister Sussan Ley blocked a Bathurst go-kart track for years, she was hoodwinked by the same fringe Indigenous group that duped her Labor successor Tanya Plibersek into shutting down the $1bn Blayney mine project, say indigenous leaders.

It’s telling that this blatant grifting is pissing off even genuine Aboriginal organisations.

The revelations come as local Aboriginal land councils prepare for a crisis meeting in Orange on October 30 to call for a parliamentary inquiry into why Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek issued a “section 10” declaration to halt Regis’ McPhillamys mine in August following demands from the ­Wiradyuri group.

Even they are admitting that the ‘sacred site’ claims are just so much bullshit.

In the IPC submission the ­Orange land council also raises concerns of “people and organisations lacking experience, expertise and authority” holding themselves as “authorities on ­Aboriginal cultural heritage”.

“We question the motives of people and organisations who participate in promoting unsubstantiated claims and seek to ­hijack Aboriginal cultural heritage in order to push other agendas,” the council’s submission reads. The land council has vehemently denied money impacted its decision to change its stance on the mine.

The land council leaders criticised the appropriation of the Three Brothers Dreaming to block both the Mount Panorama track and the Blayney mine, pointing out that members of the rebel Wiradyuri Corporation were not the designated keepers of that dreaming.

The go-kart track area had “no Aboriginal heritage whatsoever” and the WTOCWAC at that point had just four members, according to Bathurst Local Aboriginal Land Council chief executive Toni-Lee Scott.

In her first public remarks on the controversy, Ms Scott said Ms Ley had taken “our cultural authority and given it to these wannabe fellas”.

It’s long past time to crack down on these obvious scammers.

The coalition has promised to overhaul federal heritage laws should it return to power, as new analysis shows the indigenous group that sank the Blayney gold mine has become one of the most successful and litigious applicants under the current system.

On Tuesday, opposition environment spokesman Jonno Duniam pledged to complete long delayed reforms to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act to ensure a “small group” of indigenous ­Australians could not hold public sites to “ransom” under land-rights bids.

Australians, who voted in droves to affirm that we are one people, one nation, can’t wait for some sanity to return.