Western Australia's new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, which came into effect on 1 July, is expected to be repealed in entirety.
In an exclusive published by The West Australian overnight it was reported Premier Roger Cook and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Tony Buti are likely to make an announcement on scrapping the Act within days.
It is understood major resources companies and Indigenous groups were briefed on the decision on Friday, 4 August.
The Act sparked a backlash from farmers, as well as criticism from some Aboriginal land councils and other Indigenous organisations that the legislation was unworkable and stakeholders were not prepared for it.
The new law - the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 - replaced the notoriously racist and one-sided Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972, under which Juukan Gorge was legally destroyed by mining giant Rio Tinto.
Legal experts and Traditional Owners were critical of the Act before its passage through Western Australia's parliament, noting that it left the final decision-making power with the minister, rather than Traditional Owners, and did not mandate a majority Indigenous membership Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Council, let alone a 100 per cent Indigenous body such as the equivalent body in the Northern Territory.
WA barrister Dr Greg McIntyre SC told National Indigenous Times at the time that the right to challenge the minister's approval of a heritage management plan in the State Administrative Tribunal being excluded from the then Bill had "an element of substantive racial discrimination".
Many other critics have maintained that a right to appeal decisions impacting Aboriginal heritage sites and materials was at the heart of Traditional Owners' calls for reforms to the old system.
More recently, Aboriginal land councils and others have raised concerns that Aboriginal land councils did not have sufficient resourcing to take on the additional responsibilities of being a Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Service (LACHS), a system introduced by the new Act, and that there had not been enough consultation over developing the Act's regulations.
In April the WA government announced a funding boost to support the new Aboriginal heritage system, but concerns remained that stakeholders were not prepared for the new legislation.
The 1972 Act gave Traditional Owners no real power to protect heritage. Aboriginal community leaders and organisations in Western Australia agreed that the need for reform was urgent, and reached out to the WA government multiple times before the Act passed parliament offering to work with farmers, miners and other stakeholders on creating new legislation that protected Aboriginal heritage and provided certainty and fairness for all parties.
The West reported that the decision to axe the Act came after days of "frantic meetings" at the highest levels of state government to address an issue.
The consensus was that the new regime was too complex and could not be adjusted sufficiently through changes to regulations.
In recent weeks thousands of people have attended information sessions hosted by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage in locations across WA in an attempt to explain the obligations and responsibilities under the new Act.
The new laws introduced a three-tiered approach for ground-disturbing activities and place a greater onus on landowners to proactively ensure their properties did not contain cultural heritage prior to embarking on development.
The Act covers any property bigger than 1100sqm, and places significant workloads on Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Services (LACHS).
