Heritage Applications
The first Section 10 application brought by the so-called "proponent women" in 1994 under the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Heritage Act 1986 succeeded. On the basis of the Report of Law Professor Cheryl Saunders (1994), Minister Robert Tickner declared a 25-year ban on the building of a bridge. That ban was overturned on a technicality. The veracity of the proponent's women story was not at issue. They had told their story and been believed but the Minister had erred in the manner in which he had dealt with the material.
The Ngarrindjeri brought another application under the federal heritage act in 1995-6. This time Senator Rosemary Crowley appointed a woman judge, Jane Mathews, to be the reporter and thus the proponent women would be able to include knowledge restricted to women without violating their cultural rules. However, the Mathews Report was not able to run its full course. in 1996 the Howard Liberal government came to power and Minister Herron refused to appoint a woman to receive the report. Then, following the Federal Court judgment in Tickner v Western Australia of 28 May 1996, Mathews (1996: 43–6) made it plain that the women could not rely on material that was not being made available to the other parties most closely affected by the application. Rather than have their stories read by a male minister and made available to other parties, the women withdrew their restricted material. They chose not to violate their religious law that women’s knowledge was for women’s eyes only. Although this knowledge was missing, the Mathews Report of June 1996 nonetheless acknowledges that the area of the proposed bridge was of significance.
The dissident Ngarrindjeri women sought a declaration from the High Court that the nomination of Justice Mathews as the reporter was incompatible with her commission as a judge of the Federal Court of Australia. On 6 September 1996, the majority of the court agreed and the appointment of Justice Mathews was invalid (see Wilson v Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (1996) 189 CLR 1.).
Read more about this topic: Hindmarsh Island Bridge Controversy
Famous quotes containing the word heritage:
“Flowers ... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery of God only by them—when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.”
—Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)