By Melanie Burton
MELBOURNE (Reuters) -Western Australia will overturn its 2021 Aboriginal cultural heritage protection laws, set out after the destruction of the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelter after community uproar, the state’s premier said on Tuesday.
Farmers, pastoralists and small landowners have been up in arms over the regulation they say is costly and onerous and which was put in place after miner Rio Tinto legally destroyed rock shelters had shown human habitation for 46,000 years.
Instead, the state government will restore and amend 1972 legislation to ensure the protection of important sites, Cook said.
“These are simple and effective amendments that will prevent another Juukan Gorge from happening,” he said.
The destruction of Western Australia’s Juukan Gorge rock shelters for an iron ore mine caused deep distress to Indigenous groups and a global outcry that eventually cost Rio’s chief executive, chair and senior executives their jobs and sparked a national inquiry.
(Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Kim Coghill, Robert Birsel)
