The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 is legislation passed by Queensland Parliament

Queensland Legislative Assembly

The Queensland Legislative Assembly is the unicameral chamber of the Parliament of Queensland. Elections are held approximately once every three years. Voting is by the Optional Preferential Voting form of the Alternative Vote system...

, commencing in April 2004 to effectively recognize, protect and conserve Aboriginal

Australian Aborigines

Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...

 cultural heritage

Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations...

 in the State of Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

A key feature of the Act is its creation of a new legal responsibility or statutory

Statute

A statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law, decided by courts, and regulations...

 'duty of care' requiring all people across the State to respect, value and protect the State's Aboriginal cultural heritage, at risk of prosecution and substantial fines should they fail to take all reasonable and practical measures to ensure their activities do no damage

Overview

In proclaiming this statute, Queensland Parliament:

• created a statutory duty of care
  Duty of care
  In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring that they adhere to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. The claimant...
  
   applying to all land users in Queensland, regardless of tenure
  Land tenure
  Land tenure is the name given, particularly in common law systems, to the legal regime in which land is owned by an individual, who is said to "hold" the land . The sovereign monarch, known as The Crown, held land in its own right. All private owners are either its tenants or sub-tenants...
  
  ;

• recognized any pre-existing agreements landholders may have entered into with Aboriginal owners;

• established a register of Aboriginal cultural heritage to be protected, plus database
  Database
  A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
  
   holding information and details of known Aboriginal cultural heritage places

• proscribed fundamental principles requiring areas and objects of significance to Aboriginal people to be protected and managed in accordance with relevant Aboriginal laws, customs or history

• provided for Aboriginal peoples to play an active role protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage by enabling particularly interested groups to form State approved Aboriginal cultural heritage bodies to whom cultural heritage inquires are referred

• provided for land users and Aboriginal peoples to be able to negotiate, agree, enter into, and, if desired, register with the State, cultural heritage management plans proscribing how Aboriginal cultural heritage is to be managed in particular places

• removed an earlier requirement under former Aboriginal cultural heritage legislation that a permit first be obtained before cultural heritage studies or management plans could be undertaken.

Definition of Cultural Heritage

The Act defines Aboriginal cultural heritage as being:

• any significant Aboriginal area within Queensland;

• any significant Aboriginal object from Queensland; or

• any place within Queensland containing in situ evidence of archaeological or historic significance to Aboriginal peoples prior occupation of the State

A Minister who was responsible for implementing the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (i.e. then Queensland Natural Resources and Water Minister Craig Wallace

Craig Wallace

Craig Andrew Wallace is an Australian politician. He is the member for Thuringowa in the Queensland State Parliament, to which he was elected to on 7 February 2004....

) gave example of the kinds of things he believes to be Aboriginal cultural heritage as follows:

"Cultural Heritage relates to significant Aboriginal .. objects and places, or archaeological or historic evidence of indigenous occupation of an area ...These can be rock shelter

Rock shelter

A rock shelter is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff....

s, carved or scarred trees, engravings

Petroglyph

Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

, paintings, shell middens

Midden

A midden, is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, vermin, shells, sherds, lithics , and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation...

, fish trap

Fish trap

A fish trap is a trap used for fishing. Fish traps may have the form of a fishing weir or a lobster trap. A typical trap might consist of a frame of thick steel wire in the shape of a heart, with chicken wire stretched around it. The mesh wraps around the frame and then tapers into the inside of...

s, grinding grooves

Ground stone

In archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. Ground stone tools are usually made of basalt, rhyolite, granite, or other macrocrystalline igneous stones whose coarse structure makes them ideal for...

, earth and stone arrangements

Bora (Australian)

A Bora is the name given both to an initiation ceremony of Indigenous Australians, and to the site on which the initiation is performed. At such a site, young boys are transformed into men. The initiation ceremony differs from culture to culture, but often involves circumcision and scarification,...

 and other artifacts."

Statutory 'Duty of Care'

In proclaiming the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003, Queensland Parliament intended to provide 'blanket' statutory protection to ALL of Queensland's Aboriginal cultural heritage, irrespective of whether or not that heritage is known toland users.

To achieve this end, Parliament created a formal, statutory 'duty of care' by which anyone carrying out any activity on any land (including freehold) anywhere in Queensland is required by law to take:

"..all reasonable and practicable measures to ensure their activity does not harm Aboriginal cultural heritage".

The risk both individuals and corporations take should they fail to take care, and so damage Aboriginal cultural heritage (even secret or sacred heritage embedded into the landscape unknown to the land user), is legal prosecution (coordinated by Queensland Government's cultural heritage unit), and possible fines of up to $75 000 for individuals, or $750 000 for corporations.

Coverage

After 4½ years of heritage protection under the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003, the Minister responsible for the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 1993 announced :

• the cultural heritage databases holds approximately 23 000 records of known indigenous cultural heritage places

• the State had approved 22 indigenous cultural heritage bodies to assist protect cultural heritage (to whom cultural heritage inquiries are referred)

• for each of 2007–2008 & 2008–2009 the State has made a total of $100 000 per annum in grants available to assist pay some of the costs of studies updating the cultural heritage database, plus some of the operating costs of the approved Aboriginal cultural heritage bodies.

See also

• Ban Ban Springs
  Ban Ban Springs, Queensland
  Ban Ban Springs is the formally approved and current name given by the Minister for Natural Resources on the 24 September 1999 to a small community in Queensland, Australia, located at the junction of the Burnett and Isis highways....
  
   - First place put on Queensland's Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Register
• Ngarrabullgan
  Ngarrabullgan
  Ngarrabullgan , officially named Mount Mulligan by the State, is a large tabletop mountain located 100 kilometers west of Cairns in the north of Queensland .The tabletop mountain is a monolith bounded by high cliffs that fall 200 to 400 m to the surrounding...
  
  - Second place to be put on to Queensland's Aboriginal Cultural Heritage register

External links

• Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld) Accessed 3 March 2008
• ATNS (Agreements, Treaties, Negotiated Settlements Project Database Entry on Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld) Accessed 3 March 2008
• Queensland Cultural Heritage Coordination Unit web page Accessed 3 March 2008
• Queensland Cultural Heritage Coordination Unit's (2007) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Heritage Map of Queensland.Accessed 25 February 2009
• Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water's Summary of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld)Accessed 3 March 2008