00:00 60,000 years of that oral history.
00:17 It's this connection that sustains us.
00:22 Hazard Flowers is a traditional custodian of Goring Country, out here in WA's Great
00:29 Southern.
00:30 Clouds like this, it tells us that there's been a death in our region.
00:38 Someone from our country has passed on.
00:42 He believes the voice would help foster his people's connection to the land.
00:48 A necessary step, he says, to improving the lives of First Nations Australians.
00:54 Yes, it is very important to our cause, our vision and our future.
01:04 We are still voiceless when it comes to implementation and development from government in regards
01:14 to our environment and we've got no say.
01:23 To him, the chaos that derailed WA's cultural heritage reform shows why governments would
01:28 benefit from greater Indigenous advice to those in power.
01:34 But about 400 kilometres away in WA's Wheatbelt, landowner Tony Maddox says the debacle is
01:39 exactly why he doesn't support the voice.
01:43 They're two different items, but they are intertwined.
01:48 He's facing charges for breaching WA's old 1972 cultural heritage laws for building this
01:55 concrete pass.
01:56 Without the crossing in place, we have no way of getting to our homestead.
02:06 He claims he didn't know he was building over a creek with cultural significance.
02:12 As his charges rose to prominence, so too did concerns from landowners about the impact
02:17 of sweeping new changes designed to prevent another Djukangorj disaster.
02:23 In 2021, Rio Tinto legally detonated 46,000-year-old culturally significant caves.
02:31 Tensions this year reached fever pitch as almost 30,000 people signed a petition to
02:38 delay the changes and farmers marched on WA's parliament.
02:43 Farmers are paralysed with fear on freehold land.
02:46 We should be able to develop our farms.
02:53 Facing a chorus of criticism, the government relented.
02:57 We got the balance wrong and what we did hasn't worked.
03:03 And for that, I'm sorry.
03:05 An unprecedented law reversal is now underway as the WA government goes back to the drawing
03:11 board.
03:14 But the controversy has become a lightning rod for opposition to the voice, arguing it'll
03:20 almost be impossible to reverse once it's in the constitution.
03:24 And to those of you that have been on voting no, I think there's a pretty strong message
03:28 to the government here on this.
03:33 My concern is that if a yes vote were to be successful, these are the sorts of measures
03:39 that would be applied nationally.
03:42 It's a sentiment now ingrained in the minds of voters like Tony Maddox.
03:48 The Heritage Act is a certainly different item to the voice.
03:53 But the results of the Heritage Act are and can be exactly the same if we're not careful
04:00 with the voice.
04:02 Voting has shown support for the voice falling nationally, but it's hard to conclusively
04:06 say how much of the fall can be attributed to WA's heritage law controversy.
04:11 Baucoo woman and policy researcher Aurora Milroy says it's certainly affected how some
04:16 Aboriginal people see the voice.
04:19 There's a real danger in trying to conflate the two of these things.
04:22 So structurally and in a kind of legal sense, they're very different.
04:26 Though I think for Indigenous people in this community, what it's done is set us back a
04:31 little bit with trust of government.
04:33 The proposed voice would advise on a broad range of issues federally, but would have
04:37 no legal power to enforce any of its recommendations.
04:41 Cultural heritage laws, on the other hand, were specifically intended to protect culturally
04:46 significant places in WA, like here at Boolamil or Bluff Knoll.
04:53 Some opponents to the voice argue that means it may be tokenistic.
04:58 Tarezard Flowers asks why anyone should stand in the way of what he believes is progress,
05:05 no matter how small.
05:07 If there's a no, well then where do we go from there?
05:11 What happens to reconciliation and closing the gap?
05:16 A question for voters to contemplate with just a few weeks left to decide.
05:21 [Music]
05:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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