New law claim on Traveston Dam

Arthur Gorrie | 5th November 2009

Submitted

MARY Valley indigenous leader Eve Fesl yesterday dropped a bomb on the Traveston Crossing dam project, demanding a stop work order in response to claimed government breaches of its own cultural heritage laws.

Dr Fesl yesterday claimed the government had ignored the rights of her people under the legal concept of contemporaneous history.

She said the government and its dam construction company, Queensland Water Infrastructure Pty Ltd, had ignored this concept, which she says is essentially the provable cultural claims of people who really are from the Mary Valley.

She says some Native Title claimants “would not even know where the Mary Valley is,” if they had not been told by QWI.

She says her family can prove their cultural claims with photographs of family gatherings on the Mary River.

She says the government has chosen to deal only with claims of “traditional” links by people who may never have had family members living in the area.

She has also accused some rival Native Title claimants of breaking that law by approaching Mary Valley landowners and seeking to search the properties for relics.

“Native Title does not apply to freehold property. Native Title is extinguished by freehold and landowners affected by that should join our claim,” she says.

Ms Fesl says QWI has breached its own Act in Sections Nine and Ten, which she says establishes a need for the government to deal with people who have contemporaneous history in the area.

“That’s our place. My mother was born on the Mary River and so were my aunties and uncles.

“We can produce photographs of family meetings on the river.

“That’s contemporaneous history,” she said.

“The people with that history are the aboriginal party under that law.

“Some of the other groups claiming Native Title didn’t even know where the Mary River was.

“We will not agree with the flooding of the area where we have burial sites. We have history there and we are not giving it away.

“We took QWI to Court – and its shareholders are the Premier and the Treasurer – and it shows how nasty they are that they tried to send us to jail for opposing them

“They had a QC and barrister and lawyers and they beat us on that argument, but normally the parties pay their own costs.

“They wanted $100,000 costs and we would have gone to jail because we wouldn’t have been able to pay.

“Fortunately the judge rejected their claim,” she said.

Dr Fesl said she was now demanding that the government’s Department of Environment and Resource Management place a Stop Work Order on the dam.

“They’ll probably say they want to think about it, but if I haven’t heard from them within 24 hours, I want an interim order,” she said.

Government comment will be sought today.