Major cost blowouts under Victorian heritage laws attract public scrutiny

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]Now, let's go to Victoria in the state's Aboriginal cultural heritage laws are causing major cost blowouts and delays in building roads, pipelines, housing, environmental works under state legislation every project must be assessed by the local registered Aboriginal group before construction can begin. Victoria has 12 registered Aboriginal parties and an army of 352 heritage consultants and just have a look at some of these costs. We've got 2 and 1/2 million dollars to provide cultural services to Melbourne water.

[00:00:34]Victoria's Murray flood plain restoration projects have also required 1.74 million dollars in cultural heritage assessments, 1.15 million for complex assessments and testing of artifacts as part of the Great Ocean Road coastal walking track assessment.

[00:00:52]More than 510,000 to assess an upgrade to the Davies Plain four-wheel four-wheel drive track and campgrounds. And more than 1,200 more than 200,000 I should say to develop a cultural heritage management plan for wastewater upgrades at Healesville.

[00:01:12]Nick, the Weekly Times has done great work here reporting on this issue and these Aboriginal cultural heritage laws are coming at great cost. They're slowing down development and they're adding additional costs. They are and full marks to the Healesville Times for doing this. I mean, this has been a sleeper for a while, right? Every developer or builder will tell you about the delays and costs to do with this black tape, you know, the heritage laws. But what worries me even more about this Rita is the completely unregulated unmanaged nature of the process. There's no due process here, right? Okay, you want to build something, you have to call in an Aboriginal archaeological assessor suitably qualified you know, who says they're suitably qualified? I don't know. You pay them to do the work and then they give you the tick or they give you the cross. Of course, this is wide open for corruption. I'm not making any allegations in any particular case except to say that if you had somebody who just thought they'd make it difficult for a developer in the hope that they could get more money out of them. Well, I'm told that is happening in parts of the country. So, we we this not just the process, not just the fact that why should we have this special layer just for one particular group of the country based on racial background, but but the the way it's managed and and the scope for corruption if people were so minded, that's a real problem with this.