Unintended consequences

When serving on the Greater Dandenong Council in the early noughties the Council decided to undertake an Aboriginal Heritage study with the intention that it would lead to a planning overlay.

The purpose of this was to help landowners comply with the recently passed State Government Act. It was designed to help landowners comply with their legal requirements under the act and it would in fact save them quite a lot of money.

When news of Council's work broke there was a knee jerk reaction leading to an emergency motion and a vote was taken to discontinue the study.

An emergency motion as its name suggests an emergency response and the motion doesn't come with the usual council supporting papers where possible unintended consequences are discussed.

For the record I opposed the emergency motion and one of the reasons I advanced was that without a report there could be unintended consequences.

The net result was some time after I had retired from council I was rung up when an important heritage tree was cut down and Council was powerless to stop it. The very Councilor who led the push to discontinue the heritage process blamed me, as the then Mayor, for not actioning a letter from Conservation Victoria offering their help in protecting significant trees.

I remembered the discussions at the time and the Council decided that such help was unnecessary as protection of trees would be covered in the subsequently discontinued heritage study.

The discontinuance of Council's Aboriginal Heritage process didn't remove landowners obligations under the State Act just as voting NO won't remove our obligations to our fellow Australian citizens of First Nations descent.

In the event of a No vote it will be incumbent on those who voted or advocated voting NO to work with the current government to come up with a better/different and socially acceptable way to Close the Gap and also to deal with any unintended consequences.

If you don't know, vote NO is a cop out on our mutual obligations as Australian citizens and a continuation of Australia's history of not listening to our First Nations peoples.

Kevin Walsh RFD, Cape Paterson