Aboriginal Remains, Riverlea Park

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:00): Supplementary: when does the minister intend issuing authorisation for carbon dating testing on those remains?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:00): I thank the honourable member for his question. I am not going to go into details about an application process that is currently underway, but what I can say is that very often in these sorts of application processes, part of the application process is the ability to talk to traditional owners to allow for testing.

Carbon dating testing is a destructive method of testing. It requires the destruction of parts of material and in this case ancestral remains. As I say, I won't go into details about an application process underway, but very often in these sorts of application processes, one element is the authorisation to allow for that destructive testing for carbon dating testing. In this particular application process, as I outlined to the Hon. Michelle Lensink, it's expected it will conclude sometime early next year.