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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-09-12 Daily Xml
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Moonta and Burra Mines World Heritage Listing

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:04): I have a question for the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister please provide an update for the house on the tentative World Heritage listing for the Moonta and Burra mine sites and what the next steps might be?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (15:04): I am delighted to talk about this great next step that has occurred for the Moonta and Burra mines.

People will probably be aware—but let me elucidate for you—that the importance of the Moonta and Burra mines is not only the establishment of Cornish heritage across the other side of the world in the 1840s but also the blending of two cultures' technologies, one being the Cornish hard rock mining, and the other being Welsh smelting. The bringing together of those two made the Moonta and Burra mines unparalleled in their strength and their reach during that period. In fact, for quite some time, between those two mines, they produced some 10 per cent of the copper in the world and were the leading mine in the world.

Of course, we have great ambitions for copper in South Australia to continue to be an extraordinary source of prosperity for us all, particularly in the context of the demand for copper in the renewable energy technology revolution, both for electronic vehicles and also for wind farms.

Having recognised that we have this extraordinary piece of history, two councils, the Copper Coast Council and also the council of Goyder, got together with the National Trust of South Australia, formed a consortium back in 2018 and started working on the first stage to getting a full World Heritage listing. They employed a consultant, a UK specialist named Barry Gamble who put together a fabulous proposition of why this was worthy. As some of you may have noticed, last week the Albanese government announced that it had indeed made the tentative listing for UNESCO's World Heritage—a very important next stage and the second one in recent times following on from when Nilpena Ediacara in the Flinders Rangers received the tentative listing a couple of years ago.

The process from here can take some time. The UNESCO process has become more complex recently. They have added to what it is expected to be produced and that will add significant time to the considerations. However, the fact that we have got to the tentative listing for both of those suggests very strongly that it is a matter of producing the evidence, having it considered and, indeed, getting it awarded. I have every confidence that both of those tentative listings will translate into being listed.

Part of what needs to happen at this stage is for the Narungga and Ngarrindjeri people to be—and the terminology is to give meaningful and informed consent, so while it is not their culture that is being recognised and protected, they are, as First Peoples of that area, asked to participate in giving that meaningful and informed consent. That process is occurring right now in a sensitive and culturally appropriate manner. Once that is undertaken, the effort will then be able to move to the next stage.

Meanwhile we are, of course, also working very hard on the Flinders Ranges site. If you haven't had a chance to go up to Nilpena Ediacara and have a look at the way the fossils are displayed, please do. Both of these, once they are World Heritage listed, will become even more the place that tourists from across the world will want to come to. It will provide additional prosperity and, I hope, a source of pride for our state.

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