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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-27 Daily Xml
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Anna Creek Station

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:27): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Deputy Premier and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Attorney-General a question regarding charges against owners of Anna Creek Station, Williams Cattle Company.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: Last month, an ABC News Stateline report confirmed the owners of the biggest cattle station in the world have been charged over allegedly building illegal dams on inland rivers and waterholes in outback South Australia. Anna Creek Station is a pastoral lease of just under 24,000 square kilometres, bordering at Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre) on country held under native title by the Arabana people since 2012. In a submission made in late 2022 to the South Australian Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee, the Arabana Aboriginal Corporation provided satellite imagery of 21 earthworks and 21 Indigenous sites.

At the same time, The Advertiser cited a report by Indigenous heritage experts stating that no consultation about the proposed earthworks had been conducted with the Arabana people, nor had any cultural heritage surveys been carried out. These seven business entities that jointly controlled and operated Anna Creek Station under the trading name Williams Cattle Company are defendants in the case and are charged under the Aboriginal Heritage Act, the Natural Resources Management Act and the Landscape South Australia Act. This represents the first time charges under the Aboriginal Heritage Act have been laid against a pastoralist or commercial entity.

Penalties under the act were recently increased up to $2 million for companies, but due to the time of the offending the station is being charged under the previous act with penalties of up to $50,000. The owners are also being pursued for environmental damage in the Environment, Resources and Development Court. My questions to the Deputy Premier are:

1. Can the Deputy Premier confirm if all of the offending in question occurred prior to the enactment of the new penalty provisions?

2. Was there any offending post the new laws coming into effect?

3. What further updates and information is the Deputy Premier able to provide this chamber with regarding this matter?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (15:30): I thank the honourable member for her questions. As the honourable member would appreciate, with an ongoing matter before the courts—as when I am occasionally asked about them—there is limited information that I can give or that I should give in relation to something that is before the courts.

I can confirm that there are prosecutions I think that were, as I remember, initiated in the Coober Pedy Magistrates Court in relation to breaches of the Aboriginal Heritage Act and, if I remember correctly, in the Environment, Resources and Development Court in relation to environmental laws. As I understand it, the prosecutions are in the very early stages of proceedings.

I am happy to go away and find out and report back directly to the honourable member in relation to her question about the timeframes—whether the acts occurred before we made changes during the term of this parliament to significantly increase the potential penalties or if the acts that are being particularised in the prosecution occurred before the passing of our legislation and the new penalties applied. I will go back and check that.

Certainly, it is something we remain committed to—the protection of Aboriginal heritage in South Australia. I think the honourable member is correct when she says that it may be the first prosecution against a corporation since the Aboriginal Heritage Act came into operation in, I think, 1988 in South Australia. I think it is the case that there has only been one other prosecution that has been lodged, and that was well before my time. I do not think that was against a corporation, and as I remember that prosecution failed, so I think that is correct as well.

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