Sam Newman at it again!

[LP]

Mate the small primary school my wife works at enquired about getting a ceremony done at an assembly as part of their First Nation people cultural studies, they got quoted $750 to $1000 which they  couldn't afford.

It's even worse on the bureaucracy side of things, in some areas you get land site survey fees as part of planning permits but built into this is you guessed it, a tick off from local indigenous communities before you can even dig a hole, more $ for that in the fee than the surveyors.

Another case, a family farm has been growing trees for lumber for nearly 100 years. They want to clear some of the trees to restore pastures, now they have to get a permit to clear trees their own family planted and we're initially denied on indigenous heritage grounds. But hold a ceremony to clear the land for use it'll be OK, $11,000 is the fee they paid, the ceremony involved burning fallen timber and removing what was described as a handful of dirt. The ashes of fallen timber from their own trees, it's like a joke story you hear in a Scottish pub about how locals con tourists!

If shizen like this is really going on, then it's obligatory for it to be exposed by both sides of the debate, otherwise one side is going to risk being labelled disingenuous!