The Mark Knight cartoon that Parks Australia demanded to be taken off the web and a permit for the rock sketch be applied for.

By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
THE Aboriginal land rights movement is again revealing its neo-Marxist and fascist underbelly with a Federal Government department demanding a newspaper cartoonist apply for a permit to draw the world-renowned rock outcrop Uluru, previously known as Ayres Rock.

When the outcrop was handed over to Anagu “traditional owners” (custodians would be a more accurate designation) on October 26, 1985 and leased to the director of National Parks, to be jointly managed under a board made up of a majority of “traditional owners”, few Australians would have imagined it would one day require a permit to be sketched.

But the rock, once a natural wonder and national symbol, has instead become a symbol of the separatist and totalitarian agenda of the indigenous land rights movement exposed four decades ago by former Communist Party of Australia member Geoff McDonald in the early 1980s.

Up until October 26th, 2019, the custodians had only requested visitors not to climb the rock out of respect for the spiritual significance they claim it represented for them, although an increasing number of visitors continued to do so. But on that date a ban on climbing was enforced under National Parks regulation. Australia’s national wonder had now become an off-limits “sacred site”. This is increasingly becoming the case at other mountains and outcrops, especially in the Grampians in Victoria where rock climbing was banned at three sites in 2019.

Now in 2022, the trend is continuing at pace with both Victorian and NSW governments locking the public (ie non-Aboriginals) out from national parks and popular rock climbing spots such as Castle Crag in the Arapiles and Mt Warning in northern NSW.

The Spectator reported that once the Mt Warning “management plan” was in place “the act of respectfully walking to the summit on the 110-year-old track built by locals will constitute ‘harm’ and attract a fine of up to $550,000”. The is straight out corporate fascism imposing unlawful and unusually severe fines on the right of movement in one’s own country.

“Where on earth does this seem a reasonable and proportionate response to someone bush walking on a long-established track? In comparison, damaging or desecrating a Western Cultural place attracts a maximum penalty of a mere $4400,” wrote reporter Marc Hendrickx.

Parks Victoria regional director Jason Borg told the ABC they were moving towards “a more formal protection” called a ‘set aside’ under the National Park Act, “and that precludes anyone from going into that area”. The site is being assessed by Parks Victoria and the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, one of the many land councils around Australia growing in power and influence in league with corporate government environment departments.

And then came the outrageous demand on December 1st, from an agency of the Australian corporate government, Parks Australia, ordering Herald-Sun cartoonist Mark Knight to take down a cartoon of Uluru and demanding he apply for a permit to draw the rock.

Parks Australia accused Knight of breaching “media guidelines” with his cartoon and the letter from a media officer demanded the drawings be removed from the web. “These artworks do not have media permits and breach media guidelines,” the letter said.

“To comply with the EPBC Act, (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999) media guidelines, ICIP (Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property) laws and show respect for Anangu land and culture, we ask that you remove any artwork breaching these conditions and showing Uluru.”

The Herald Sun refused to comply with the request, engaged legal counsel to fight the claim and contacted Parks Australia about the demand. Parks Australia maintained their stance, citing a 44-page government-authorised media handbook which states that organisations wanting to use the rock for commercial purposes must apply for a permit, with the guidelines in place to “protect Anangu against inappropriate use and benefits to others from the commercialisation of their Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property”, the Herald-Sun reported.

These totalitarian impositions would not come as a surprise to Geoff McDonald, who wrote that as a Communist Party member he “learned about communist opposition to the ‘White Australia’ policy and plans of making Australia a Communist country by establishment of black republic areas of Australia inhabited by Aboriginals”.

McDonald said Red Over Black was “above all … a call for action for the defense of Australia against the psychological warfare being waged upon us. My own original concern has naturally stemmed from what I learned about communist strategy and tactics through a lifetime in the Labor and Trade Union movement, and intensified by the years I spent inside the Communist Party.”

In a follow-up book titled The Evidence, McDonald referenced a “psychological war” hotting up against Australia with tormenting propaganda about Australians being ‘racists’. “The Federal Labor government and its opposition cannot find a word to defend the good name of Australia against the charge of racism,” he wrote in a foreward.

“Lie after lie is thrown at Australia but politicians will not muster the strength to answer on behalf of the people who elect them. Liberal and Labor politicians whose perception is asleep, reach a level of self-abasement in placing themselves as decoy ducks to those who are, in broad daylight, promoting the independent nation objective.

“Even when Left controlled United Nations agencies multiply their slanders against Australia this abuse is still met with stone silence. In September, 1983, a joint parliamentary senate committee of Labor and Liberal politicians brought down a recommendation to the Federal government that they should enter into negotiations with ’representatives’ of the Aboriginal people of Australia for a treaty or ’Makaratta’ to make peace with the Aborigines.

“We are not at war with the Aborigines. As the white man’s Treaty Committee headed by Fabian Socialist Dr. H.C. Coombs admitted on a number of occasions, the call for a treaty was a white man’s invention.”