Administrator Rik Hart adjourned the first meeting of Central Coast Council for 2024 when the gallery erupted after he decided to put the words “Darkinjung Country” back into Council’s Acknowledgement of Country.
Hart had taken the words out more than a year ago and at the time said he would leave it to a yet-to-be formed Aboriginal Advisory Committee to decide on the wording.
The new advisory committee’s recommendation for the inclusion of the wording saw a protest outside the Wyong chambers before the January 23 meeting and attracted three speakers on the topic at the public forum.
First speaker Van Davey suggested deleting the word Darkinjung from the proposed new Acknowledgement of Country.
He said there was an inbuilt conflict on the Central Coast that Council needed to resolve.
It came from the misalignment between NSW land council legislation from the 1980s and Federal Government legislation from the 1990s that took into account the Mabo High Court “traditional owners” decision and Native Title legislation.
Davey said the NSW legislation did not reflect the Federal legislation, which says traditional owners have certain rights.
He said Council needed to initiate action between the State and Federal governments with a view to bringing into alignment the two pieces of legislation.
Until then, he said, the traditional owners’ – Guringai, Awabakal and Darkinoong – quest for justice and recognition should be assisted, not blocked.
Second speaker Shad Tyler also asked for the word to be deleted saying Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council had great people who did lots of good things but putting the word Darkinjung into the Acknowledgement would create confusion.
He said Guringai and Darkinoong were the traditional custodians of the Central Coast and the decision Hart was about to make could be an opportunity for inclusion, rather than division.
The third speaker was Vickie Parry, the executive director of Barang Regional Alliance, and a member of the advisory committee, who spoke in favour of adding “Darkinjung Country” to the Acknowledgement.
Parry was heckled by the crowd when she ran out of time to get her main points across after giving information on the work of the Alliance and statistics on the number of Aboriginal people on the Coast – making up almost five per cent of the population.
Later in the meeting, when Hart adopted the recommendation to put “Darkinjung Country” into the Acknowledgement, some people in the gallery yelled out “shame, shame, shame”.
“The Darkinjung are not a people,” one person said.
“Listen to the traditional custodian,” another said.
Hart tried to hush the crowd but they kept yelling at him.
In the end, he adjourned the meeting for 10 minutes and security staff directed everyone to leave the public gallery.
After the 10 minutes, the meeting recommenced and the public was allowed back into the gallery but about two thirds of the people did not return.
The next four items on the agenda were dealt with quickly and the meeting ended soon afterwards.
Merilyn Vale