A CROWD of about 100 people gathered at the Dunkeld Community Centre on Thursday evening to receive a detailed presentation on the controversial Recognition and Settlement Agreement (RSA) with Barengi Gadjin Land Council (BGLC), with many attendees strongly voicing their deep concerns about its ramifications.

The RSA was quietly signed off by the State Government almost 12 months ago, but was only brought to public notice in July, with communities and stakeholders still catching up with understanding and considering what it could mean for those living in the 36,000 square kilometre area it covers and the 10 local councils within those boundaries.

Discussed at the meeting by a three-person panel were potential major changes to water, biodiversity and land management, along with future access to ‘natural resources’ such as timber and metals in mining.

The meeting was the third on the subject run by the Bread and Butter Club (BABC) with the first two at Waubra and Beaufort equally attracting great interest.

BABC committee member, Roger Pescott, opened it by saying, “almost all of us would wish that we weren’t here tonight” and expressed disappointment that no members of Parliament had attended despite being invited and said, “everybody is being let down by both sides of politics”.

A substantially lengthy explanation of the RSA was made by former ABC journalist, Marita Punshon, who said she had “read this document a lot of times” with her concerns growing after each reading.

“Every time I read it … something new pops up,” she said.

“It’s one of those documents that you keep learning something every time you read it. It might be a specific something in one sentence and you think ‘oh, I don’t remember reading that before’ or it might be a rather innocuous sentence at the start somewhere, but if you actually interpret it in full, that could actually have ramifications right throughout the document.”

She left no doubt how she viewed its importance.

“I actually think this particular agreement which is relevant to this area is unprecedented, not just in Victoria, but in Australia,” Ms Punshon said.

“If you’ve seen the newspapers or the radio or TV or Twitter or any form of media in recent weeks, you would have noticed what was happening in Western Australia with their Aboriginal Heritage Agreement, and how it was impacting farmers, land users, community groups, in relation to requiring Aboriginal agreement for relatively minor tasks (such as) digging into 50 centimetres deep and whatnot.

“The WA agreement is a pup - really - to what you’re facing here, I believe”.

Ms Punshon said she noted the trajectory of the new premier, Jacinta Allan.

“Our new premier last week in her first press conference to the media said that her priority was not the $226 billion debt that we’ll have by 2026 or the ambulance crisis or the hospital crisis, or the aged care crisis or the mental health crisis, or the problem getting children back to school post COVID … that wasn’t her priority,” Ms Punshon said.

“She said her priority was treaty and walking with the Indigenous people.”

Ms Punshon said she just wanted to “establish the background and the environment in which this agreement has been made” and then spent the next 54 minutes going through the details, taking questions and comments from the audience along the way.

One of her major concerns was the transparency of the process to create the RSA - for example, the councils not even knowing until June about their need to respond, saying, “it would be fair to say if it’s not secret, it’s at least very, very, very quiet” and also “we don’t know what it will cost the public”.

“There are pages within this document which go to the financial ingredient, but you will never know what the numbers are because they’re all redacted,” Ms Punshon said.

Ms Punshon said the BGLC were exempt from rates and wanted that extended to land tax and stamp duty, but also requested “resource sharing” with councils.

Reaction to the presentation was almost entirely negative, with one attendee quipping, “Who wrote this, the Mafia?” and others questioning whether the agreement could actually be legal.

Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) president, David Clark, also spoke, claiming it was important for people to understand “it is not binding on councils” and used his own experience as councillor for the Pyrenees to stress how these processes worked.

“Just like I can’t sell your car because it’s not legally mine, the state cannot give away council’s resources because they’re not legally theirs,” he said.

But Ms Punshon later said it didn’t make sense for the State Government to have worked on the agreement for years without a strong motivation for change.

Also discussed was the “aspirational” preferential treatment of approved contractors for councils, which Moorabool councillor, Paul Tatchell, took exception to, explaining that the current arrangement of local support was a better way.

“If it’s a local business, to help our economy, that’s exactly what we’ll do,” he said.

“You come in five per cent better than the lowest tender - (if) you’re local, you get the gig. We don’t do it by race.

“That’s what this document is asking us to do.”

With other discussions about potential complexities created by water resource ownership, divergent boundaries between the RSA and councils, and seeming conflicts with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006, another subject that received a lively response was whether local councils had the capacity to deal with negotiations on such complex matters, with more than one person claiming this wasn’t anything new.

“I’d just like to point out that one of the chief responsibilities of local government is to manage land that includes public land, private land, through various complicated acts,” one attendee said.

“My experience working in local government for 20 years…”

But another person interrupted: “My experience with the local government … is they don’t have the capacity to fill a pothole”.

Although a joke, the more serious underlying issue of potentially creating additional work and costs to local councils and thus delivering either increased rates or lower services to residents, the overwhelming sense at the conclusion of the meeting was the controversy surrounding the RSA has only just begun.