‘There will be a lot of people all around regional Australia and a lot of landholders that will be sleeping a lot easier tonight than they were last night,’ said Tony Seabrook, President of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association in Western Australia.

‘I think the message has finally gotten through. This was a very poor piece of legislation and the community just didn’t want it.’

Seabrook’s comments come as the nation awaits the official announcement early next week that the state will roll back, ditch, shred, and erase the divisive Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Laws.

‘This was really starting to stir up racial divisions. It never should have happened,’ Seabrook finished.

Having caused outrage and panic since their introduction on July 1, Labor has found it impossible to manage the political mess caused by their sweeping powers and outrageous imposition on private landholders. Not only were the laws threatening the survival of the WA Labor Party, the problem was spilling into Albanese’s referendum, sinking it as if WA had tied a weight to the Voice’s ankle.

Breaking point came when an Indigenous organisation attempted to pocket $2.5 million to approve a tree-planting activity. In the same week, another tree planting event was stalled and from that point onward, it seemed impossible for Western Australia’s Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Laws to survive the bad PR.

Having already infuriated homeowners and farmers, throwing green groups into the mix meant that public opinion across the political spectrum soured. If unelected bodies could demand money or hold up basic tasks required to maintain the land, how could the nation function?

In short, the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Laws immediately showed how quickly bureaucracies built on race could misbehave and wield their power for self-interest rather than cultural protection.

It was, many feared, a glimpse of what The Voice to Parliament might enshrine into the Constitution. Unsurprisingly, the polls for the ‘yes’ vote collapsed with every dodgy story making its way out of Western Australia.

Powerful opposition groups rose up against the laws, including the Pastoralists and Graziers Association. The IPA spoke to Spectator TV last week about their fact-finding trip around the region which showed the extent of frustration and anger toward the legislation.

‘Of all the issues with this law, one of the big problems is its opaque nature and the lack of transparency. What it actually refers to in terms of Indigenous heritage are intangible matters,’ said Daniel Wild. ‘Spiritual matters are subjective and in the eye of the beholder. There is no way a farmer would be able to satisfy those requirements because they are unknown.’

No one was surprised by the news this morning that one month after implementing the badly written laws, the Labor Party in Western Australia had made plans to remove them.

According to the ABC, it is expected that both the new Premier Roger Cook and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Tony Buti – who had to front the bulk of criticism over the past few weeks – will make an announcement about their retraction.

It is believed that while the laws are being revised, Western Australia will revert back to the original 1972 Aboriginal Heritage Act. No doubt we won’t hear anything more about this until after the Voice referendum, given the damage the Aboriginal Heritage Laws have already done.

Even Labor got a shock when they discovered that if an election was held today, it might return a Liberal government – such is the outrage regarding the overreach of Indigenous activism. People are starting to worry that private property is meaningless once handed over to the clutches of activists, and they’d be right.

Nationals leader David Littleproud even managed to find his voice, saying that Western Australia’s Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws had managed to form a ‘point of tension and division [between WA locals that they] hadn’t had before’.

It’s a bit of a sore point for the public, given that the Liberals (who are taking a ‘softly softly’ approach to opposing the laws) and the National Party both failed their rural members by supporting Labor in this proposal. They say they regret it, but one has to wonder how foolish and incompetent their ministers were to support the laws in the first place. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that handing racial bureaucracies near unlimited and intangible power is likely to be a disaster. This is a pattern of behaviour from the Coalition. They take left-wing ideas on good faith and then moan about not realising the unintended consequences later. The clock is counting down to a similar apology after Net Zero finally crashes and burns.

The Liberal leader has also come out to say, ‘We understand the Labor government will backlfip on the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act laws that they introduced earlier in the year. We’ve always committed to scrapping the Cultural Heritage Act and going back to the drawing board. They were quite clearly an overreach on private property rights. They went too far.’

Although, as the Spectator Australia reported earlier, Ms Mettam previously wrote, ‘We are committed to fixing Labor’s mess by making sensible changes to the overly prescripted regulations. Fixing the laws won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.’ She added, ‘We have always supported the intent of these proposed laws which promised to prevent a repeat of Jukaan Gorge.’

A more careful reading of the electorate would suggest that very few Western Australians support the intent, the vibe, or the scope of these laws. Learning from a mistake in the mining industry should not, by extension, bleed into the farming and private sector.

At least the Liberal leader appears to be back on track, adding in a recent interview:

‘And it was extraordinary how the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs was even unable to answer really basic questions about how this act would actually work. It has been shambolic from the start.’

Labor may hope that they are burying this legislation in time to save the Voice referendum, but Australians would be wise to realise that the mess WA got itself into over July is what awaits the rest of the nation if Labor is able to constitutionally enshrine a racial bureaucracy with near unlimited advisory power.

Editor’s note: a conference held minutes ago with Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson saw him refuse to confirm earlier reports that the laws are to be scrapped. Speaking to the press, he said: ‘No decision has been made by the government at this stage.’

Flat White is written and edited by Alexandra Marshall.