Ladies and gentlemen, gather ‘round for a backstory that’s more convoluted than an Australian Olympic breakdancer. Mount Warning, a place so beautiful it’s been calling adventurers since the dawn of time, has now become the epicentre of what can only be described as bureaucratic absurdity.

In a move that would make even the most ardent bureaucrat scratch ze head, the NSW government has decided that Mount Warning, (or Wollumbin if you’re on intimate, first-name terms), should be off-limits to anyone who doesn’t fit a very narrow cultural checkbox. It’s like saying, ‘You can climb this mountain, but only if you’ve got the right ancestry card in your wallet.’ It’s Reconciliation 2.0, you know, the ‘Settlers and Migrants Not Welcome’ kind. Not even female Aborigines are allowed. Happy ‘Welcome to Country!’ Now bugger off…

Enter John Ruddick, his swashbuckling libertarian-style politician cutting back the illiberal parliamentary horde before him – a tangled cast of characters, among whom barely a redeeming figure can be found. Cowardly and limp, all. A menace of mediocre middle managers.

John’s mission, nay his self-imposed duty, was to climb Mount Warning in protest at the exclusionary laws. Sir Hillary himself would have envied this parliamentarian’s blast-furnace of a metabolic rate and even more his vision. By all accounts, the adventure was no mere meditative walk.

Now he’s launched a petition, because when you can’t believe what you’re hearing, the next logical step is to get everyone else to not believe it too. His argument? This isn’t about cultural respect. It’s about government overreach, where they’ve taken ‘protecting cultural heritage’ to mean ‘locking everyone out except for a select few’.

Here’s where it gets as clear as an Aboriginal smoking ceremony in a stuffy parliamentary chamber. The claim is that the mountain’s sacred, but only to some. It’s the absurdity, ‘This mountain’s been sacred for millennia, but we just started enforcing it last Tuesday.’

The public, or what you might call the ‘non-ancestrally privileged’, are up in arms. They’re asking, ‘Since when did our national parks become exclusive clubs?’ There’s talk of other places following suit, turning Australia’s natural wonders into a series of Members Only signs, where membership is determined by birth, skin colour, and gender, not by a love for nature or adventure.

The irony here is thicker than the collected ministries of Labor’s Penny Sharpe, the latest responsible nobody. A government that’s supposed to represent all its citizens has decided that some citizens are more equal than others, especially when it comes to enjoying what should be everyone’s natural heritage. The message is, ‘You can look, but don’t touch, unless you’re on the list.’

So, what’s next? More closures? More signs saying, ‘Aboriginal men only, others keep out?’ In a state where mountains are closed for cultural reasons, one might wonder if the next step is to close the sky for being too blue. After all, if we’re gate-keeping nature, why stop at the ground? Perhaps we’ll soon need a permit to watch the sunset like Melbourne during Covid, or a cultural pass to appreciate the stars.

The Hon. John Ruddick’s petition might just be the beginning of a larger conversation about what it means to share a country, its history, and its natural beauty. It might just be the start of a genuine dialogue about the emerging illiberalism of some aspects of the Reconciliation project.

In the grand scheme of things, Mount Warning isn’t just a mountain. It’s become a symbol of a NSW government that’s already lost its way, turning conservation into exclusion. Here’s hoping that common sense prevails, and we can all climb mountains again, regardless of our ancestry, because, in the end, we’re all just humans looking for a good view, a place to replenish the mind and soul from the shackles of an overbearing government.