To advance tourism, it's time to revise the media restrictions around Uluru

Yet even after photographers pay for a permit to shoot advertising images they face limitations on their publication. images have to "promote or enhance" the "cultural, environmental or social values" of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. This presumably rules out filming or photography for a critical production on the park or its administration.

Amateur photographers are exempt from applying for a permit. But even their subsequent use of their image is controlled by park authorities. The catch appears in subregulation 1 of regulation 12.38 which defines "captured image" to include "an image that was not captured for a commercial purpose". By a strange twist of the bureaucratic wording, the regulation is retrospective. Amateur photographers risk running foul of the EPBC Act years after they snap their image if they sell it. Apparently, they are then commercial photographers, but retrospectively.

The regulations fly in the face of copyright legislation which provides for the ownership and control of an image, video production, written word or other expression of an idea by its creator.

In the normal world, a photographer is regarded as professional, or "commercial", to use the park services' term, if they make images under contract or as stock photography for later sale and derive their whole or a part-time livelihood from their work. The Act ignores such a commonsense definition and declares that an amateur who later sells an image was a commercial photographer all along. They just didn't know it.

There's another catch and this one may have potential to compromise the freedom of the media to report. Permitted without a permit is "Television, newspaper and radio reporting and filming relating to the 'news of the day', as determined by the park manager". Now, this assumes that park managers have an up-to- date working knowledge of news and current affairs and the concept of "newsworthiness" held by different media organisations to make a valid decision. That may be questioned by some and is certainly open to abuse.

After being granted a permit, photographers and painters are free to move around Uluru-Kata Tjuta, but not film crews which must be accompanied by a supervising ranger and, in some cases, by "senior custodians of our land". There are additional charges for this, of course, which probably have to do with filming in culturally-restricted places.

Solving the culture clash

Park management seems to imply that trading in images, sounds or art work made in national parks indicates disrespect of the local Aboriginal culture, while paying the parks service for permission to do the same thing does not. Does this mean that respect for Aboriginal culture is a transaction-based practice?

It is understandable that Aboriginies do not want images made of sensitive sites as images are important to Aboriginal identity. Photographs are just as important to Anglo culture. Photography, whether amateur or professional, is a long-standing Anglo cultural tradition of remembering history, families, people and places and of documenting environments. Like images in Aboriginal culture, photographs (or video and paintings) create meaning for both individuals and for the culture as a whole. The park authority ignores this aspect of the issue.

Park management has shown no signs of negotiating a resolution on this issue. Even broaching it in public runs the risk of cranking up the politically correct who are likely to see it as an attack on Aboriginal culture. There are plenty of such people about. I once recall reading something by a community association concerned about racism that writers covering Indigenous issues should show their work to local Aboriginal interests who would OK it for publication. If ever there was the opportunity for censorship, that would be it.

Most, probably all, professional photographers respect other cultures - many of them venture into those cultures for periods of time to produce media products that promote the interests of those cultures. Few would want to see Aboriginal cultures denigrated any further. There remains the need, however, to negotiate an access agreement to national parks that acknowledges the place of images, especially those of national icons, in both Aboriginal and Anglo cultures. That won't be easy.