Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to acknowledge those allocations in this budget which go directly, or are aimed directly, at assisting the people of the Northern Territory. The funds for health, education, roads, defence—the list goes on—are welcomed and thankfully received by all of us in the Northern Territory.

We are often reminded in the Northern Territory that our budget allocation per head is well in excess of the per capita allocation of those who live in the populous states of the south. That is the case with this budget, and rightly so. It does not matter how many times or how fast one says ‘horizontal fiscal equalisation’, there are still state premiers and national journalists who constantly refer bitterly to the truckloads, now trainloads, of dollars that pour into the Territory from the south. It has been happening since the Territory was the northern territory of South Australia and I have no doubt it will continue to cause unnecessary rancour among those who are uninformed or choose to ignore the necessities of a federation which espouses, as far as possible, to provide equal standards and opportunities for all Australians regardless of their location in this great continent of ours.

Members will have noticed in the past few weeks that the Territory administration has come under scrutiny for the way in which it has allocated the Commonwealth’s annual largesse, and this is not for the first time. In particular the assertion has been made, and hardly denied, that money that the Commonwealth intends to be spent on Aboriginal education and health is diverted instead to pleasure parks and grand waterfront developments in the Territory’s capital and that the motivation for this is to pork-barrel the swinging electorates of Darwin and Palmerston and thus ensure the return of the Labor government to Territory administration at future elections.

I would be the last person to stand up in defence of Labor government in the Northern Territory, or anywhere else for that matter, but these assertions have a familiar ring to them. The former CLP government stood accused of the same misallocation of funds over its quarter-century of Territory government. Its main accusers then were, perhaps not surprisingly, the same people who stand accused today—most particularly, the Labor Party’s Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, who also chooses to hold the Indigenous affairs portfolio as part of her responsibilities, despite the presence of several cabinet members with Aboriginal heritage and/or electorates. The Bulletin’s incisive observer of and reporter on Aboriginal issues, Paul Toohey, says:

Who, in the Northern Territory, would know she actually holds the Indigenous Affairs portfolio? Very few. Because Martin, carefully, deliberately, refuses to deal with Aborigines, let alone say the word. Does she visit communities? Hardly ever. Her view has been that Aborigines are a federal problem.

This brings to me what I see as the heart of the matter. Successive Territory administrations have stood accused of, at worst, discriminating against and, at best, ignoring their Aboriginal constituents. I remind the House that the Territory’s demographics are unique in Australia. Aborigines constitute some 33 per cent of the population. No state has an Aboriginal constituency in excess of five per cent, and a little over one per cent is usual.

This House seemed to take this into account more than 30 years ago, when it imposed upon the Territory a unique piece of legislation. It was unique in intention, unique in application and, I argue today, unique in consequence. I speak, of course, of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, which seeks to recognise and protect Aboriginal land rights. The act saw the establishment of land councils and the Aboriginal Land Commissioner. It set up a land claims process, established processes for land use proposals and, I emphasise, provided for the act’s prevailing power over all Northern Territory laws. I will say it again: the Aboriginal land rights act has prevailing power over all Northern Territory laws. The act further dictates that all decisions over Aboriginal land must be made by the relevant traditional Aboriginal owners in accordance with Aboriginal law.

It is ironic, you would have to agree, that today the Commonwealth government and the national media are calling for one law for all Australians, while we have on the books a law that specifically legislates for regional parliamentary laws to be overruled and applies a formula for decision making based on a system of law that has never been formally identified—and, indeed, is currently under the most severe scrutiny, as it has been invoked as justification for the bashing of Australian women and the rape of Australian children.

The member for Bennelong is one of, I think, three members in this House who were present when the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ian Viner, introduced the bill in 1976. He may recall that the minister stated in his second reading of the bill his belief that there had been ‘a fundamental change in social thinking in Australia, recognising that within our community there are some people, the Aborigines, who live by a unique and distinct system of customary law’. Mr Viner said that Aboriginal ancestors left in each country certain vital powers that made that country fruitful and ensured a good life for people forever. He said, ‘An Aboriginal’s country, no matter how stricken a wilderness it may seem to others, is, to him, a Canaan.’

Tell that to the people of Wadeye, who live within the utopia that former Minister Viner and the Fraser government sought to create. And tell that too, to the Northern Territory’s Chief Minister who, understandably, in view of this act, believes that Aboriginal problems are a federal matter. It is understandable, because she heads a Territory parliament that cannot acquire Aboriginal land for public purposes. If she thought it desirable to build a school or a bigger police station at Wadeye, she could not, at least not without complex negotiations probably involving some trade-offs with the land councils.

Land councils in the Territory are unique powerbrokers, established not by the will or customary laws of Aborigines but by this same Commonwealth act. It has been a surprise to some that since the Labor government was elected in the Territory its long-held claim that it could work with the land councils has proven unfounded. The relationship between land councils and Labor has steadily deteriorated since the day that Clare Martin came to office. It should not be a surprise. This act has always placed Aboriginal and public interest at loggerheads. The acrimony that arises between Aboriginal and public interest, between land council and Territory government, is written into the act.

The Commonwealth, through this act, set up the dispute between the Territory government and the land councils that continues today. The courtroom is where government must argue its case for the public interest, to plan for future services and to provide water from catchment areas, pasture for cattle on the move, pipelines, powerlines, public parks, access for the enjoyment of beaches and rivers and to build schools, health clinics and police stations. Courtrooms have been the battlegrounds that seem to denote racial division in the Territory.

Today, no-one knows who owns schools, health centres or other community facilities on Aboriginal land. The land councils count such assets as having zero value as they are not their asset. Taxpayers, through their government, also have no proprietary interest as the buildings do not stand on public land. The same dilemma faces the Territory as it attempts to meet the challenge of providing public housing on Aboriginal land, one of the factors identified as being at the root of law and order problems in places like Wadeye.

I welcome the initiatives in this budget that seek to address Indigenous disadvantage in the Territory. I welcome the $3,300 million allocated to Indigenous concerns in this budget, but I anticipate—no, I warn—that little will be achieved while the Territory government can point out that more than 50 per cent of the Territory lies beyond its control while layers of Commonwealth, Territory and land council bureaucracies argue the toss and Aborigines remain confined within Ian Viner’s splendid isolation.

I acknowledge that in recent years successive federal ministers have recognised these difficulties. The former Indigenous affairs minister Philip Ruddock put an option on the table for the patriation of the land rights act to the Northern Territory government back in 2003. The Territory’s Chief Minister simply ignored the offer, probably in the belief that the land councils would go ape if she were even to acknowledge such a possibility and almost certainly believing that continued Commonwealth responsibility for the Aboriginal constituency was not such a bad thing. The next minister was organising some redrafting of the land rights act when she visited Wadeye and concluded that things were not as bad as she had been told. As Paul Toohey writes:

She came to the north and visited Wadeye, the Territory’s biggest and most troubled community, and declared all was well. She couldn’t see it either. She didn’t want to. Towns were cleaned up for her arrival and the neat, clean kids with big white teeth were presented to her for inspection.

The Prime Minister also stopped at Wadeye, and again the town swept the problems under the mat—so effectively, in fact, that in his address to the community barbecue, the Prime Minister congratulated the people of Wadeye on the new levels of school attendance and announced a package of some $2.7 million of practical assistance, including $2 million for broadband linkages, $243,000 for the school to help with the larger number of students now attending and $546,000 over four years for playgroups to help young families sort out some of the health problems of early childhood and general parenting problems.

The current minister has had a somewhat different experience. As Paul Toohey writes:

It was a blessing that the current minister, Mal Brough, turned up in Wadeye this month in the midst of a riot. He saw the truth of Wadeye for himself, and he saw the town camps of Alice Springs.

The national focus since the minister’s visit to Wadeye and Alice Springs has been on lawlessness and depravity at its worst. The issue of the application of two standards of law, taking into account traditional customs and beliefs, has been at its heart. But I would argue that, horrific as these crimes are, they are only the boils that erupt on a body that is festering internally, that is moribund because of the misguided and well-intentioned act of the Commonwealth parliament 30 years ago.

I agree with Paul Toohey, who writes that the current Northern Territory Chief Minister has comprehensively and deliberately failed to represent Aborigines of the north. She has been caught out; she has failed her four Aboriginal parliamentary colleagues and she has failed her entire Aboriginal constituency. She has no vision for the people who make up nearly a third of the territory’s population. But this act—this dated piece of Commonwealth legislation—is her excuse. It provides her, and every subsequent representative of the Territory, with an out: 33 per cent of the constituency is the responsibility of the Commonwealth or of the land councils and 50 per cent of the land is beyond Northern Territory government control. The Northern Territory government cannot even acquire the land for public purposes. How can it be blamed for the mess that it is in?

Further, the Aboriginal land rights act is fundamentally detrimental to the advancement of the very people it is supposed to protect. Again, I must quote Mr Toohey. I do so because he writes so closely to my own views that, were I to express these thoughts independently, I would certainly be accused by some of plagiarism. Mr Toohey writes:

To fear the influx of wider society is to fear being born. And the permit system—

again, established by the Commonwealth act—

works against the Aborigines who treasure it. It keeps people in, makes them think they are somehow a special part of Australia ... until the day comes when they can openly interact with white Australians—by opening caravan parks, fishing resorts, locally staffed guided tours of country, none of which happens in north Australia—the divide between black and white Australia will only increase.

…            …            …

Opening up those hidden worlds will go a long way towards changing some very un-normal parts of Australia.

For 27 years successive CLP governments in the Northern Territory sought to represent Indigenous Territorians and gain control of the Aboriginal land rights act. The Clare Martin Labor government has a completely different approach: they have no desire to take responsibility for land rights and no desire to govern Aboriginal Territorians. Clare Martin must be made to face up to this most fundamental element of government, and the time has come for the Commonwealth to impose this responsibility whether she likes it or not. If this government is really serious about addressing Aboriginal disadvantage in the Northern Territory then it must patriate the Aboriginal land rights act to the Northern Territory as a matter of urgency.

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