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

It is indeed a pleasure to be standing here talking about the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006 and the changes it will bring to the land rights act which, in the main, has not changed at all in the last 30 years. The member for Lingiari summed up a few things when he talked about the Woodward royal commission. It is important to understand where things have come from and how they have eventuated. It is important in this context to understand the political climate of the time in relation to land rights and how we got to where we are now.

Back in the sixties and the seventies, the world was discovering that it had rights. South Pacific nations shook off their colonial oppressors. MGM stopped making films featuring white Americans gunning down red Indians. The cult heroes were Che Guevara, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In Australia, Charlie Perkins was boarding freedom buses in the Northern Territory. The Aboriginal stockmen of Newcastle Waters and Wave Hill had walked off the job, demanding equal pay. A strike that became symbolic of Aboriginal dispossession was when the Gurindji people at Wave Hill turned the pay dispute into a demand for the return of their land. In 1967, the national referendum giving the Commonwealth responsibility for Aboriginal welfare received 90 per cent support, and the Aboriginal tent embassy was established on the lawns of Parliament House, just as Prime Minister Whitlam was moving into his office, brimming with reformist zeal.

The Gurindji strike lasted for seven years. In 1975, the year before the Aboriginal land rights act, Gough Whitlam symbolically poured red sand into the hands of Vincent Lingiari—my colleague the member for Lingiari on the other side represents the electorate named after him—and handed over the lease of 1,250 square miles of Vestey’s land, with a promise to further redress the injustice—an impression that has long been the lot of black Australians.

My point is that the Aboriginal land rights act is a rights act, not a lands act. It was about putting things right and about appeasing a national conscience and international opinion in the only place that the Commonwealth could—the Northern Territory. It was not about good land management or land administration. It was not about planning for the future exploitation and productivity of the land. The act does not concern itself with how the landowners are going to make a buck—quite the opposite. It is about the protection of land as a right, the preservation of culture, the locking of the gates and defending Aboriginal people and their land from the intrusions of outsiders—the miners, pastoralists, tourists or anyone without a permit for that matter, even the Northern Territory government.

It was thought that Aborigines would be able to return to hunting and foraging on their newly acquired land. Why would they need to make a dollar? Justice Woodward penned those intentions, writing of preserving ‘the spiritual link’ with land providing an Aboriginal sense of identity and allowing ‘Aborigines to be free to choose their own manner of living’. The Aboriginal affairs minister at the time, Ian Viner, picked up on the theme while introducing the legislation. He waxed lyrical about the Aboriginal spiritual connection with the land and the Dreamtime. He said that ‘ancestors left in each “country” certain vital powers’ that ‘make that country fruitful and ensure a good life for people forever’. ‘An Aboriginal’s country’, he said, ‘no matter how stricken a wilderness it may seem to others is, to him, a Canaan’. He stated 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’. Thus we can see the intent of the land rights act—to establish rights to protect the country and its inhabitants from the intruders, to create inalienable title in perpetuity for people who live differently and thereby ensure a good life for people forever.

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act was established to establish a sanctuary, a preserve of living prehistory within modern Australia. Spurring on this mood was the Commonwealth’s deep suspicions about the intentions of the then embryonic Territory government, the Legislative Council. To defend Aboriginal Territorians from their future government, the act stipulates that the Territory parliament could not acquire Aboriginal land for public purposes. At that time, Canberra genuinely believed that, given half a chance, the Territory council would repossess Aboriginal land en masse and Viner felt compelled to tell the Commonwealth parliament that he had assurances that the Territory Legislative Assembly was prepared to cooperate. In fact, there was uncertainty, resentment and division in the Territory. It was not so much about Aboriginal land ownership; it had more to do with the way the rights act was imposed exclusively on the Territory from on high. It seemed hypocritical—and it was—to impose upon a territory a land regime that is applauded by the same people who would not have a bar of it in their home states.

Mr Viner had some sense of the impact his legislation might have on the Territory. Alarmed by what he feared was a white backlash, he wrote articles and pamphlets in the Territory in 1978 assuring Territorians that rumours that Aborigines would get 50 per cent of the land were untrue and downright dangerous to racial harmony. Today of course 50 per cent of the Territory is under Aboriginal title and that is the 50 per cent that Mr Viner said would never happen. He simply did not anticipate the real outcome of his legislation. His stated desire for an end to the divisiveness was not backed by his actions. He left the Territory a legacy that has soured relations between the Northern Territory government and land councils ever since. That legacy was his scant regard for the public interest in his plan to effect the biggest land transfer of crown and pastoral land to new, select communal ownerships since Captain Cook arrived.

The Commonwealth act prohibits any compulsory acquisition of land under the Aboriginal land rights act by the Territory government. The vast tracts of land were handed over to select communal ownership. The Territory government was forced into the land claims courtroom to represent and argue the public interest. It cannot be argued that the Territory government should not have done this. Governments are required to represent public interest, to plan for future services, provide water from catchment areas, provide pasture for cattle on the move, pipelines, powerlines, public parks and access for the enjoyment of beaches and rivers. To ignore such future considerations would have been a dereliction of public duty. But the adversarial nature of the courtroom inevitably leads to acrimony. Today most Aboriginal Territorians believe that the Territory government has opposed every land claim. They have been told that by land councils and the Labor Party finds polarisation of Aboriginal people and the previous CLP government relations politically convenient. John Reeves QC, in his review, said:

The provisions preventing the Territory government from compulsory acquiring land meant that the land claims process was the only chance the Territory government had to present possible matters of detriment.

He went on:

If the Territory government could acquire land in the future in certain limited circumstances, it would not be necessary for matters of detriment to be predicted way into the future and thus occupy so much court time and argument.

Today there is no real answer at all as to who owns the schools, the health centres and 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 propriety interest, as the buildings do not stand on public land. So it was Mr Viner, consciously or unconsciously, who set up the dispute between the Territory government and the land councils.

The late author Shiva Naipaul visited the Northern Territory in the mid-eighties. He was appalled by what he described as the ‘confining of the Aborigine in his aboriginality—the escape into an adventure playground of timelessness, of goannas and kangaroos and red earth. The running off into a world of unalterable Aboriginal essences is a condescending and profoundly flawed prescription for regeneration.’ This was followed up with the challenge: ‘Either the Aborigine is or is not a citizen of Australia. If he is—which he is—he must face the consequences.’

Bob Beadman, in the spring 2004 issue of Policy wrote an article called ‘A future for Indigenous youth?’ in which he said:

The problem now, however, is that the title is now stitched up so tightly that it is worthless as a form of security for commercial borrowings, and home ownership is unknown for the high proportion of Aboriginal residents of the Northern Territory who live on Aboriginal land.

It is a cliché now, but the people are land rich but dirt poor.

The form of entry controls (which date back many decades prior to land rights, to when the land was first reserved for Aborigines), whilst very effective in providing a buffer from the worst aspects of the encroaching migration of the frontier, also blocked the migration of businesses, right through to the present time. Now, the Land Rights Act creates additional barriers to people pulling themselves up out of the quagmire of welfare dependency.

In a country with one of the highest levels of home ownership in the world, we construct a form of title for remote Aborigines that denies them the opportunity to fulfil what for others is the Great Australian Dream.

Collectivism has failed around the world, and the evidence is before our eyes that it hasn’t worked here either. Communal home ownership dictated by the Land Rights Act is just another manifestation of the removal of individual responsibility. I’ll bet if people were enabled to own their home repairs and maintenance costs would plummet.

Isn’t that something! If you owned your own home, maintenance costs would plummet. You do not have to be Einstein or the member for Lingiari to know that when you travel around community after community on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory nowhere do you see a market garden that grows fresh vegetables; nowhere do you see a butcher shop or a small abattoir; nowhere do you see bakeries. You do not see hairdressers; you do not see clothing stores—let alone a McDonald’s or an Irish theme pub. The reason none of that exists is that it is impossible to get those businesses up and running unless there is the incentive for people to make that investment in those communities.

I think the great changes being proposed today will go some way towards changing that. The normalisation of townships and the creation of long-term leases on towns will enable Aboriginal people and others to buy land and build houses in Aboriginal communities. It will allow businesses to set up. Some may not flourish—some may go broke—but that is business. It will allow people to set up market gardens and have an entrepreneurial attitude. It will allow for butcher shops, bakeries, hairdressers and clothing stores and present a whole range of other opportunities to Indigenous people.

In an article in the Australian of 15 August last year called ‘Hope lies in the great Australian dream’, the National President of the Labor Party, Warren Mundine, was reported as saying:

My parents owned a house and I own a house with my wife and my son now owns a house and my daughter is getting a house as well.

…            …            …

Owning ahome changes people’s lives. You have got an asset that you use yourself and that you can pass on to future generations.

He went on to say that home ownership ‘makes a total difference for people’:

For one thing you don’t have a ‘cargo cult’ mentality.

The article says:

Mr Mundine told the story of visiting an Aboriginal community where there was a broken sewer pipe.

‘I said: “You can fix that—we’ll just get a hessian bag and some concrete—otherwise you’re going to have sewage going everywhere.”

‘I was told, “That’s not our job, that’s ATSIC’s job”.’

The article continues:

Owning a home changed all that. ‘If the house is yours you look after it. The other thing is, if you own a house you have to be employed. You can’t willy-nilly wander in and out of jobs, you have to make a go of it.

…            …            …

‘If the boss is on your back you have to grin and bear it, you can’t just say “I’m out of here”.’

That is how you change people’s lives. That is how you allow them to get ahead—you create some incentive for them to work and an ability to own something.

The member for Lingiari laughs when the minister talks about mini communist societies in Australia. It is true. It is almost impossible for Indigenous people on Aboriginal land to get ahead or to own anything. I challenge the member for Lingiari to point out one single person who owns a private asset on any Indigenous land in the Territory. Hernando de Soto wrote in The Mystery of Capital:

By making assets ... capable of being divided, combined or mobilized to suit any transaction—by attaching owners to assets, assets to addresses, and ownership to enforcement, and by making information on the history of assets and owners easily accessible, formal property systems converted the systems of Western capitalist society into a network of individually identifiable and accountable business agents.

That is exactly what we are trying to do in transforming Indigenous economic development and what these changes to the land rights legislation will mean.

I think it goes without saying that the changes being proposed are not going to be the panacea for every ill in Aboriginal communities. More must be done. This legislation does not remove the permit system, for instance. It does not patriate this act to the Northern Territory government. I have said several times in this place that the act should be patriated to the rightful place, namely the Northern Territory. The permit system is another way of stopping Indigenous Territorians from accessing economic opportunities. A previous federal Labor MP, John Reeves QC, who conducted the Reeves review, sent me an email recently where he says:

I think the permit system should be scrapped and replaced with a system that more closely approximates that of all land owners—ie, the right to prevent trespass. By contrast, the permit system is essentially a passport system. Whilst the NT government presently has the power to make legislation to give effect to the permit system, the federal government has the ultimate control over the issue because it can withdraw that power just by amending the Aboriginal Land Rights Act.

He says that this should be done immediately. I am running out of time, but I think the last word should be left to Noel Pearson:

Many of the conventional ideas and policies in Aboriginal affairs—ideas and policies which are considered to be ‘progressive’—in fact are destructive.

He said Aboriginal affairs is dominated by journalists, academics, politicised clergy, politically active medical doctors, party careerists, writers, musicians, actors, cartoonists and ‘other inner city dwellers with socially suitable left-liberal opinions about everything’.

I and my people have suffered the intellectual and cultural hegemony of the progressive scribes for decades.

I think he is right. When I look at the members from the other side of the House who are due to speak on the debate, I see the members for Lingiari, Kingsford Smith, Fremantle, Reid, Banks, Fraser, Hotham, Werriwa, Chifley, Shortland and Melbourne. I rest my case. They are trying to do it all over again. They just restrict Aboriginal people and try to keep them in their place. There is nothing like having a good obedient blackfella around. We on this side of the House want to see them do well. We believe in the individual and giving them all a fair go. (Time expired)

See this speech in context