Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

It is a real shame that the government has chosen to apply the guillotine to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006, and in so doing frustrate the legitimate rights that members of this parliament have, particularly in the opposition, to get up and speak to this bill. I cannot help but note that the Senate has also expressed concern about the speed with which this legislation is passing through the parliament. This has been a feature of the Howard government’s approach to legislation in the recent session, but giving a full and comprehensive consideration to an issue as significant as this is a primary responsibility of this parliament. That is what we have been elected to do. The member for Lingiari’s electorate incorporates the lands to which this proposed bill specifically applies. I would have thought it self-evident that not only he but any other member who wished to speak to this legislation should be given the opportunity. So it is a very great shame that the government has chosen to gag debate on a bill as important as this one.

I am struck, having heard the comments of the member for Solomon, by the difficulties that we sometimes have in this House in relation to political debate about Aboriginal issues. It is very difficult, it seems, for people to strip out their biases and their ideological fixations and come to a more constructive place as we seek to determine legislation, its merits and the kinds of policies that will be needed to be adopted by this House—and, hopefully, in time agreed to by both sides of politics—to help Aboriginal people overcome the accumulated disadvantage that they suffer.

In the House today we have had two interesting, hot-button occurrences. The first was a forum in the House, very well attended, detailing and concerning itself with issues of Indigenous violence, something which all of us both deplore and have great concern about. In that particular forum on Indigenous violence, speaker after speaker made the point that one of the most significant and important aspects of consideration of Indigenous violence is to recognise that both strong culture and the identification and protection of rights, particularly rights of the child, are absolutely essential predeterminants of having a debate and developing policy on this issue. Yet at the same time, both in the House and in the media, we have a concerted attack on notions of culture and on notions of rights. Who is right? Those Aboriginal people who work in communities, who experience physical abuse, who experience disadvantage day in and day out? Those Aboriginal people charged with the responsibility of running organisations dealing with health, truancy and kids who are petrol sniffing? Organisations concerned with the delivery of social services, with the health of Aboriginal families, who get up in this place and say that it is about strong culture, it is about recognition and identification of rights? Are they the ones who are correct on this issue? Or is it the plethora of pundits, opinion makers and ideologues who jump in and out of this debate as they see fit and when they see an issue that they can hang onto?

The other hot-button issue that was on display in this House today was the motion brought by the member for Stirling, Mr Keenan, calling upon the House to affirm the primacy of Australian law and asserting in effect that cultural considerations should not predominate over Australian law. With these kinds of contributions from members opposite in this debate is it little wonder that Aboriginal people get frustrated at the way in which politicians respond to the very considerable difficulties that they have?

Finally, I cannot help but refer to the contribution of the previous member when he looks forward longingly to the day when Aboriginal communities have ‘Irish theme pubs’ as evidence of their economic and cultural vitality. What a joke.

Labor opposes this bill, as there are aspects of it which are wrong and make it deficient. We come to the bill recognising that there is a need for reform of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, particularly in relation to prudential arrangements between and including royalty associations, which receive royalties from land councils, and also in relation to mining exploration and development activities.

I think it is particularly significant that it is on the issue of part IV of the act, which relates to mining, that we can see the most sensible and prudent aspects of this act. It is in that particular area that we have seen the most significant advance in the way in which mining companies in particular have changed their attitudes to negotiations with Aboriginal people, both for access to land and for the terms of development on Aboriginal land. I think, and I am sure members present would agree, that there has been a substantial change in attitude over the last decade from the mining industry in general in the way in which it has conducted itself, particularly in the Northern Territory, and in the way in which it has come to negotiations with a respect for culture and a willingness to sit down and spend the time necessary to negotiate. The result has been ongoing economic development for Indigenous people where the mining companies and Indigenous people have struck those agreements.

So it is appropriate that these much-changed attitudes and approaches, and the necessity for us to have better processes in relation to mining and royalty accountability, be reflected in any amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. But, as the member for Lingiari, who has just spoken, noted, these amendments also undermine the integrity of the principal act by eroding the rights of traditional owners. They are a recipe for uncertainty for development on Aboriginal land. The informed consent of traditional owners to major changes is not a part of these amendments. Traditional owners, as landowners, are unfairly constrained in optimising their financial prospects under the 99-year lease. There needs to be a better promotion and facilitation of economic development on Aboriginal land than is put forward by this amendment. And the protection of traditional owners’ traditional rights to control access and development on their own land is not present.

The member for Lingiari noted that these changes have come virtually out of the blue and that for a number of Indigenous communities across the Top End there has been little or no discussion or negotiation about these changes. Additionally, there is no evidence that the government understands the cultural values that attach to changes of this kind or the way in which those issues would play out at a future point in time. There is a diversity of situations that Indigenous people face and there are manifestly different conditions and challenges that present themselves to particular communities.

The comments made in the House today by Minister Brough, the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, to the extent that Aboriginal people live in communist enclaves I think is an example of the need for the government to reconsider and to examine more thoroughly what is actually going on in Aboriginal communities. These are not helpful and not accurate comments. There is a danger that this debate is one where we hear only the loud voices and where the underlying and historically based issues are not properly and thoroughly explored, nor the points of view of the communities themselves.

I will just reprise briefly the history that has brought us to this point. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was a product of the Woodward royal commission. It has been in operation for some 30 years. Justice Woodward’s basic premise was ‘the doing of simple justice to a people who have been deprived of their land without their consent and without compensation,’ and, further, that it was essential to both provide land and preserve the spiritual links to land that give Aboriginal people a sense of identity. While Woodward recognised the important need for Aboriginal people to be provided with land that would do most good in economic terms, as we do in this House and as Labor does, he also viewed the holding of land as a form of trusteeship rather than a transfer of rights.

There is some irony, I would have to say, in the position that the government takes where it wants to attack the rights of Indigenous people but in this very instance, when in fact they were not granted a certain kind of right, it takes opposition to that as well. The Aboriginal land rights act has subsequently been reviewed twice, most recently by John Reeves QC in 1997. That review was then referred to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs in December 1998. The House of Representatives committee did not accept Reeves’s major recommendations and it took wide views from many people and took written submissions. Its report, Unlocking the future, had as its primary recommendation that:

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 … not be amended without:

• traditional Aboriginal owners in the Northern Territory first understanding the nature and purpose of any amendments and as a group giving their consent—

and that is extremely important—and that:

• any Aboriginal communities or groups that may be affected having been consulted and given adequate opportunity to express their views.

That is the background: a process of review and of understanding an act of some 30 years standing, an extensive investigation by the House of Representatives committee and two primary recommendations that emerge as a result. It is on that that our opposition to the bill as it has come before this House is based.

It is the case that some of these proposed amendments, including proposed amendments before us which have been agreed to at least through the Northern Territory and through the land councils, are a result of an agreement on a package of proposals with the Northern Territory government. But it is our task as Labor members of this House to come to our view about the merits of the bill as it comes before us. That package took some time to negotiate—in particular, part IV of the act, which deals with mining and which, as I have said, has the support of the mining industry. But a number of the other proposed amendments have been neither sufficiently discussed nor negotiated with traditional owners or other Aboriginal people living on Aboriginal lands, nor even the land councils. That is the necessary precursor for a bill like this to come into law.

Whilst the need for traditional owner consent remains, I am worried that the federal government is already using the proposal in the amendments to negotiate with Indigenous communities. The cart is being put before the horse. It is important to identify that it is by no means axiomatic that individual home ownership capacity in and of itself will bring about economic independence or success for Indigenous people in facing the considerable challenges and disadvantage that does fall upon them. Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, has pointed out a number of overseas experiences that demonstrate that point.

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