Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

When I see how you occupy your time here it is no wonder that I am a stranger in the House. I just did some quick research before I came down to give my speech in this debate on the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006. I looked up how much water the Northern Territory has. The Northern Territory has 77,000 megalitres of water in the annual run-off from its great rivers. I then looked up how much the Murray-Darling has. The Murray-Darling has only 22,000 megalitres. Half of the Northern Territory—and a lot of that would take at least half the water—is owned by people of Aboriginal descent, First Australians. Some 61,000 First Australians in the Northern Territory own 600,000 square kilometres—half the surface area—and they own let’s say half of the water supply, some 30,000 megalitres. The Murray-Darling on 22,000 megalitres supports 54,000 farming families—that does not include the 200,000 jobs that are there—and produces some $15,000 million a year of agricultural production. I ask: why do the most land-rich people on earth have almost all of the most appalling social statistical qualifying data concerning them? Whether it be life expectancy, income, alcoholism or trauma rates—these areas could arguably be amongst the worst in the world. How can these people be so enormously rich and yet so enormously poor?

When I was appointed minister in the Queensland government in 1983 I had to address that very seriously and very quickly. The education department had moved their teachers out of two schools and were threatening to move them from all of the schools in the gulf and peninsula. The police force were making similar threats and had their police removed from Pormpuraaw during mass rioting at the time. Similar threats took place at Yarrabah. They attempted to ban alcohol. They thought alcohol was the problem, as the current Queensland government does. That is what I walked into at the time. So we had to do some hard thinking.

I was quite surprised to find out that the Anglo races—the English, if you like—got private ownership in 1292. Quia Emptores was passed in 1292. At the time of the First World War the Anglos had nearly half of the world’s industrial production and about 40 per cent of its wealth—England and America put together. Why were these people so enormously successful? They were the one race on earth that had private ownership far earlier than anyone else. The next ones would appear to be the French, and that was not until the 1800s, and then the Germans in 1850. The Japanese only really got private ownership, the way we know it, in 1946. One can see the extraordinary success story that unravelled with the coming of private ownership to Japan, and one can see the same phenomenon occurring now in China. If you are looking for a reason as to why those races got ahead of the rest of the world—there may have been other reasons—the defining factor was that the Anglos had private ownership far faster than anyone else in the world, three or four centuries before anyone else in the world.

Why is this group of people in the Northern Territory, the most land-rich people on earth by a long way, so incredibly poor in every sense of the word? They do not have any private ownership. I have been quite amazed to hear each of the opposition speakers attack the minister over his use of the word ‘communist’. He could have used the word ‘socialist’ or whatever, but most certainly there is community ownership of land as opposed to an individual or a family owning this land.

I did not go into the job in 1983 with any ability to manoeuvre. The most successful community appeared to be Hopevale. I met with a person called Lester Rosendale, who became one of the leaders of the group that got together to change things in Queensland and who at that time was secretary to the advisory council of the church at Hopevale. The Rosendale family were heavyweights in the church. I said, ‘What have you done with land ownership here?’ He said, ‘We have private ownership; here’s the map.’ He had a big map of Hopevale with all the blocks drawn up on it. I said, ‘Legally it is still supposed to belong to the government with a beneficial ownership to the church.’ He said, ‘No, forget about that.’ I said, ‘What about tribes?’  He said no and waved it off. I was looking for a reason as to why Hopevale was the shining light of success amongst all the Aboriginal communities. It was the only one that had this private ownership arrangement.

We moved on. The next community I went to was Pormpuraaw. I met Jackson Shortjoe and Eddie Holroyd. I said, ‘What do you want?’ One of them, Eddie Holroyd, said, ‘We want self-management.’ I said: ‘That’s coming. Forget about that. Move on to the next item.’ Jackson Shortjoe then said, ‘I want to have a go at the cleanskins, the cattle that are running around here unbranded.’ The cattle were running around on government land. At one stage they were government cattle but no-one had been able to get them in. I think some members of the community were joining their cousins in little raids on the cattle in Pormpuraaw and moving them out to their cousins’ place. He thought it would be better if he was mustering them for himself. I said: ‘If you are going to do that, Jackson, you are going to have to build yards and put up fences. You will have to put out a lot of money here. I don’t have government money to give you and I’m pretty certain the feds won’t give you any money. Every bit of money they have put into anything they’ve lost, so I doubt whether you will get anything from them. What say you take up private ownership of a block and then you get some money off the bank to do it yourself?’ He said, ‘But we wouldn’t be able to get the private ownership.’ With a confidence that I most certainly did not feel I said: ‘I’m the boss. I make the decisions. If I decide that is going to be private ownership, then you will own it and nobody else.’ He said, ‘Yeah, that would be good.’ Later we had discussions with Eddie Holroyd and went down the same path conversationally.

Let me go back to Hopevale for one moment, because CDEP, the Work for the Dole scheme, started off with a Hopevale person called Greg. They did a 60 Minutes program on the scheme. It is the only time in the history of 60 Minutes that they did a repeat of a program the following week, because the positive public reaction was so immense to what Greg had achieved at what was then Weipa South and is now Napranum.

Hopevale went on to produce Matty Bowen—the greatest footballer in Australia at the present moment, to quote Peter Sterling; some of the selectors obviously disagree but I would agree with Sterling—Eric Deeral, the first Aboriginal person to be elected to a parliament in Australian history, and Noel Pearson, who needs no introduction to this parliament.

Torres Strait Islanders, in sharp contrast, are arguably the most successful race on earth in terms of the mothering of children and life expectancy, despite being away from medical access, in terms of trauma, alcoholism and crime. I remember being on Mer Island and asking the storekeeper how often the store got broken into, because we used to average one government store a week in a lot of Aboriginal communities. The lady said, ‘What do you mean?’ I had to explain to her what ‘broken into’ meant and she recoiled in horror and said, ‘No, we don’t have anything like that.’

The Mer case or the Mabo case, as it is known now—it was really the Father Passi case, because Mabo was picked out on the second day—one of the most famous cases in Australian jurisprudential history, centred on the fact that these people knew that they owned this area of land. It was acknowledged by everyone on the island that they owned that land. The government did not really interfere in any way with that ownership so they had continuous occupation and ownership which was universally recognised. I went on to recognise that arrangement in the legislation. If the Premier, God bless him, had listened to me and we had released the deeds of grant on Mer Island, there would have been no Mabo case. But he listened to $12½ million worth of lawyers’ advice, which was entirely wrong. But the judges were right in saying that those people owned that land. That was the decision of the Bjelke-Petersen government and every member of that government and every member of parliament recognised that ownership and so ultimately did the High Court—and who would argue with that decision? We could argue very much over the way it has been extended, but we will leave that for another day.

At Pormpuraaw we had only ever mustered 360 head of cattle. The government, which was responsible for Pormpuraaw, or Edward River as it then was, had only ever succeeded in mustering 360 head of cattle. But within three years, under Eddie Holroyd and Jackson Shortjoe, under the private ownership arrangements and the arrangements we had for the cattle, they got in 6,000 head. Under government-community ownership we got in 360 head, which was the maximum we ever got in. Then, under the control of the federal government, at the adjoining Aboriginal area, Aurukun, they started community ownership. The church had done a wonderful job there in fact. They had 12,000 head of cattle. It was turned over to community ownership and was run under community ownership, which really amounts to white outsiders coming in and doing it for you. That is really what community ownership amounts to: almost every store and cattle operation is run by outsider whitefellas, which is a dreadful situation in itself. It is demeaning for every single person of Aboriginal descent in these communities. The Aurukun cattle operation was run exclusively by whitefellas. They had inherited 12,000 head of cattle. Within six years they had no cattle at all. But under entirely black private ownership we went to 6,000 head of cattle mustered behind wire. This is an incredible success story which proves conclusively that if you move in this direction there is no reason why these people will not be just as successful as any other race of people on earth—if I may use the term ‘race’.

But I was in no situation to make these decisions. I must say that at the time I had read with very great interest the works of Konrad Lorenz, who received the Nobel Prize during that period for his work on territory and aggression, and Robert Ardrey—his magnificent books, including The Territorial Imperative. As one person remarked, it is the most important book since Das Kapital was written. If I were to reduce what Ardrey was saying in his group of books, of which The Territorial Imperative is one, to a single phrase, it would be that in Russia the year that the Communist manifesto was written was the same year that the Lincoln homestead act was propounded in the United States. Half of the United States was taken up under the Lincoln homestead act. Everyone got a mile by a mile for occupation, cultivation and production—those were the three criteria that you had to meet. You had to live on it, you had to produce something of value from it, you had to cultivate it and you had to use the land. If you did, you got a square mile for free. Remember the big land rush in the movies when they rushed to put their pegs into the ground? That land rush resulted from the Lincoln homestead act.

So Ardrey said that what happened was that Russia was turned into an experiment in community ownership and the United States was turned into an example of private, family territorial ownership. He compared the performance of both states. Russia was the biggest basketcase on earth, having to import huge amounts of food from outside, yet it had a bigger area of cultivated, arable land than the United States had—much bigger in fact. Nearly 90 per cent of the food produced in the United States by agricultural production was surplus to their requirements. They were feeding themselves and nine other people for every American at the time.

Let me move on and say that the question that I asked myself was: how do we move these people from where they are to where these people should be? I asked them the question first, because I actually had little say and little room in which to manoeuvre. So we went out and called a public meeting in each place and we said: ‘Hey, Fellas, this reserve area is in the name of the Queensland government. We’re the legal owners. You people are the beneficial owners, but the name on the ownership papers for Pormpuraaw, Kowanyama or Lockhart River is that of the Queensland government. We do not want to continue in ownership of this land. It is not right, it is not moral, it is not legal and it is not proper. We want to get out. We have to put someone’s name on this bit of paper. Whose name do you want on it? Do you want your local shire council name? Do you want your land council name? Do you want the government’s name to continue on it? Do you want private names to go onto this bit of paper? We will cut it up into little pieces and put private names on it. Whose name do you want to go on the bit of paper?’

They asked a lot of questions about private ownership. It was a concept they were not familiar with. At the end, about 3,800 people voted and only three voted against private ownership. Do you want to own your own house, your own farm and your own cattle station or do you want the council—whatever council or government that might be—to own it? Surprise, surprise! The vote was 3,800 to three. Nobody in this place has gone out there and asked them. Nobody has sat down and given them time. In this process that took three months, I think I was home for three nights. This process took an enormous amount of energy and commitment.

There are about 100,000 hectares of flat land at Lockhart River; it has a 60-inch rainfall. The land is very suitable for grazing or farming. We decided that at least we could plough out the blady grass and put in improved pasture and that would provide about two beasts to an acre or three beasts to a hectare. That would produce $50 million in income, which would have put the 100 families that lived at Lockhart River on an income of $400,000 each.

It would take a lot of money—we are maybe talking about $20 million—to move from where we were to put that fencing in, to plough out the blady grass, to plant the improved pasture, to put in waters and to set up a bit of ancillary feeding. I did not have a government that would give $20 million to the people, and I am damn sure that the federal government, the Hawke government, after the series of disasters that they had inherited, were not going to put a cent in it. Clyde Holding told me that they most certainly would not. So where was the $20 million going to come from?

We felt that, if we put the blocks out to private ownership, these people would own a piece of land; they would have something they could take to the bank. Mr Deputy Speaker, when you think about it, that is the only way it can ever happen. The bank has to have some security, and it is the only one with pockets big enough to be able to provide the finance. As far as the house building went, we provided them with the wherewithal to build their own homes, and 360 jobs were created. The interesting phenomenon was that, where many houses had been utterly destroyed—and Kowanyama was a classic example of this—and probably 70 per cent of the houses had been destroyed by the occupants, people who were not involved with the building program suddenly started to look after their own homes. When people started to realise they could build a home themselves, it was enablement or, to quote Noel Pearson in his very wonderful speech to the Press Club, it was ‘capability’. In retrospect what we were giving those people was the capability to move forward.

I hear a lot about education. Peter Harvey-Sutton, a schoolteacher at All Souls, is about the only person I know who has been successful. He frankly said, ‘If you want a place in the football team, you had better turn up to school and do your homework.’ It was a very cogent argument. Most of the leadership of the Aboriginal communities in Queensland come from All Souls school, and it is the result of very great people like Peter Harvey-Sutton as an educator.

Finally, Bjelke-Petersen said, ‘How many families do you have, Bob, that can run these things?’—he did not think we had too many; I think he thought I was a bit of a bleeding heart—and I said, ‘Five’. We had about 40,000 people living in these communities. He was quite staggered. I think he expected me to say hundreds or thousands. He said, ‘Only five?’ and I said, ‘Well, you asked me the question!’ At that point in time he realised, as everyone in this place should realise, that we must move forward. Do not worry about the past. Let us move forward into the sort of world that we can create for these people. (Time expired)

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