Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Fraser raises the issue of services. You know what we asked them to do? We asked the Territory Labor government to provide Indigenous people with the most basic things that they deserve: decent policing, decent education and decent health. I am negotiating on behalf of those Territorian Aboriginal people who have been denied that right by the people who sit opposite—that is an absolute disgrace—and I will continue to do that.

We have a couple of amendments that we will move today. I will table amendments that provide an option for the Commonwealth entity to hold township leases and other minor amendments together with a supplementary explanatory memorandum and a minor correction to the explanatory memorandum.

I have listened to the people whom I spoke with at the Northern Land Council in the last couple of days. On the five per cent cap, I inform the House that it is my intention to move a further amendment in the Senate when this is finally debated removing that five per cent. So far be it from me not to listen. We do listen to people. The reality is that that was set upon because it was a realistic rental agreement that most real estate proprietors would expect as a return on their properties. We and the Northern Territory government will negotiate fair and equitable returns with people in return for their 99-year leases. Then there will of course be a negotiation between the leaseholder of the head lease and the people who want to own their property, in the same way as currently occurs in the electorate of the member for Fraser here in the ACT—because that is the only way that people can have property rights. It will be treated identically. I think that is what people have to understand.

It has been nine long years. We now have the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, a member of the Labor Party, the housing minister of the Northern Territory, a member of the Labor Party, and the Indigenous President of the Labor Party, all agreeing that this is right. I simply ask—

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