Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. I am pleased that the ALP will be opposing this bill. Professor Mick Dodson, when delivering the Mabo lecture in Cairns on 7 June, had something to say which I think is worth quoting to the House. He said:

·              Indigenous people all over the world understand that it is a constant and continuing battle to retain our land rights, to exercise our responsibilities for the land and waters, to practice our culture and languages, to build our families and communities, whether in the cities or in the bush, because we are the first peoples—this is our country and we must defend it. And as its the Traditional Owners who ought to decide who comes here, onto our land, and we should say so more often, because the consequences of sharing our country with the colonisers are devastating. And I know we can’t kick them out but is it too much to expect a fair go.

After 11½ years the Howard government has had a chance to show its record on Indigenous affairs. Unfortunately, it is a sad record and one that will haunt this Prime Minister to his grave when he eventually leaves this parliament, voluntarily or involuntarily. In the first budget in 1996 we saw $400 million ripped out of the Indigenous affairs budget—it was a budget that slashed across the sector. On the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum what do we see in relation to Indigenous health? Twenty-four per cent of Aboriginal men reach the age of 65 and 35 per cent of Aboriginal women reach the age of 65. And we call ourselves a civilised country!

That is why Aboriginal people in many respects are wary about governments of whatever political persuasion. Their history of dealing with Aboriginal people has not been good. It has been paternalistic. It has been patronising. It has not been sitting down in the sand with them and talking to them and working through what are very hard issues. When I was Aboriginal affairs spokesman, from 1996 to 2000, it was an eye-opener for me. I had not appreciated the extent of the problems in my backyard. It was not until I sat down with Indigenous people and talked to them that I realised that they too were concerned with what was happening with their communities, but they wanted to be part of the solution. Self-determination, self-empowerment, meant working with them, not hectoring them, not lecturing them, like this government seems to have done for more than 11½ years. This legislation is another example of that. What is it designed to do? It is designed to steal their land, to impose our conditions on them, to set conditions before they obtain benefits that everyone in the city obtains. In my electorate, if we tried to withhold the benefits of health, housing and other essential services on condition that householders surrender their leases or their land to the control of some other entity, or if they were required to give away their individualism, all hell would break loose. But it seems to be acceptable when it comes to Aboriginal people.

I was part of a bipartisan report from the House of Representatives Aboriginal affairs committee under the chairmanship of Lou Lieberman, who is no longer in this House. We talked about the Aboriginal land rights act and said: no changes unless there was the informed consent of the Aboriginal people. That recommendation was unanimous. It has not been considered by this government in the spirit in which the recommendation was given. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser deserves credit for picking up the land rights act that the Whitlam government proposed and passing it in 1976. That is what makes him markedly different from this Prime Minister. What we have is the member for Solomon saying, ‘Let’s hand it all back to the Northern Territory government.’ I would not trust the Northern Territory government as far as I could throw them, whether they were Labor or conservative, because both have an attitude when it comes to Indigenous people. It is an attitude we should not accept. The argument against the member for Solomon is exactly what he quoted in his speech: the 1967 referendum, which gives this parliament the constitutional authority, the legal authority and the moral authority to protect Aboriginal people from the states and territories. That was the mandate that was given to this parliament by the people in 1967.

In the second reading speech the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs stated:

·              The government is therefore acting to establish a mechanism through which the Commonwealth can hold and administer township leases.

Sadly, as I said, we are again debating legislation that works from the premise that the Commonwealth determines what is appropriate for Indigenous communities. What I say is that we work with Indigenous communities. When I was the shadow minister I was their advocate; I did not advocate against them. What we see here is an assimilation principle of previous years underpinning Commonwealth legislation; we see the whitefella deciding what is good. We are not the same—we have different values, we have different hopes, we have different aspirations. To try and run a policy on the basis that we want to make them like us is a policy that is doomed to failure, as the stolen generations report showed: when we took the children to try and make them like us, and destroyed communities and families, and impacted in such a way that even today there are devastating effects. And we cannot get an apology from this Prime Minister on what was official government policy at the time. Every state and territory leader has apologised. The sky has not fallen in.

If I seem too harsh, then consider the report which prompted this legislation: Living in the sunburnt country. This report was prepared on behalf of the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs by PricewaterhouseCoopers. One does not have to go past the first few pages to realise the likely outcomes. Pages 11 and 12 identify the consultations conducted between May and August 2006. Of 46 organisations specified, seven were identified as industry groups, 11 were identified as Indigenous groups and 28 were identified as government groups. I repeat: 28 were government and only 11 were Indigenous. There can be no real doubt about how the outcomes of the report were going to be skewed. The government appears still, after all these years in office, not to understand the need for proper consultation at grassroots level with Indigenous communities. I know it is hard at the moment because Indigenous communities are doing it tough and a lot of them are copping it from their communities. They are under siege in a very difficult environment and morale is low. Why? Because we have got a government and particularly a minister who loves to run out and blame the victim. That is the minister’s approach to life: to go on current affairs programs and run his public policy through Lateline and other programs. We know there is a problem there, but that is no way to run public policy.

In terms of the financial impact of this legislation, the explanatory memorandum states:

The costs of the office of Executive Director of Township Leasing will be met from up to $15 million to be provided over 5 years, from 2006-2007 to 2010-2011 for the township leasing scheme.

And note this:

The necessary funds will be sourced from the Aboriginal Benefits Account.

Aboriginal money is being used without consultation with the Aboriginal community. It reminds me of a number of programs this government announced and ATSIC was forced to foot the bill, dollar for dollar. There always was a cost to the Aboriginal community of a new announcement by this government: it was coming out of their purse. In the 2006-07 budget the key reform announced in relation to Indigenous Affairs involved additional funding for Indigenous housing of $293.6 million—funding which would provide about 730 new homes in remote areas. That was welcome. It is currently estimated by the Ministerial Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs that there is a current shortfall of up to 18,000 houses. This is in addition to the backlog of repairs and maintenance, estimated to be in excess of $700 million. The budget papers also revealed underspending of $60 million in the current Indigenous housing program for 2006-07.

According to Professor John Altman of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the ANU, the new Remote Indigenous Accommodation Program has three aims:

... to shift Commonwealth expenditure to focus on remote Australia, where only 25% of the Indigenous population lives; to abolish the Community Housing and Infrastructure Programme—

I always thought that it was a reasonable program and operated well—

and to shift or force Indigenous people instead into public housing (thus cost sharing with the States) or into private housing, conditional on traditional owners leasing their lands to the state and meeting negotiated behavioural conditions.

Professor Altman also points out that in this year’s budget the government announced it would assist Aboriginal people to buy their own homes to the tune of $300 million over four years. The same budget allocates $863.8 million to members of the ADF as financial assistance for home ownership through a subsidy for interest payments. Do not get me wrong: I do not in any way begrudge the ADF, but I make the point to illustrate where this government sees Indigenous people in its priorities. Indigenous people are entitled to and deserve more in terms of the problems with their communities. We cannot have a patchwork approach.

Inevitably, there is more than one side to any argument and, from my experience with the Indigenous community, I can categorically state that those views are considered and clearly articulated. I am impressed with the leadership of the Aboriginal community and I am impressed with the young people coming through. The sad part is that, for a long time and still now, this Prime Minister and government did not engage with a section of leadership of the Aboriginal community because they saw them as being too close to the previous Labor government. That is how this government dealt with them. The fact of the matter is that the government should be dealing with all members of the Aboriginal community who have an interest in their community. We should be mentoring the leaders and bringing them through, irrespective of their political persuasion.

There should not be a situation where, if you happen to be a blackfella who sings the government song, the government looks after you, but if you are a blackfella who does not sing its song you are not engaged with. That is the attitude of this government. That is what happened to a number of investigations of organisations within the Indigenous community. The dogs were set on community organisations because they were not aligned or sympathetic to the government; they were independent of the government. In the end they went belly-up because it was impossible to resist.

In the current debate over Indigenous town leasing, there is more than one view. Early in May this year the Aboriginal community of Nguiu in that Tiwi Islands signed up to the government’s private home ownership scheme. This is on the basis of a 99-year lease. The Commonwealth provided $5 million as a lump sum payment to control the land for the next 15 years. The minister described this as a type of cash advance.

The agreement will be recouped, according to a report in the Australian on 10 May, ‘through rental payments from sub-leasing over that 15-year period’. In addition, the Nguiu will receive $13 million for a high school, 25 new homes, better health services and an upgraded football oval. A senior Mantiyupwi landowner, Walter Kerinaiua, is quoted in the same report as saying:

The negotiations have not been easy, and we have stood our ground on a number of important matters. But we are now confident that Nguiu will remain a Tiwi town and that the social and economic future of our people will be improved ...

The ABC’s PM program reported on 17 May that not everyone in the community was happy with the outcome. Traditional owners at Nguiu agreed to the government’s proposal, but those who were not traditional owners were reported to be unhappy with the decision. One resident said on the PM program:

I know there’s still a lot of unrest in the community especially with the Retipi group. Yeah, we’re just a bit concerned that we might be rushing a bit.

In Alice Springs we saw the opposite reaction—residents refused to sublease their land in return for $60 million. The Weekend Australian reported that Tangentyere Council had rejected the deal because ‘residents would not have had any say over how housing would be managed’. While being described as ‘deeply disturbed’ by the decision, the minister spoke of his concern about behaviour in the Alice Springs town camps and the impact that had on township children. He then took the $60 million off the table. The Melbourne Age reported on 24 May 2007:

... Mr Brough said the government would not spend the money unless the residents subleased the camps to the Northern Territory Government for 99 years and gave up control over public housing in the camps.

On 18 April 2007, Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, released a statement to be made on his behalf at a general meeting of the Tangentyere Council. The council met that night to consider the government offer on town leasing. It is worth quoting some of Mr Calma’s comments in detail:

Our land is our most important asset, and maintaining a voice on how the land should be utilised and developed is integral to our self determination and to our futures. Changes in tenure will have a long term impact on our communities and are not easily reversed once done. They should not be done lightly, and indigenous peoples must fully understand the implications of any changes.

Mr Calma continued by raising his concerns that the government was insisting on changes to land tenure arrangements in order to ensure that investment in services to the community would continue to be provided. Mr Calma concluded his statement by saying:

And you have my full support in ensuring that both the NT and Australian government meet their human rights obligations in providing services to your community, as is your right as a citizen of this country. And this means without coercion.

I am profoundly disturbed by these comments and the trend which may be emerging to coerce Indigenous communities by withholding funding for services if land leases are not granted. At the annual session of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues concerns were voiced about this government’s plan to introduce private homeownership on traditional lands. Mick Dodson said that it was a ‘take it or leave it’ plan which was designed to benefit non-Aboriginal people. Mr Bryan Wyatt, of the National Native Title Tribunal, supported Mr Dodson’s position and reinforced his views by saying that the Tiwis had been conned into signing away management control of their communal lands for four generations in exchange for homes and services that the government provided other citizens without such preconditions.

It is valuable in debating the legislation today to consider analysis on the issue of individual land title provided by Tom Calma in the Native Title Report 2005. Commissioner Calma discusses the experience of the World Bank. In some developing countries there were trials of individual title over communal title primarily in the 1970s. He states on page 120:

The World Bank experienced difficulties in achieving outcomes under the individual titling approach to economic development. According to empirical economic research, the results exposed high costs, few benefits and in Africa, where farming prospered, it appeared to do so within the framework of customary rights, kinship and social contracts.

The commissioner noted that a key value element of the World Bank approach is the agricultural use of land, which is not necessarily the case in remote Australia. The World Bank experiment does, however, provide important lessons for the Australian experience. Quoting from the World Bank 2003 report, Mr Calma concluded:

The World Bank has taken the view that tenure security is vital to promoting economic development; however the nature of that security is not necessarily tied to formal individual title.

Commissioner Calma says the World Bank acknowledges customary title as a means of facilitating economic development, and recently noted that, subject to minimum conditions, customary title is generally more effective than premature attempts at establishing formalised structures.

This debate still has a long way to go, and without close and meaningful consultation with Indigenous communities it will be meaningless. On 23 June 2005, the National Indigenous Times hypothesised that it is not impossible that this government is considering ‘unpicking Aboriginal land rights’. Professor Mick Dodson, in a media release on 7 June took this further when he said:

My argument is that we are getting slaughtered by the colonial imperative to steal our land, to strip our culture and demoralise us as peoples and nations ... we must defend our identity and our inheritance in the land and sea.

The tragedy is that all the government want to do can be done, but it needs to be done with the Aboriginal community, in cooperation with them, taking them with them, bringing them through the process, not hectoring and lecturing and taking an assimilationist approach, not ignoring their pleas, and not adopting a take it or leave it attitude. Nowhere else in our community would we as representatives of our community cop that for our community. Self-determination is about making your own decisions, proceeding with the help of government; not government attacking you day in and day out.

See this speech in context