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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I invite you to go back and look at the Hansard. There was no imputation other than what the member for Lingiari perceives in himself. The people of Tiwi are the people that we are here to discuss, because they have met with me and said on numerous occasions that this is something that they want. The members of the Labor Party today stand condemned because they are not letting the first Australians make that choice for themselves.

This piece of legislation does nothing more than enable Aboriginal Australians to have the same rights as everyone else has, if they choose to have them. At the moment they do not have them and the majority of the Labor Party, including the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, agrees with this. It was her idea. It is her party president, the member for Lingiari, who is condemned for his inaction over the poor health and wellbeing of the constituents he has represented for the best past of two decades.

This bill will allow one person, to be known as a statutory authority, to hold a headlease. The allegations by the member for Jagajaga that this somehow abdicates or removes the rights of Indigenous people in those places to have a say over what occurs in the next 99 years is wrong, because built into the lease are conditions about people being residents on the Tiwi Islands and about who can have a lease and under what conditions—and it can be reviewed. There are reviews built in for the very reason that they do not want the opportunity of making a decision for a 99-year period to lapse without the next generations being able to have a say and changing things as they go. What is so offensive about giving the first Australians the right to be able to determine who lives on their land and under what conditions? Absolutely nothing. That is the lie that is the Labor Party’s position in relation to this whole piece of legislation. This legislation—unlike the member for Kennedy’s thoughts that this is somehow forcing anybody—does not force; it is enabling legislation. The fact is that the people of Nguiu have said to me that for the first time men are walking with pride in their chests and their heads held high because they have some direction and some control over their own future. And the Labor Party wants to stop it.

When I have sat down with the traditional owners at Wadeye they have said, ‘We want to think about this,’ and I have said, ‘Go and think. Take your time. When you want to come back, you come back to us.’ We have given an offer to the people of Groote, saying, ‘When you want to, you come back to us.’ The Galiwinku people said, ‘We would like to be able to negotiate with you.’ I say to the First Australians, the people of the Northern Territory, that the reality is that because of the lack of leadership from the Labor Party’s side if there is a change of government at the end of this year those people who are looking for a brighter future for themselves and their children—building businesses, building employment opportunities, improving their health, giving kids the opportunity to go forward—will find that that is going to be snuffed out in a moment because of the ideology of those who sit opposite. They talk about paternalism. Their idea of paternalism is that they will decide what the First Australians can do, when they can do it and how they do it.

The member for Lingiari, as the member for the Northern Territory and his current seat for the best part of 20 years, oversaw the circumstances in the Northern Territory Alice Springs town camps—which have gone further downhill—and he has done nothing about it. The federal government comes in and stands up and says, ‘Yes, this is a Northern Territory direct responsibility. No, these are not traditional owners. These are special purpose leases. We will work with you but it will not be on the same basis that has failed before, where houses are not maintained and rents are not collected. We will change that.’ The member’s own Labor Party Territory government has agreed 100 per cent with the Commonwealth. It is only this dinosaur, the member for Lingiari, who is the President of the Labor Party up there, who is in total opposition to his own Chief Minister and his own former president of the federal Labor Party, Aboriginal man Warren Mundine. These people have spoken against him, yet he stands up there and condemns his own people by his actions.

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