Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I strongly support the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Bill 2007 that is before us today. This is not a grab for power by the federal government or a blow to Territory self-government. All the action at the national level is designed to ensure the protection of Aboriginal children from harm and to prevent further abuse.

Small survey teams made up of government departmental representatives and, in some cases, police have commenced community engagement and area surveys in a number of communities to assess the resources they need. A task force made up of child protection experts is already in place. The emergency measures to protect children already announced are the first step towards providing a stabilising influence in communities.

These initiatives only came about because of the inability of the Martin Labor government to deal with the problem and act accordingly. However, the Northern Territory is not alone. Labor state governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia have adopted a similar tardy approach to dealing with abuse problems in their communities. The time for sitting on reports is now long over. Tough measures are needed, but the federal government is not imposing draconian measures or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Nor will we victimise Aboriginal communities as it is only a minority of people who have transgressed the law.

Welfare reforms will stem the flow of cash going toward substance abuse and ensure funds meant for children’s welfare are used for that purpose. It is vital that school attendance is also enforced. As part of the immediate emergency response, most state police forces agreed to send officers to the Territory along with the AFP. Volunteers from all walks of life are also coming to these Indigenous communities requiring assistance. This will make communities safer.

By the inaction of state and territory governments, the Howard government was forced to act immediately to protect Aboriginal children and tackle these problems. It is clear that, after the historic announcement, the policy has the widespread support of the Australian community. The Little children are sacred report detailed the shocking extent of child abuse and family violence in Indigenous communities in the Territory. The magnitude of the problem has been known for some time and, while there have been some attempts to address it, this has been clearly insufficient.

The Northern Territory Emergency Response Taskforce recognises the urgent need for immediate intervention to prevent child abuse in communities. I am heartened by the speed with which the task force settled its terms of reference and moved to establish its operational priorities. Ensuring communities are safe and government services are up to scratch is the first step. Commander of the task force’s operational group, Major General Dave Chalmers, and his team are currently assessing infrastructure, housing, health services, income support and policing arrangements while working closely with communities and carrying out surveys with experienced survey teams. Government business managers will operate in prescribed townships after the surveys are completed, and they will ensure that services in the community are coordinated and assets are being properly managed. State governments have pledged policing support and other assistance to the Northern Territory Police and, as I said, police are already on the ground.

The federal government is now implementing a number of complementary parts of the emergency relief effort, including measures to support school attendance and welfare reform and measures designed to provide for the healthy wellbeing of children backed up by medical checks. Health teams include not only medical practitioners but also child protection officers and interpreters. As part of the federal intervention process, the government will be changing the law to remove the requirement for people to get a permit to enter Aboriginal townships. Permits will be scrapped in relation to the common areas of townships, as well as roads into these townships, and airstrips. Common areas are those parts of a township that are normally accessible to everyone, such as public buildings and facilities, shops, art centres and the like.

I personally do not think this measure goes far enough, but it is a good first step. I personally think that the whole permit system should be done away with and normal laws of trespass should apply. Why should people need a permit or, in other words, a visa, to visit Aboriginal land? Aboriginal people may look different and many may speak a different language, but they are Australian and the land which they occupy is part of Australia. However, contrary to my view, the permit system will continue to apply to the vast majority of Aboriginal land in the Territory, including homelands. Improving access to townships will promote economic activity and help link communities to the wider world. Removal of the permit system will also enable normal scrutiny of activities in Aboriginal townships and access for all people, including police, media, doctors and other essential service providers. It will also lead to improved housing, help get kids to school and enable people working to improve their own circumstances.

In May this year the federal government introduced the first 99-year lease over a township on Aboriginal land. This historic agreement with local people for the lease of the town of Nguiu on the Tiwi Islands will enable them to have real property rights—to buy a home, to own a piece of land, to start businesses and to have the same opportunities as other Australians. It is impossible to find an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory that has a market garden, a greengrocer, a hairdresser, a restaurant, a clothing shop, a shoe shop, a bakery or a butcher shop. Who out there honestly believes that Aboriginal people should not have access to these services in their townships that other Australians enjoy? After 30 years, the permit system has not stopped the carpetbaggers, the drug pushers, the grog runners, the abusers and the corrupt. We can no longer allow the situation where children are being abused and where crimes are being perpetrated on people who have little or no protection. We should not segregate one part of Australia from another just because of a person’s skin colour.

As I mentioned, Nguiu on the Tiwi Islands is the first community to take advantage of 99-year leasing, which offers the chance of private home ownership and business enterprise development on Aboriginal land. This is what the federal intervention in Indigenous communities is all about. The Howard government wants to break that cycle of despair. It wants to encourage land councils to work proactively towards engaging Aboriginal people with private enterprise and economic development. A good example is the federal government’s offer earlier this year of $60 million to Tangentyere Council, in Alice Springs, to upgrade town camps in Alice Springs. Tangentyere should have accepted the offer. There is an urgent need to improve conditions in the town camps in Alice Springs and to impose the rule of law on areas one of my parliamentary colleagues described as ‘ghettos of despair’. Town camps have become associated with Third World living conditions: poor hygiene, extreme violence, alcohol abuse and child sexual abuse.

The Territory government has done too little since 2001 to remedy this situation or to improve the lot of Aboriginal town camp dwellers. Its response was the Alice Springs Town Camps Review Task Force report, which was published in 2006. It reviewed infrastructure, services and living conditions in town camps. The report highlighted the urgent need to bring power, water, sewerage, roads, rubbish and rates into line with standard arrangements for other parts of the town. This would build a healthier and safer community for residents of the town camps, as will the proposed alcohol courts. All town camps have historically experienced poor infrastructure and service provision. These federal government initiatives offer a normalisation solution for town camps and communities as well as providing private homeownership opportunities, in contrast to the neglect shown by the Northern Territory Martin Labor government.

The Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs highlighted in question time today the latest comments from Clare Martin about the Northern Territory national emergency response. He also explained the need for federal government intervention. For Ms Martin to say that compulsorily acquiring town camps has nothing to do with protecting children shows just how out of touch with reality the Northern Territory government has become. In 2006 Ms Martin—and her Alice Springs Town Camps Review Task Force report—said that housing was of critical importance because of overcrowding and that its resultant stress and poverty were key factors in child abuse. In their first meeting, the federal Indigenous affairs minister heard from Clare Martin that the Alice Springs town camps were her highest priority because of alcohol and drug fuelled violence, abuse and overcrowding. How can she now turn around and say that the government’s measures have nothing to do with protecting children? This hypocrisy is astounding and underlines more than anything the appropriateness of the Howard government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.

The release of the third Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage report earlier this year also reinforced the need for a new approach to tackling Aboriginal issues in the Territory. Just about every indicator shows that Aboriginal Territorians are well below the national average and are disadvantaged. While some progress has been made in achieving falling rates of infant mortality and in increasing educational opportunities, a lot more needs to be done. Indigenous housing is one area which needs improvement. There needs to be more choice and opportunity for Aboriginal people in the Territory that allows them to realise the economic potential of their land. There needs to be changes to the land tenure in Aboriginal townships, streamlined processes for land development and improvement in the accountability of land councils and royalty bodies. Federal intervention now holds out that hope.

Central to the current intervention debate is the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, which was passed by both houses of the Commonwealth parliament and imposed exclusively upon the Northern Territory in 1976. At the time, pressure was building for land rights, and the political climate was ripe for change. At the time, the Aboriginal affairs minister, Ian Viner, picked up on a central theme while introducing the legislation. He waxed lyrical about Aboriginal spiritual connection with the land and the Dreamtime. He said that ancestors left in each country certain vital powers that made that country fruitful and ensured a good life for people forever. He said, ‘An Aboriginal’s country, no matter how stricken a wilderness it may seem to others, is, to him, a Canaan.’ He stated his belief that there had been a fundamental change in social thinking in Australia, recognising that within our community there are some people, the Aborigines, who live by a unique and distinct system of customary law. Therefore we can see the intent of the land rights act—to establish rights, to protect the country and its inhabitants from intruders, to create inalienable title in perpetuity for a people who lived differently and thereby to ensure a good life for people forever.

The purpose of the land rights act was to establish a sanctuary, a preserve of living prehistory within modern Australia. Spurring on this mood were the Commonwealth’s deep suspicions about the intentions of the embryonic Territory government: the legislative council. To defend Aboriginal Territorians from their future government, the act stipulated that the Territory parliament could not acquire Aboriginal land for public purposes. At the time, Canberra genuinely believed that, given half a chance, the Territory council would repossess Aboriginal land en masse and Ian Viner felt compelled to tell the Commonwealth parliament that he had had assurances that the Territory legislative assembly was prepared to cooperate. In fact, there was uncertainty, resentment and a lot of division in the Territory, not so much about Aboriginal land ownership but more to do with the way the land rights act was imposed exclusively upon the Territory from above. It seemed hypocritical—and it was—to impose upon a Territory a land regime that was applauded by the same people who would not have a bar of it in their home states.

Some years ago I argued, in a paper to the Bennelong Society Conference, that the Aboriginal land rights legislation was, in a sense, a rights act, not a land management act. It was about putting things right, about appeasing the national conscience and international opinion in the only place that the Commonwealth could, in the Northern Territory. I argued that it was not about good land management, land administration or planning for the future exploitation and productivity of the land; it was about the protection of land as a right, the preservation of culture, defending Aboriginal people and their land from the intrusion of outsiders, be it pastoralists, miners, tourists or anyone without a permit—even their own future Territory government.

The land rights legislation has left the Territory a legacy that has soured relations between the Northern Territory government and the land councils ever since. To defend the rights of Aboriginal Territorians, the act stipulated that the Territory parliament could not acquire Aboriginal land for public purposes for fear that a Territory government would repossess Aboriginal land en masse. So the legislation was, as I said, imposed exclusively from above.

Today, almost half of the Northern Territory is under Aboriginal title. The Commonwealth act prohibits any compulsory acquisition of land under the act by the Territory government. The power of the land councils has grown in equal measure. Land council administration costs have eaten up mining royalty moneys, and whatever little is left has gone to benefit some Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. But, despite this protection, many Territory Aborigines today are land rich and dirt poor, trapped in a welfare dependency status. The reality is that it is difficult to find a functional Aboriginal community anywhere. The federal Indigenous affairs minister has highlighted this problem in the past year or so. Sexual assault, domestic violence and other violence, antisocial behaviour and drunkenness are all too common today in many communities.

Some years back, the then minister for Indigenous affairs, Philip Ruddock, produced an options paper for the future of the land rights act. One option was repatriation of the act to the Northern Territory government. That would have meant at least some control by the Territory government of over 50 per cent of the lands in the Northern Territory. As history shows, the offer was ignored by the Northern Territory government, by Chief Minister Clare Martin and by the land councils. It was a missed opportunity.

The land rights act has failed because, while it has created Aboriginal owned land, it has also reduced Territory Aboriginals to a welfare dependency status. The royalty flow from mines located on Aboriginal land has been used by land councils to fund the administration costs of a powerful bureaucracy, and an elite Aboriginal leadership has emerged. Moneys have been distributed to select groups and individuals on a grace-and-favour basis, with little flowing down to those at the bottom. Decision makers in the royalties distribution business have in many cases been beneficiaries themselves in the process. Many of these people are the very same people who are now screaming the loudest about the introduction of these reforms.

My view is that the leasing provisions in this legislation will right some of these wrongs, but the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act should be repatriated to the Northern Territory as soon as possible, with its new provisions being discussed today but also with the Commonwealth installing some safety clauses to guarantee some of its provisions, as it sees fit. It is central to the current debate on the federal intervention in the Northern Territory. The government are not forcing this act on the Northern Territory government; we are not forcing the Territory government to manage this act. They do not want it. They have said that in the past. They are not prepared to govern for all Territorians and that is why the federal government are intervening now and that is why I support the legislation before the House today.

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