Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

With regard to the Native Title Amendment Bill 2009, which proposes to shift more responsibility to the Federal Court for native title matters, I wish to conclude my remarks by saying that a change to the legal arrangements will not succeed without a change to the administrative arrangements, and I spoke at some length on that in my speech last night.

At the moment, significant to all these matters, are the so-called representative bodies, the land and sea councils. Every one of them associated with my electorate is dysfunctional and in fact cannot even resolve its own matters within its proceedings. In the north, theYamatji Land and Sea Council has come under severe criticism through representations in my office from Aboriginal people who want to see it resolve certain native title matters and certain issues of approval of mining projects et cetera, because they see employment and contracting prospects associated with them. It is a mess.

In the south of my electorate I have the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council, that has not even been able to resolve, over two years, the transfer of a tiny piece of land to the local fire brigade so that they can build a shed to house a brand new piece of firefighting equipment very necessary to the adjoining community. We are going to end up with some people getting killed because other firefighting appliances cannot be relocated there in a hurry, depending where the fire is. Fires have a habit of blocking off the access road when they occur. That is how bad the situation is and that administrative process needs to be changed.

We have another problem with land rights, which concerns the intervention of other people, other interest groups that tend to exploit native title to oppose something that they do not like. The classic example, which would be known by the next speaker, I think, is Hindmarsh Island. This House was rent apart by a campaign of white people utilising native title issues to prevent a mundane and, what was really otherwise, an uncontroversial land development. It now exists and I do not see any Aboriginal person now being unable to have a family, as was predicted at the time.

We have the tragedy of the INPEX decision in Western Australia, which has denied the people—the collective of Western Australia—millions and possibly billions of dollars of revenue. That revenue might have built hospitals and schools and other things through the payroll tax just in the construction of that project. Furthermore, the Commonwealth has become a loser of resource rent tax. From the minute the developers of that field put in a pipeline to the Northern Territory—with, of course, huge emissions in Japan or wherever that lengthy pipeline is constructed, and with the ongoing emissions and the necessary extra energy required to pump the gas—the Commonwealth were the loser.

Now, all of a sudden, the new Premier has used the law as it is written and might be determined by the Federal Court in the future, and the next such decision has been passed in minutes. Why? Because the so-called representative group was sidelined by the native title owners. The native title owners had their own vote this time and voted 90 per cent. Again, that dysfunction cannot continue.

Of course, we have the arrogance of the self-interest groups that intervene and people who say, for instance in the town of Broome, ‘Oh, we don’t want development; we want the other taxpayers of Australia to provide us with the Flying Doctor Service, a good hospital, roads and everything else you like but don’t you dare have some development up here that might in some way affect us.’ Missy Higgins the singer got into the act. She has a house up there, which I believe is tax deductible and one that she uses to get the sorts of feelings she needs to write things. These people should not be there. The Maret Islands, where INPEX wanted to go, has not been inhabited for years but suddenly the Kimberley Land Council starts flying people out there on a daily basis to prove that there was some interest by the Aboriginal— (Time expired)

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