Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Solomon for this motion on the books and can I recognise our chairman of the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia, the bald-headed, moustachioed—

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Then it is not a mirror—Mr Entsch. Last Saturday evening, I was fortunate enough to attend the 110th anniversary of the Labor Party in the Northern Territory. I say that because the very fibre of the Labor Party across northern Australia has been the north, its development and its development interests. We all support the idea of having an investment forum in the north as part of the process of developing it, and as a flow-on from the white paper. However, I just counsel a number of things. It is really very important that if these sorts of investor round tables are to take place, they will achieve very little unless Aboriginal traditional owners and those with an interest in native title on land across the north of Australia are involved. Native title and the statutory titleholders to the land such as through the Northern Territory land rights act have an interest in the majority of the land across the north. I am sorry to say, but I think simpler land arrangements often mean weakening title interests. That is, of course, affecting the interests of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people in the north of Australia.

Across the Northern Territory, all of traditional owners in the Northern Territory own more than 50 per cent of the landmass and more than 85 per cent of the coastline. If this forum is like so many others before it, it will not have acceptable outcomes unless it is engaging with and involving traditional owners of the land across the north. I would encourage those involved with this process to ensure they are taking proper account of the interests of native title holders and traditional owners of land in northern Australia.

Another issue confronting the north is water. So much of the northern development will always be dependent on sustainable water supply and access.

The Rudd government in 2007 convened the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce, which examined the long-term strategic potential for land and water development with particular emphasis, but not limited to, the capacity of the north's future agricultural development.    The Martin and Henderson Labor governments were part of that process and had, as a critical objective, set up strategic Indigenous reserves, SIR, program.

The SIR program was aimed at allowing Aboriginal traditional owners to have perpetual, exclusive and inalienable rights to a share of water from aquifers, rivers and creeks. The idea was that that water could be used by Aboriginal people for economic or environmental activity that would generate prosperity for their communities. The policy was developed by the Indigenous Water Policy Group and driven by the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, NAILSMA, formerly led by Joe Morrison, now at the Northern Land Council, and Peter Yu, formerly of the Kimberley Land Council.

But the election of the Mills-Giles CLP government in 2012 was to change everything. Immediately after the election, the CLP government tore up the SIR, denying Aboriginal people the opportunity to participate in their own economic future and development. It gets worse. The same CLP government then handed out huge allocations of water to other non-Indigenous interests, including to a local magistrate who was also a large donor to the CLP and to a prominent CLP member and pastoralist who stood against me at the last federal election. She admitted she did not know what she was going to do with the allocation. We now know, though, because she has applied to subdivide her property with a selling feature being the large water allocations that go along with the sale of the land. These sorts of rorts cannot be allowed to continue. If we are interested in actually developing the north properly, we need to have a rational approach to all resource development, including the allocation of water.

For NAILSMA, payback was swift. With the deeply flawed Indigenous Advancement Strategy, NAILSMA applied for funding to continue and grow their work. Sadly, they were unable to get any funding. Their record is second to none in terms of demonstrating on a scientific basis how our environment can be developed in a sustainable way to the benefit of all northern Australians and indeed the nation as a whole.

Of the $10 million over four years that NAILSMA applied to the ISA for, they received nothing—zilch, zero, not a red cent. It makes you think that those opposite and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs want northern development all right—they do want it—but not with Aboriginal people being engaged or having ownership of the outcomes.

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