Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I also speak in favour of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill. Like the member for Lingiari, I congratulate the government on introducing this legislation. It will be unanimously supported in this House and will be a net contributor to the wellbeing and welfare of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. That is why my colleague the member for Lingiari speaks in such a passionate manner about this subject, born not just of his great and substantial knowledge but of his lifelong commitment to the issues that are underpinned by this legislation.

This bill amends the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 to expand the functions of the Executive Director of Township Leasing by allowing it on behalf on the Commonwealth to hold a sublease of Aboriginal land. The bill of course will also facilitate a resolution of the irregular and uncertain tenure arrangements in the community of Mutitjulu. The community of Mutitjulu is located on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory, and in 1985 it was leased by the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Aboriginal Land Trust to the Director of National Parks for 99 years. That lease expires in 2084. At the time of the creation of the lease, of the effective handover of the rock to Aboriginal peoples, I was living in the Northern Territory and I had met Warren Snowdon many times. The decision by the Hawke government to transfer the title of the rock was highly contentious. It was a tough political battle and a battle that was engaged in with vigour by all sides—it was a battle which I believe brought no credit to the then government of the Northern Territory or the then opposition in the federal parliament. At that time hundreds of thousands of dollars of territory taxpayers' money was spent on a campaign to stop the rock from being given away. I have before me and ad that was run in the Northern Territory News. It is headed 'The rock belongs to all Australians!' and declares:

On October 26 without consultation or mandate, the federal Labor government will hand over Ayers Rock and the whole of the Uluru National Park to fewer than 100 Australians. They will then pay these special Australians $75,000 a year to lease it back from them. All Australians visiting Ayers Rock will pay to see it, and the new owners will get 20% of that fee.

This was an ad paid for by the government of the Northern Territory. This was a campaign joined by the federal opposition—by then opposition leader John Howard. This was a campaign that saw some of the very worst elements of our country come forward to argue what they thought was a principle argument about not allowing the rock to be given away. I was a young man at the time and I watched the thoughtful enthusiasm of Clyde Holding, the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. He grappled with the very poor political environment that had been created around what was in fact a gesture by the Australian government and by the Australian parliament—but, more than a gesture, it was getting real administration and process and employment and economic livelihood into the land rights debate in a way that was critically important. Clyde visited the Northern Territory on many occasions to explain the Commonwealth's position. The then Chief Minister, Ian Tuxworth, wound the campaign up with such ferocity in the Northern Territory—this is all documented in the Northern Territory News papers of the day, in 1983. One screaming headline declared 'Hawke gives Uluru Park to Aborigines' and the graphic used by the Northern Territory News is a silhouette of Ayers Rock with Clyde Holding's image on top and the words 'The final solution.' The campaign run at that time brought nothing but disgrace and embarrassment on us as Northern Territorians and on us as a nation.

I am really pleased that as we reflect on those events of the 1980s and as we reflect on what has become the reality of land rights in the Northern Territory, as much as I disagree that we can do gas mining on land in the Northern Territory I completely agree with the principle that if we do not have Indigenous approval we cannot go forward. That is not about the geology of gas mining, that is not about the interaction of gas and water, that is not about the technical doability of it—it is just about the reality that if you do not have Indigenous consent to use Indigenous land you cannot use it.

As we speak here today, according to the Northern Land Council more than 80 per cent of the value of extracted minerals in the Northern Territory comes from mining on Aboriginal owned land. This amounted last year to minerals production worth more than $1 billion—$1 billion a year from land that is Aboriginal owned. Today at enterprise level and regionally throughout the Northern Territory, northern Western Australia and northern Queensland, we see outstanding examples of Aboriginal employment and participation. In remote regions of our country employment of Aboriginal Australians in the mining industry has increased by 71 per cent for males and an astonishing 307 per cent for females over the period 2006 to 2011. Today in the Northern Territory approximately 30 per cent of Aboriginal lands are under exploration or in negotiation for exploration, and we could see that proportion rise. I hope we do. When we see it rise, we will see it rise because of the property rights that are implicit in the operation of the land rights act in the Northern Territory—in the way in which the land councils work with project proponents, supported by their communities, engaging in the interests of their communities to create an economic livelihood that creates income, that creates opportunity, that creates better health and that creates better outcomes because of the strength of decisions that were made in this place by previous governments dating back to the 1970s but carrying the torch of good public policy and good public administration that have benefited Aboriginal people for near on 40 years.

So I speak on a bill that not only improves the operation of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act but also improves on the nature of the property rights that attach to it. It expands the capacity and the operations of this act into numerous other townships and creates the capacity for leasing, transferring and subleasing such land. The creators of the framework of that legislation were the Whitlam and Fraser governments. Passing through the tumultuous and unpleasant period of the early 1980s, when the Uluru debate took place, we find ourselves now, some decades later, proudly proclaiming not just the validity of this legislation but also the profound economic impact that we have when we create land rights, respect decisions made by Aboriginal people and seek informed consent from Aboriginal people. That informed consent brings with it economic rights and obligations. It brings with it the dignity of engagement from our great companies, our great mining and resource companies, but also increasingly tourism operators who are looking at bringing tourism opportunities into remote and regional Australia to explain and showcase our Indigenous cultures in a way that creates good jobs on country, good careers, great livelihoods and careers that are transferable to other locations. We see a range of opportunities that grow from the courage of people who, in this parliament over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, made decisions to give rights and benefits and to recognise ownership of land. They courageously underpinned that with legislation that has survived and is able to be amended and improved in this way.

I commend this legislation to the House. I commend the minister and the government for bringing it forward. As I reflect back on those bitter days of the battles of the mid-1980s on the proposition of providing Aboriginal control of lands with which they have cultural connection and over which they have rights, I can only feel in myself, as I reflect on the people who fought these battles through the 1970s and who gathered and celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Uluru decision recently, that the fine thoughts and aspirations have indeed been borne out, even though for a short time in the early 1980s it looked like the darker angels of our nature would prevail once again.

This bill will go through this House and the other place without opposition and with the complete support of our parliament, as it should. I congratulate the government on bringing this legislation forward.

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