Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

All that Labor has asked for from the start of the debate on this bill—from the very first time this bill was shown to us—is that there be consultation. That is all that the Indigenous community of Australia wanted, and that is why Labor pursued the idea that there should be consultation. There has been consultation, and that consultation has allowed for amendments—sensible amendments, practical amendments and amendments which constrained the undue scope of the bill as it was first introduced. The government should be thankful. The government should be thanking the Labor Party for making sure that there was time for that consultation and that there was time for those ideas to come forward.

But, regrettably, this is a government that does not want to talk with Indigenous people. It is a government that wishes to talk at Indigenous people in every statement by this Minister for Justice and every statement by the Attorney-General. There are untruths from the Minister for Justice, here now, about the supposed unanimity of the Aboriginal community of Australia. It is not true that every single Indigenous group said, 'Pass this bill straightaway.' Far from it. The government is showing, by the ignorant statements made by this Minister for Justice, that it does not know how to listen. If it was a government that knew how to listen to Indigenous people then it would have heard the voices of Indigenous people saying that there needed to be consultation. But, regrettably, the foolish Minister for Justice, who represents the Attorney-General in this place, has shown constantly that this government does not know how to listen, and it certainly has not listened to the Indigenous community here.

I want to reiterate that, for Labor, this bill is not about mining rights, as regrettably it seems to have been for the government. Rather, it is about land rights. That is something that my colleague Senator McCarthy said in the other place. I wish it were the case that, for the government, it was about land rights, native title and the compact that the Native Title Act is between the Australian polity and the Indigenous people of our country, but they do not seem to understand that. For this government, this bill has been about the Adani Carmichael coalmine. It is very disappointing, as I said before, to read the comments of the Prime Minister when he was in India in April when he said to the head of the Adani corporation that the native title laws that stood in the way of this mine would be fixed. That was his word—'fixed'—as if all that this act of parliament was was some ordinary piece of legislation and not the incredibly important legislation that it actually is.

Let me make clear again: there are some 126 ILUAs that this bill will validate. We accept that that is a just outcome for the communities that made those agreements under the law as it then was, and for those with whom those agreements were made. Regularising those agreements is a very important step. But, to make clear also, it is not my understanding that this bill will provide some kind of removal of a final legal hurdle for the Adani mine, as some media reports have suggested. As the Attorney-General has acknowledged in debate in the other place, there are in fact several very serious pieces of litigation that remain on foot in relation to the Adani mine. In particular, the Wangan and Jagalingou people, the traditional owners of much of the land on which the mine and its facilities are going to be built, or are proposed to be built, have several legal actions on foot against Adani.

Most of the cases that have been brought by the Wangan and Jagalingou people in the Federal Court and in the Supreme Court of Queensland will be entirely unaffected by the passage of this bill. In particular, they have made clear that there are some very serious allegations of fraud that have been made against Adani regarding the processes under which the Wangan and Jagalingou agreement was purportedly reached. Those proceedings, which may very well impact on the validity of any Indigenous land use agreement, will only commence trial hearings in March of next year, and there are other legal actions underway, including a case that challenges the validity of the licences issued by the Queensland government.

I repeat: for Labor, this has been about ensuring that there has been adequate consultation with the Indigenous people of Australia—a word that this government seems to have trouble understanding the meaning of. Its conduct of this bill has shown that. Again, the Native Title Act is a compact between the Australian people and the Indigenous people of Australia. It needs to be treated with the utmost respect, which, unfortunately, this government has not shown.

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