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

Labor is very happy to support this bill, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Jabiru) Bill 2020, because it will facilitate the grant of a section 19A township lease and the complete transfer of ownership of the Jabiru township land to the traditional owners, the Mirarr people. In doing so, the bill does something concrete to recognise the rights of one of our First Nations peoples to determine their own future. The bill is, therefore, as welcome from this government as it is unusual because, very clearly, this bill is a welcome anomaly from what has been going on for First Nations people over seven long and dispiriting years of Liberal Party rule.

But, before I turn to that deplorable legacy of inaction, I should acknowledge that the groundwork for this bill was laid seven years ago, in the last year of federal Labor government. That Labor government introduced and passed the Aboriginal Land Rights and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2013, to give effect to the settlement of the Jabiru native title claim. Introducing that legislation in 2013, the then Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the Hon. Jenny Macklin, said:

The bill continues the government's commitment to ensuring Aboriginal people's ongoing connection to their land is recognised by scheduling further parcels of land as Aboriginal land. It will benefit traditional owners, residents and business operators in Jabiru and the wider Kakadu region in the Northern Territory. Importantly, it will also provide traditional owners with significant economic development opportunities.

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Importantly, this bill recognises the traditional ownership of Jabiru by the Mirarr people.

My friend and colleague the member for Lingiari also spoke in support of that bill, in 2013, saying this:

By adding this land to schedule 1 of the Land Rights Act, it allows for the land granted as Aboriginal land to be handed back to the traditional owners, the Mirarr people. There has never been any question that the Mirarr people were the traditional owners and are the traditional owners of Jabiru. Their connection to this country goes back many, many thousands of years. In fact Australia's oldest human occupation site, you might be interested to know, known as Malakunanja II, is the traditional lands of the Mirarr, as is of course the Ranger uranium mine and the site of the proposed Jabiluka uranium mine.

Now, with this current bill, the transfer of ownership of the Jabiru township to the Mirarr people may finally take place.

This bill puts right the decision made by the Fraser government to act on the 1977 recommendation of the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry—the Fox inquiry—which was in the following terms, and I quote from the second report of the inquiry:

That the land which constitutes the town, if one is built in the Region, not Land Claim become Aboriginal land but become part of the national park.

The Fox inquiry recognised the Mirarr people as the traditional owners of the land but withheld from them the formal title of Aboriginal land. This bill would facilitate the granting of that title. Labor welcomes this.

If the House can forgive me at a moment of reminiscence, I can say that I have a particular personal connection with the subject of this bill. In 1979 and 1980, I worked as a Northern Land Council field officer with the Mirarr people and other First Nations people of this region in setting up the Kakadu National Park in this beautiful part of our country. All of Kakadu National Park was Aboriginal land, except for the area on which the town of Jabiru was to be built. It is satisfying, it will be satisfying, to see this last piece returned to the traditional owners.

Now to the present. It was the most recent former Liberal Prime Minister, the one deposed by the current Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, who declared in June 2018 that 'Governments have got to stop doing things to Aboriginal people and start doing things with them.' While this bill is a happy example of doing something with First Nations people, it is an approach of which we have seen very, very little from this government. By way of example, I will begin with the issue of native title, because the right to lands, the link between traditional ownership and self-determination, is fundamental. Essentially, when it comes to the issue of native title, the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments have been asleep at the wheel. They did not stir when, in June 2015, the Australian Law Reform Commission delivered its review of the Native Title Act 1993 called Connection to country. That report marked the first major review of the critically important issue of connection in native title determinations, since the introduction of the Native Title Act. That report considered a number of related matters and made 30 recommendations for reform. It is now more than five years since that report was received by the government, and the government has still not even bothered to formally respond.

But this government certainly woke up when the full Federal Court of Australia delivered its decision in the case of McGlade v Native Title Registrar. Suddenly, it wasn't the interests of First Nations people at stake but rather those of commercial third parties, whose agreements to exploit lands, pursuant to agreements with traditional owners, were suddenly thrown into question. This government responded to the McGlade decision with astonishing speed and focus, expediting amendments to the Native Title Act in order to protect those third-party interests in a flurry of activity, including a belated, begrudging and largely perfunctory consultation with Indigenous Australians when Labor demanded the government talk to someone other than resource companies about changes to native title law.

The relationship between First Nations people and the Australian justice system is another area of great difficulty in which this government has consistently failed to act. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service have long provided a vital service to First Nations people who encounter the justice system. They have operated with a degree of autonomy in carrying out their vital role. But this year ATSILS were, against the strident objections of their leadership and the communities they serve, folded into a newly established national mechanism by the Attorney-General. This decision directly contradicted not only the clearly expressed views of the Indigenous community but also the very first recommendation of the Review of the Indigenous Legal Assistance Programreport that was commissioned and received by the government last year. That first recommendation stated:

To facilitate a sustainable, community-controlled Indigenous legal assistance sector, Commonwealth Government funding should continue to be delivered through a standalone, specificpurpose funding programwith minimum five-year funding terms.

Indigenous groups have expressed opposition to and deep concern about this decision by the government. In an open letter, some 100 organisations state that the Morrison government's decision to ignore the key recommendation of the ILAP review is:

… disappointing, not least because the Federal Government has been committed to and responsible for the funding and administration of ATSILS since their inception almost 50 years ago. This began after the 1967 Referendum in recognition of the Commonwealth's special responsibility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is important to retain this Commonwealth leadership.

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All evidence and research show that working in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and ACCOs is the best way forward. The Federal Government should honour its long-standing commitment, keep ILAP and adequately fund ATSILS to close the justice gap.

We call on the next government to urgently overturn this decision to abandon ILAP and instead retain a standalone Commonwealth program that supports the ATSILS and the communities they serve.

I could say a great deal more about the government's failure to engage constructively on issues of Indigenous justice, but I will move on to what is perhaps the greatest betrayal of First Nations people by the current government—that is, the betrayal of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Unlike this government, Labor is committed to honouring the Uluru Statement from the Heart and to working towards a genuine reconciliation with First Nations people. That includes working with First Nations people to establish an Indigenous voice to the parliament. In contrast, this government has used its preferred methods of governing—fear and lies—to undermine the very idea of the voice. It was appalling to see a fear campaign about a so-called third chamber of parliament based on deliberately concocted falsehoods and spread by the Liberal and National parties for the purpose of killing the voice before it could ever be heard. I say again: this bill represents a welcome departure from the general record of this government, and I am happy to congratulate those who have worked on bringing this bill into this place. I hope that it is the first of many actions by this government to actually move our nation closer to reconciliation and to improve the lives of First Nations people.

I will conclude by briefly discussing another issue of importance to First Nations people and, indeed, to all Australians—that is, the need to defend the Aboriginal flag from the current constraints on its use. This is yet another matter which the federal government should have resolved long ago, because it is clearly within their power to do so. An Aboriginal owned and led social enterprise and fashion label, called Clothing the Gap, have been running a Free the Flag campaign since being sent legal threats for using the Aboriginal flag on their clothing by the current copyright licensee. Clearly, this is an entirely unacceptable situation. As my friend and colleague the member for Barton, just last week, said:

It's heartbreaking to see a private company holding this symbol of incredible strength for its private profit.

The Aboriginal flag is a national symbol, but it's not being treated like one.

This matter can and must be resolved, and resolved in a manner that respects the copyright interests of the designer of the flag, Mr Harold Thomas. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

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