Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition supports the Native Title Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2009. The bill makes amendments to the Native Title Act 1993 by the insertion of a new subdivision into part 2 of the act. It facilitates the construction of housing and associated community infrastructure in Indigenous communities that are or may be subject to native title. The bill seeks to consult meaningfully with the native title parties through a legislated consultation process of up to four months. The new process ensures that the representative Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander body, or any registered native title claimants in relation to an area of land or waters, are notified and afforded an opportunity to comment on future legislation—future acts—that could affect native title.

The purpose of this bill is to simplify the process by which tenure issues can be resolved to enable the construction of public housing on native title lands. The reason for this is to ensure that the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been allocated to building housing in remote communities for Indigenous Australians might build an actual house at some point in the future. To date this program has been, I would argue, one of the sorriest chapters of the government’s administration. This is a program that has failed at every single point. The coalition, who support this program and the investment of these funds and have done so right from the outset, will do what we need to do to ensure that the government has the support to get this program working. But we remain horrified and disappointed, as do Indigenous Australians and Indigenous communities right around the country, at the incredibly poor progress that has been made with this program.

It is also my hope that the consultation processes that are set out in this bill will indeed involve talking to the native title custodians of these lands and that we will not have the situation where this process, as we have seen too often, particularly in Central Australia, is hijacked by land councils. Many of those I recently visited in Central Australia with my shadow ministerial colleague, the member for Warringah. We met with quite a number of Indigenous native title custodians who had been shut out of many consultations by the Central Land Council, and that was cause for great concern. I hope that what we see and pay for in this bill will actually translate into some genuine consultation with those who have a long-term interest in these lands and they will not just be subject to some sort of bureaucratic process overseen by the Central Land Council in particular—ticking boxes rather than carrying out the purpose of this bill. The purpose of our support for this bill is to provide genuine consultation with the traditional owners.

Where a future act is covered by these amendments and certain procedural requirements are met, the future act will validly affect native title. These amendments will operate for 10 years, which matches the 10-year funding period under the national partnership agreement entered into between the Australian government and the state and territory governments for remote Indigenous housing and service delivery. The key issue here is that when you undertake an activity like this type of construction on these lands it has the effect of extinguishing native title. So it is important in order to guarantee the faith of this process that we put in place a measure that will guarantee the security of the title while at the same time trying to provide much-needed services to these communities.

I have referred to some of the significant problems that have occurred with Indigenous housing programs in debates in the House of Representatives on numerous occasions but I will repeat them here again. In September 2007 the former government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Northern Territory government as part of the Northern Territory intervention. The delivery of housing formed part of that landmark action, an action which coalition members were and remain keenly supportive of and proud of. In April 2008 the Rudd government announced a funding package of $647 million over four years to deliver 450 new houses, 233 builds on existing houses and the refurbishment of 2,500 existing houses spread across 73 remote communities. The announcement, made by the minister, indicated that work under this program would begin in October 2008. The October 2008 deadline passed by and no work had commenced. A further $25 million was allocated to the program between October and December 2008 and a new start date of February 2009 was announced. It too passed by. In response to a question about the start date for the program on 20 August, Minister Macklin avoided answering why no new homes have been built under the program. She just repeated her government’s previous announcements. We have had many announcements and many start dates that have passed but sadly we have had very few, if any, houses built. This was particularly so back in August.

A review of the program undertaken by the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments found that the program had been slow to deliver housing. That is not a great revelation. It found that the structure of the program is too bureaucratic and costs associated with the program are too high. It recommended a refocus of the program in order to achieve the desired targets. It found that the objectives were working against one another—design and consultation against cost—and that this was caused by the lack of effective oversight at the delivery level.

It was found that the program’s governance and management arrangements would need to be restructured. The program is clogged up with unnecessary bureaucracy. There are unresolved leadership and capacity issues that have affected the ability for outcomes to be delivered under the program. Continuation of the program structure without change would cause unsustainable unit costs and result in future targets not being met. Most significantly, the review found that more than $45 million had been spent under the program without a single house being built. That finding alone has, in my view, not really attracted the same level of profound accountability in the minister that I would expect for such a profound failure. We are talking about $45 million being spent when not one single house has been built, and without an answer or explanation for that and with no great sense of responsibility or accountability for what is an appalling outcome.

The initial unit cost for the program was revealed to be too ambitious. The average cost of projects was revised down from $560,000 to $450,000. It could be argued that, given the cost of delivering programs in these places and the way in which they are administered by, in particular, the Northern Territory government, it would almost be cheaper—in fact it may well be cheaper—and a better use of public money to simply give the homes away. Administration costs have been found to be more than 11 per cent of the program’s budget, and steps were recommended to reduce the proportion of the program’s budget devoted to administration. It was recommended that the layers of management involved in the delivery of the program be reduced from six to three.

On 31 August 2009 the minister gave the Northern Territory government a four-month deadline. Remember that this was a program where the MOU was first agreed in September 2007. By August 2009, almost two years later and following these catastrophic failures, we gave them a four-month deadline to lift their game on Indigenous housing. We are still in this deadline period. Unless the Territory government improves its management of the program, the Australian government may step in and take charge. I am flummoxed as to why we are not at that point already. A minister who was really in charge of this program would not have suffered such appalling outcomes and allowed them to drift and to continue. She was in fact warned by her parliamentary secretary at the time, Senator Ursula Stephens, that these programs were out of control. No action was taken effectively on this, because the poor outcomes continued. Both the minister and the then parliamentary secretary have been reported to have been subsequently comforted by the progress of the program and no longer as concerned as they might previously have been.

I had the good fortune recently when I was in Central Australia to meet Alison Anderson, who was the Northern Territory minister for Indigenous housing and Indigenous affairs. She is a remarkable person. She is an individual who has a real strength and inner conviction to pursue the interests of her people. She, frankly, was not going to cop it any longer—she was not going to sit there and watch this waste and this abuse of public funds, which were intended for the welfare of Indigenous Australians, continue. She called it. She said enough was enough. She called the Labor government in the Northern Territory for what it was. When you read her description of that government you could easily mistake it for referring to any Labor government in the country, particularly at a state and territory level. It may well be a prophecy of what the current federal Labor government will be like in the years ahead. Nevertheless, she called it as it was. She was prepared to ‘out’ this shameless waste and this shameless abuse of public trust in terms of the moneys that were available for this important program. She resigned, and in doing so I think Alison Andersen has been a brave advocate for her people because she has finally stood up—someone in that government finally stood up—for their interests and ensured that governments could no longer look away.

It is my hope that the federal government will not look away, that their four-month deadline period—and I understand they have embedded federal public servants into the process in the Northern Territory—will yield some results. But based on the form, I am not encouraged. The government’s failure to properly deliver this program has resulted in the need to scale it back. Just last week the Australian reported that four out of five proposed renovations were scrapped because of cost blowouts. A lack of funds has necessitated cuts to the scope of renovation works to be undertaken. Homes that required more than 50 refurbishment items would now have an average of only 10 items performed due to funds not being available.

I was in Santa Teresa not that long ago and I saw four homes whose roofs had blown off. I understood, from speaking to some of the residents and officials in that town, that more than $200,000 had been allocated to fix the roofs on those homes. That did not happen just last month; it happened one year previously. The roofs blew off, the money was allocated and, up to a year later, the roofs were still off those buildings: a year to fix four roofs. I would like to know whether those roofs have subsequently been fixed. I hope they have. The money was made available. The government was aware of the problem and I would hope that it had been fixed, because the people who were living in those homes have had to go and live in other homes. As we all know, overcrowding in Indigenous housing is one of the key problems facing these communities. In terms of closing the gap, as the government refers to it, one way of ensuring that the people who live in these homes in these communities do not suffer any greater disadvantage than they already suffer is, when a roof blows off a house and money is provided, you have a system that enables the roof to be put back on that house within 12 months. Within 12 months would be nice; within one month would be appropriate, but I think it would be the absolute expectation of any Australian in this country that we would be able to at least get that done within 12 months.

This bill seeks to ensure that there is a more streamlined process for making sure that these homes can be built where they need to be built. The coalition supports that. What we are troubled about is the complete incompetence and inability of the governments working in this area to actually deliver these homes, and this is a major concern. The broader issue of tenure—while we are talking about tenure—goes further than just the delivery of public housing. The broader issue of tenure is critical to resolving what can be a great opportunity for Indigenous people in this country, and that is the opportunity to own their own home. That should be a primary objective of any Indigenous housing program that any government in this country, particularly a national one, pursues. The opportunity to buy your own home and for others to see that opportunity not only existing but being achieved for Indigenous Australians has the very real potential to help people turn their lives around.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Interjecting

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad that the member for Kennedy agrees with me, because I am sure he would agree that we need to have this as an objective. As long as we provide the opportunity to extend the type of interventions that we are looking at in this bill to broaden opportunities for Indigenous Australians to realise home ownership, then I think we are seeing only part of the picture. But it is consistent with this government’s focus only on public housing in this area, never looking beyond public housing to see where the opportunities are for achieving private ownership.

The International Real Estate Institute, or a variation thereof, runs a program in South America called the Strategic Housing Initiative. They have come to Australia and looked at the potential for the program’s application here. When the institute went into the slums of South America they discovered that the people in these slums had jobs. They were teachers, they were policemen, they were nurses—they had a regular income. What they did not have was the opportunity to buy a home that they could afford.

They have gone to the governments in these countries and said, ‘If you provide the land, we can build the houses.’ They have designed the homes so that they can be built and purchased at an extremely affordable rate, and micromortgages are offered to people so they can buy their own homes. So you now have in the slums of South America governments working with private industry. They are setting aside land on which to build homes and people are being taken out of the slums, where they are the victims of slumlords, and they can buy their own homes. If that can be achieved in the slums of South America, it can be achieved in this country. I would certainly support seeing that happen.

Secondly, dealing with the issues of native title and enabling these lands to be used by those whom they are entrusted for, it is important to develop commercial opportunities not just for the land councils—or not even for the land councils—but for the interests of private individual Indigenous citizens of this country. We need to find a way so that these lands, which are theirs, are able to be used for their private purposes in order to create wealth and opportunities for them. Whether it is supporting businesses or other endeavours, this is critical.

We see an example of this in the government’s ETS bills that are currently before the Senate. Most recently—on the weekend and over the last week—the opportunities for commercial abatement under that scheme that the coalition has been arguing for and how that might impact on individuals who live on those lands being able to utilise those opportunities and attract a commercial gain have been raised. This is something that is currently not resolved in those bills. I think it is something the government should be paying attention to.

Thirdly, there is the chronic need to see these lands that are affected by native title used to unlock land supply in remote regional centres. In particular I refer to Alice Springs. It is unthinkable that a town such as Alice Springs could be landlocked, but it is. Commercial rents in Alice Springs have literally gone through the roof. Companies are bidding against private individuals, they are competing against private individuals, to secure housing for people who come to work in that town. Their inability to do that is limiting the opportunities for that town to grow and for jobs to be created. Even worse for the citizens who live in that town, rents are going through the roof.

The federal government believes that the problems of housing affordability are limited to the availability of social housing. In a housing forum I conducted in Alice Springs the advocates for social housing sat next to the private real estate developers and sung the same tune: unless we release land supply in Alice Springs then this town is heading for a crisis, or in fact is already in a crisis. You have people living in tents in Alice Springs and that is not just in the town camps. That is the only form of accommodation available to them because of the inability of the Northern Territory government to deal with land supply. Alice Springs’s land supply is controlled from Darwin, which is further away than Adelaide. There is a great need for some master planning to be conducted for the township of Alice Springs that equally addresses the native title issues on the surrounding land and the other lands that are available to be freed up for housing development.

My recent visit to Central Australia revealed not only the chaos with the failure of the housing program but the frustration and the loss of hope that has followed the government’s lack of commitment to follow through on the intervention program. The failure of the housing program has really shattered confidence in the intervention. The intervention has produced some excellent outcomes in terms of nutrition, income quarantining and improved security with the placement of police, who have worked closely with communities. I think they have achieved some very good outcomes. Sadly, the failure of the strategic housing program has completely shattered faith and confidence in the program. Once faith and trust are shattered, they are very difficult to restore. So, while there have been successes, it is very important that we build some momentum again and have a renewed focus on where we go to from here.

There are some good things occurring, as there are in all places around Australia in this area. Those good things occur—from what I can observe—not so often due to good policy but due to good people. There is some good leadership, some good vision and some great commitment of individual Australians, Indigenous and otherwise, working in townships and working in remote outstations across the country. The presence of police, as I said, has created safer communities. These are the good lessons that we have learned from the intervention.

We need to learn more in terms of the design of accommodation in these places to ensure that the type of housing built is most appropriate to the needs and lifestyle of the communities for which it is intended. We need to ensure that we provide an ongoing and robust system of governance. The left hand simply, in a lot of these places, does not know what the right hand is doing. There has been a complete breakdown of the integration of the delivery of government services and support across many of these places. My colleague the member for Warringah and shadow minister for Indigenous affairs recently wrote in the Australian about this topic and made an excellent suggestion about the possibility of an expanded version of the Cape York system, where:

… an appointed administrator, advised by local elders as commissioners, can decide all local governmental matters not just ones to do with welfare. For such a system to work, decisions about land use would need to give rise to secure title at least in townships.

He said:

To work, the administrator would need general authority over all the local functions of government such as policing, health and education, as well as municipal services.

The integration of the delivery of services, the clear presence of accountability and the clear presence of authority to direct and act are something that is sadly lacking in these communities and are something that I believe they are desperately crying out for. They are something I commend to the government to consider.

Just last week in this place I talked about the kiaps, who worked in Papua New Guinea over a long time during the period in which Australia had some responsibility for that place. The kiaps had similar authority, not just for issues of law and order and security, health and various other things but for things like economic development, and they had some authority over the coordination and the delivery of government services right across those remote villages and communities. A model similar to that, as the member for Warringah and shadow minister for Indigenous affairs is suggesting, I think would put some real governance on the ground. And real governance on the ground, with the ability to direct traffic, to make decisions and to get actions, would ensure that the roofs of the four houses in Santa Teresa which were blown off over a year ago and for which funding was allocated would get on a lot quicker than the current system is delivering.

As long as we have the situation in the town camps in Alice Springs and in towns like Hermannsburg where children are simply not safe, we also need to ensure that the remote outstations have the opportunity to develop economically and to provide a viable community that can support their population. I am reminded and will always be reminded of young Shirley Ngalkin, a six-year-old who was killed in Hermannsburg in 1998. The subsequent trial for those who perpetrated that crime was the trigger for the Northern Territory intervention. We visited the remote outstation where she used to go to school before her family took that fateful decision to go into Hermannsburg, where she was raped and drowned. It was a very sobering moment to look at the plaque outside her former school. I wish she had been able to stay in that community. I wish her parents and those responsible for her had not felt the need to go and spend that time in Hermannsburg. Maybe Shirley would be with us today. Maybe she would not—there are many other problems in these communities, as we know. But, as long as the Shirleys of our country are at risk, I think it is critical that we get these things right.

I do believe the government want to get this right. I do not doubt their sincerity on the issue. I do not doubt the sincerity of the minister on this issue. It is not a question of sincerity. It is not a question of purpose. It is a question of being able to deliver on the ground. This bill should assist in the delivery of these programs, but, unless the significant bureaucratic problems associated with the delivery of housing to Indigenous communities in remote areas are overcome, this bill will offer little substance. Really, at the end of the day, it comes down to the government’s ability to deliver policy.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Native Title Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2009. Before I do so I would just like to touch on the contribution made by the member for Cook. They say a stopped clock is right twice in 24 hours.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Even a broken one.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Even a broken one is right twice. I waited for 25 long minutes there to see if at any stage the member for Cook would actually touch on the legislation before the chamber. Unfortunately, he did not come close. I will be focusing on the Native Title Amendment Bill (No. 2). Beginning with the apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples at the very first sitting of the 42nd Parliament, the Rudd government has been working towards closing the gap to improve Indigenous health, Indigenous life expectancy and Indigenous education. It was quite an honour to be one of the 42 new MPs sitting there at the very first sitting of the 42nd Parliament—and I was 42 years old at the time. Probably much the same age as the member for Oxley, I would imagine.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In fact, exactly the same.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In fact, exactly the same age. The apology was quite a moving experience. The apology was not only an acknowledgement of past wrongs but also a sign of hope and commitment to a better future for Australia’s Indigenous people. I would like to think that it was the start of a new Australia, and certainly I have been told that by many of my constituents, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, affected by the apology. Certainly it was a step towards making a prouder and more noble Australia, one where there is dignity for all Australians whether your roots go back 40,000 years or just 40 minutes since you got off the plane from, say, France or somewhere like that.

A major part of the Rudd government’s commitment is in the efforts to address dire housing issues like overcrowding, homelessness and the poor standard of housing generally which can be found in remote Indigenous communities. Census data tells us that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are four times more likely to become homeless and six times more likely to live in overcrowded accommodation than non-Indigenous Australians. That is a shameful set of data. As we know, overcrowding has negative flow-on effects, contributing to poor health, family violence and challenging educational outcomes. In a former life I was a union organiser in the independent education sector, doing enterprise bargaining at Waja Waja High School in the Woorabinda Aboriginal community. I remember looking at some of the horrific lifestyles and practices that went on in that community. That is not to take away from the many good people who were committed to changing that community around and many other communities. Certainly you do not have to look far to see the great efforts of many people in Queensland and throughout Australia to breach the gap.

I would particularly like to mention someone who is nominated to be the Australian of the Year—Dr Chris Sarra, who went to teachers college with me. He was a year below me at teachers college and has since gone on to bigger and brighter things. He has been nominated for his work in leadership in Aboriginal education. I wish him all the best, as I am sure the other Queenslanders in the room would, in the hope that Dr Chris Sarra is the next Australian of the Year.

It is estimated that well over 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households are overcrowded and more than 15,000 Indigenous households experience housing stress, paying more than 25 per cent of their income in rent. Those numbers are staggering—10,000 overcrowded households. We can only imagine the sadness and tears that go with those figures. The rate of homelessness for Indigenous Australians is also significantly higher than for non-Indigenous Australians, with Indigenous Australians making up nine per cent of the homeless population. Through COAG the Rudd government is working to turn this around by constructing and upgrading housing in remote communities, particularly in Queensland and Western Australia. This National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing is worth $1.94 billion over 10 years. It will deliver more than 4,000 new homes and major upgrades to almost 5,000 homes as well as  improving tenancy management.

As a former native title adviser to the Queensland state government, I know—unfortunately—that there is currently no way to quickly negotiate land use agreements on land that is, or might be, affected by native title. It is a complicated, drawn-out process and it is hard to do such things quickly—the ILUAs. Given the urgency of the housing needs in Indigenous communities, it is vital that our nearly $2 billion in housing can be built quickly. We need roofs now and rights later.

Obviously, to do so is not done lightly. The Rudd Labor government well knows the importance of native title. After all, it was a Labor government that was in power when on 3 June 1992 the High Court brought down the Mabo decision. Certainly, it was a Labor government that responded to this decision handed down by the judiciary. If we cast our minds back to 1992, the Australian reality and view of Indigenous rights then was not quite the same as it is now. It would have been great had a parliament handed down a decision like the Mabo decision, but the political will obviously was not there. But give Paul Keating his credit: with a difficult Senate, he responded in a way that brought forth a piece of legislation that we can be proud of.

Unfortunately, the state of Queensland has played an interesting role—some of it not always particularly noble, I would suggest. We can look at some of the atrocities, perhaps, visited upon Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in Queensland over the years—as the Bjelke-Petersen government, and I would even suggest that the Goss and Beattie governments, did not necessarily step up as much as they could have in terms of recognising the consequences of native title. There was a lot of fear out there in 1992 and in 1993, and also later when the Wik decision came down. There were definitely people beating the fear drums in terms of saying, ‘Your backyard is going to be taken,’ et cetera. In fact, it is interesting when we look back at that history—it has been quite a while now—and explore what Australia might have done. But, thankfully, the Keating government was able to steer that native title legislation through.

I have just been reading a book by Andrew McGahan, an author from Dalby in Queensland, called The White Earth, which explores this particular time, the hysteria and what it meant for the identity of Australia. It was certainly a very significant time. As I said, we do not treat native title lightly; the Rudd Labor government fully appreciates the importance of native title and how important it is for the aspirations of Indigenous people and in recognising their connection with the earth.

This bill will ensure that state and federal governments can get on with the job of delivering better housing in Indigenous communities, and that is now, not in the never-never. As I said, it is important to get a roof over a kid’s head right now and we will worry about the native title rights later. This bill amends the Native Title Act 1993 to allow the government to build housing and infrastructure in discrete Indigenous communities on land that might be affected by native title, without the requirement for an ILUA or compulsory acquisition. State and territory governments will still be required to undertake genuine consultation with possible native title holders as part of a new process and to report to the Attorney-General on this consultation. There is still some process there, but the exigencies of housing, on balance, mean that this is the most appropriate thing to do. The Attorney-General will have the power to amend the consultation requirements over time to ensure that the process works well for all parties.

This bill is all about ensuring the timely delivery of housing and infrastructure in Indigenous communities over the next 10 years. That is why this bill includes a sunset clause, to ensure that these amendments are operational for the duration of the funding. As a government, and as a caring country, we cannot stand by and allow the appalling standard of housing and infrastructure to continue in Indigenous communities for any longer. This bill ensures that we can get on with the job of improving Indigenous housing and, in doing so, help to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. I thank the Attorney-General and the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs for identifying the urgent needs and responding to them. I commend the bill to the House.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In respect of the member for Moreton’s contribution, Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not know where these people get these extraordinary ideas. Has he no memory at all? The worst riot ever in Queensland parliamentary history was when the maligned Bjelke-Petersen government’s policies were overturned by the Goss Labor government. It was the worst riot in Queensland parliamentary history.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Perrett interjecting

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Kennedy now has the call.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don’t you remember that? You obviously have a very selective memory, member for Moreton. When the deed of grant in trust legislation was introduced—by me, I might add—on the front page of the Australian newspaper, of the Cairns Postof every newspaper in this country—was that the elders wept. After 130 years they got their land back, only to have it taken off them again by your party in 1992. Don’t you have any memory?

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Kennedy willing to give way?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. I want to take the interjection.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you have the Aboriginal Land Act that followed the DOGIT legislation? Are you familiar with it?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was my legislation.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Aboriginal Land Act, not the DOGIT legislation.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy will now answer the question.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I welcome the questions. Do you know, I had this enormously radical approach. It was revolutionary. We went out and sat with the people. We called a meeting and simply asked them what they wanted. And, do you know, in the 26 years since not one single minister has ever done that. Over 3,000 attended—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Rubbish! Absolute rubbish!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Say that outside and I’ll sue you! I can prove that we had over 2,800 people at the meetings. Say it outside and we will see who is—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member wish to field the question?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, absolutely. I am taking his question.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Kennedy, if you are suggesting that there has never been a minister since you to go and consult with Aboriginal people, that is highly offensive. That is what I objected to.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Name what minister—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Perrett interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moreton will resume his seat. You cannot debate the issue. You have been given permission to ask a question.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From now on you will cop it between the eyeballs. There were 2,800 people who attended the meetings. They attended the meetings and we asked them: ‘What do you want?’ They said, ‘We want our land,’ and I said, ‘Right, I’ve got a piece of paper and I have got to put someone’s name on the bottom of it. It is up to you as to what name you want put on the bottom of it.’ I would leave too, if I were you, member for Moreton. I asked: ‘Do you want to put the shire council? We are going to set up shire councils here. Do you want land councils? Do you want the names of the land councils put there? Do you want tribal councils?’ They were not called native councils at that time; they were called tribal councils. I asked: ‘Do you want the tribal council name on it? Do you want private ownership, the same as everyone else in Australia has, do you want a continuation of government ownership, or have you got some other idea?’ They discussed it. Most of these meetings took the best part of a day in each community. Surprise, surprise: we had given them the choice and they decided that they wanted to own their own houses, their own farms and their own cattle stations. They did not want the tribe to own it. They did not want the local council to own it. They wanted to own it themselves. That was what they decided. In fact, in all of those meetings there were only three people who objected. The previous speaker referred to the Bjelke-Petersen government. Of all of those communities, I think at Yarrabah there were over 2,000 people who attended the celebrations at the handing over of the deeds of grant. So either the previous speaker knew absolutely nothing about what he was talking about or, alternatively, he came in here and positively and mischievously misled the parliament. There are only two possibilities here. One is towering ignorance—

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ripoll interjecting

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What have I just said that is incorrect? Either he did not know what took place or, alternatively, he is being mischievous. There are only two possibilities here. Rosalind Kidd, most certainly no admirer or supporter of conservative politics, wrote a book called The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs—The Untold Story. It is a textbook throughout universities in Australia. Frank Brennan, most certainly no friend of the conservative side of parliament, wrote a book called Land Rights Queensland Style: The Struggle for Aboriginal Self-Management. Both of those books are highly flattering of what we did in Queensland. They are, I might say, historical documents. The member comes in here and rewrites history when in actual fact his party overturned that legislation, precipitating the worst rioting ever seen in Queensland parliamentary history. The beautiful fence was torn to pieces. There were about 2,000 people. Some people would not describe it as a riot. I would. I was in the middle of the people there. They smashed the door, they smashed windows and they tore down the flag. Two hundred went to hospital, it was alleged—we do not really know how many went to hospital—and some 200 were supposedly sent to jail for objecting to the overturning of the legislation.

There was no credit accruing to the government except that the government simply went out there, asked them what they wanted and then delivered it to them. There was nothing extraordinary there. What proceeded was that all of the six million acres in Queensland that were referred to as ‘reserve areas’—a lot of them were old mission stations or penal-type reserves such as Palm Island—were moved over to ownership by the local council, because someone had to decide who got what parcel of land to put cattle on, a farm on, a service station on or whatever the hell they wanted. The government did not want to be involved in that. We believed the local people should do that. There was an appeals tribunal, which was a couple of tribal elders—for lack of a better word; ‘justices of the peace’ was the technical term—a magistrate presiding and one representative of the government. It would be up to the council. You would apply to the local council to take up a private block, and if you did not like the outcome then you could appeal. If the council did not like the outcome then they could appeal. That was what happened.

I turn to the housing, because this is supposed to overcome our housing problem. I have just come from a conference of the mayors representing 40,000 people of Aboriginal descent in Australia. In fact, they are the only properly elected group that represents people of Aboriginal descent in Australia. They represent the shire councils that were set up under the act during that period of time. I think a lot of the criticism of the premier, Bjelke-Petersen, was well directed in the early years, but I think the criticism in the later years would get you laughed at if you knew what took place on the ground then.

But I turn back to the housing. A man called Gregory Wallace became a very famous man in Australian history. He comes from a little town called Hopevale. For those of you who follow rugby league, Matty Bowen comes from Hopevale. The first ordained priest in Australia, Pastor George Rosendale, was ordained in the Lutheran Church and came from Hopevale. The first Aboriginal Australian member of parliament comes from Hopevale. It is a very famous town with a very successful history in the area. I think the honourable member for Leichhardt would agree with me that Hopevale is still making a very significant contribution today. Greg Wallace came up with the idea of working for the dole. He convinced the local people to work for the dole and was put on 60 Minutes. There was such a surge of approval from the whole of Australia for what had taken place there that the next week there was a second broadcast of Greg Wallace on 60 Minutesthe only time in 60 Minutes’ history that there has been a repeat. So they got Work for the Dole.

Noel Pearson’s brother Gerhardt Pearson rang me up and Gerhardt said to me, ‘Why can’t we use Work for the Dole to build houses?’ and I said, ‘Gerhardt, you should get the Nobel peace prize for this year.’ I am not making political points here. I made the comment in anger, in defence of a government that I was part of, but Gerry Hand said: ‘What an absolutely brilliant idea. Let’s get going with it.’ Within two weeks Gerry had given me approval to move with it, so we were then freed up. Half our labour force was coming from Work for the Dole, so we were building very, very cheap houses. Eric Law and Lester Rosendale were instrumental in securing from the ACC—a meeting of the mayors of all the councils at the time, if you like—an agreement that all houses in Queensland would be built exclusively by black labour, not white labour. In other words, the houses would be built exclusively by people of Aboriginal descent. So that was overlaid on top of the scheme.

Finally, Donnie Fraser from Doomadgee rang me up—again, a person of Aboriginal descent, a local boy at Doomadgee. He did not come from that area but he married a local girl and he was of Aboriginal descent himself. Donnie Fraser was later mayor of the community, and he came up with the idea of having our own block-making machines. I was a bit scared about this because I thought this might be a bit sophisticated. He said: ‘No, it’s not. We can train people to do this. There is some sophistication, but we can train them.’ Anyway, we ended up with eight block-making machines, I think there were. I remember at Doomadgee—I hope my figures are right here—we had been building 2½ houses a year. But by mobilising the free labour from Work for the Dole, by mobilising the local block making—the blocks were double the price by the time they got there, and of course the blocks were also being made by Work for the Dole labour—we had extremely cheap blocks. Every 1,000th block had to go down and be tested. They had to meet Besser specifications, which they did. So we went from building around 2½ houses a year to around 10 or 12 houses a year in Doomadgee.

I will make the point again—I have made it twice, but I will make it a third time—that I really did not have anything to do with these decisions. They were not my decisions. The people wanted them to happen. They seemed to me to be reasonable ideas and I am sure that Gerry Hand, the ALP minister at the time, would say the same thing if he were here now. He would say they were not his decisions; they were decisions from the people themselves.

We are now asked to accept that the federal government is going to run the housing schemes. The federal government has run the Northern Territory now for 30 years. Go and have a look at their handiwork. Have a look at how the Northern Territory communities are performing. Some of the communities in Queensland have now been under self-management for nearly 30 years. Go and have a look. I am sure the member for Leichhardt would agree with me here. Go and have a look at our communities. Go to Pormpuraaw—well, I have not been to Pormpuraaw recently. Go to Kowanyama. Go to Yarrabah. Go to Mornington Island. Go to any of our communities and see how they are performing, and then compare that with the federal government’s performance. They have been running the communities in the Northern Territory. Compare the performance of both. What is happening here is that the Northern Territory model is being forced and imposed upon the Queensland communities. Not surprisingly, they are bucking. The performance of the federal government bureaucracy in the Northern Territory speaks for itself—and I am not having a go at the existing government here. The bureaucracy for the last 13 years was that of their political opponents.

The last seven houses at Mornington Island, I was assured, were for a contract of $4 million. They were $600,000 a house. You can have a look at the photographs of the houses. They are not a whole lot bigger than the toilet block on our floor in Parliament House here. They are disgracefully small. They have no ventilation. They are hot boxes. How anyone could live in them or go to sleep at night in the intense heat that would be generated inside those houses is quite amazing to me.

One of the young mayors got up at the meeting last week and said: ‘Can’t we have houses that we can live in? These houses are most unsuitable for us.’ When we went out again and asked the people they did not say that they wanted gunyah type houses or houses that were sort of Aboriginal. They really wanted conventional houses, but they did want ventilation; however, I have not got time today to go into the details of that. You are saying that the outcome should be local involvement, but this program has no local involvement. It is an insult to say to these people that they have been consulted. Does it have private ownership of houses? Does it allow a person to own his own house? No, it does not. Does it work for the dole? No, it does not. Is it local labour? No, it is not. Is it suitable housing? No, it is not. Does a local manufacturer manufacture the blocks? No.

I was guided by Mahatma Gandhi. He said: ‘It may be that we Indians cannot run India as well as the British Raj, but it is infinitely more important that Indians run India rather than the British, even if we cannot run it as well.’ I have referred before to Pastor George Rosendale. I needed him to do a job and I was talking like a machine gun for about 25 minutes and he just listened patiently and put up with me. When I finished he said, ‘When the department of Aboriginal affairs come in and build 10 beautiful houses for us at Hopevale, that is not progress.’ He was working on his beach hut. He had cut down some trees, got the bark off them and put them in a bit of concrete in a hole in the ground, and he was nailing galvanised iron on and pouring the concrete—a very simple, humble sort of dwelling. He said, ‘When you get 10 beautiful houses built for you by the government, that is not progress. This is progress.’ When I said that at the mayors meeting all of them nodded. They all knew exactly what I was saying.

One of mayors said, ‘Your problem is you’re addicted. The first step in overcoming alcoholism is to admit to yourself that you are an alcoholic,’ and I am quoting Mayor Percy Neal here. He said: ‘You are addicted to the idea that black people can’t run their own affairs. You’ve got it so ingrained in your head that you can’t overcome it. It’s just there, like an addiction.’ He said: ‘We were here for 30,000 years. We might not have been batting terrifically, but we were doing all right. We were surviving. We didn’t need you. We don’t want you. Don’t come in here telling us what to do. Leave us alone. Let us do our own thing.’ After 200 years we still do not allow them to own their own houses. The only place on earth that you are not allowed to own your own house is in the 30 per cent of Australia that is Aboriginal lands. For one brief shining moment—that the last member condemned—for six or seven years they were able to take up private ownership of a block of land. We made many mistakes. Only about four per cent of the area ever got out to private ownership, and some that has been set back since then, as the member for Leichhardt would know. But for one brief shining moment it was there. It can be done. There is no reason that it cannot be done.

There continues to be a 17-year life expectancy gap, with arguably six or seven times the number of children of Aboriginal descent now being stolen off their parents than were being stolen in the stolen generation. They are the only people on earth that cannot own their own homes. The average occupancy rate was reported recently—and I think it is pretty right—as being 15 people in a house using one bathroom facility. Yet you could give them a private title at Yarrabah. We have already had imputed valuations done, and they have said they are worth $100,000. So if you just give us the right of private title then we can go and get the money to build a nice kit home ourselves—and come in at a price we can afford the repayments on. But still, as I speak here today in what is almost the year of our Lord 2010, if you are of Aboriginal descent and you live on that 30 per cent of Australia that is supposed to be Aboriginal lands you are not allowed to own your own home. Everyone comes in here and talks about it. The last member from the opposition spoke about it. They were there for 13 years and nothing was done. (Time expired)

Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Native Title Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2009. This is important legislation in terms of the Rudd government’s commitment to close the gap in Indigenous life expectancy. We are making record investments in health and education and we are also making record investments in housing. To roll out our housing initiatives we do need to introduce this legislation and get it through the House and the Senate. I recognise the contribution of the member for Kennedy. We both represent significant Indigenous communities in North Queensland and Far North Queensland and I know we are both passionate about wanting to improve the lives of those people in our electorate.

The bill will amend the Native Title Act 1993 to allow the expeditious construction of public infrastructure, especially housing, in Indigenous communities. It will do this by including a new future act process to ensure that public housing and infrastructure in discrete Indigenous communities can be built expeditiously following consultation with native title parties but without the need for Indigenous land-use agreements, ILUAs. It is important legislation. We are making record investments as I have said across education, health and a range of different areas to close the gap in Indigenous life expectancy. These are practical measures and we have a $5.5 billion commitment to build new Indigenous housing over the next 10 years.

The apology was important to Indigenous Australia in recognising past wrongs and wanting to move forward, but as we step forward we need to make sure that we have the right processes in place to ensure that we can build housing in communities like Hopevale, Kowanyama, Pormpuraaw, Aurukun, those in the northern peninsula area and other parts of my electorate. This legislation balances the need for the urgent investment in infrastructure, specifically social housing infrastructure and some community infrastructure, whether that is health, education or emergency services type infrastructure, that is needed in the community, with the need for proper consultation and involvement with traditional owners.

I spoke to the Cape York Land Council in relation to this legislation at a recent hand back of native title areas in Kowanyama. I know the Attorney-General was down there for that hand back the day before me and I was there for the national park hand back and had some discussions with the Cape York Land Council about these issues. They obviously have some concerns in relation to the rollout of this legislation to ensure that there is proper consultation with Indigenous traditional owners and that they are respected. They also recognise—and I think this is broadly recognised across communities—that within communities within the townships themselves there is a need for real investment in housing and tenure reform. The federal government has said that we are committed to building additional housing—$5.5 billion over 10 years—we are committed to investing in new roads and other community infrastructure to really improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, but to do that we need to get some certainty and some security around tenure. This legislation is very much about making sure that we can expedite and achieve that process.

The legislation does have a sunset clause. There is a 10-year national Indigenous partnership agreement that we are working through with states and territories. As the member for Kennedy and others have mentioned, the COAG process is very important in rolling out our investments in communities. It is critically important that we make sure that we do this urgently. Not only do we need to do it urgently to ensure that we actually see houses built and this infrastructure happen but to do that we need to create more certainty of tenure to underline that. We also need to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are involved in the construction of those facilities and some of those houses. I know that Minister Macklin is very much committed to that.

We have not necessarily been very happy with some of the outcomes that we have seen over the past 12 or 18 months in some areas in relation to that, but we are working towards making sure that we have very good involvement by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the construction of any of these new houses that we build. I am very much committed to that. I know that Minister Desley Boyle in Cairns is very much committed to that as well. Both of us at times battle with some of the government agencies around this. I can assure you that both the federal and state government—and I know the member for Kennedy is committed to this as well—want to make sure that Aboriginal people are involved in the construction of those houses and facilities.

In relation to that, the state government has established a new office in Cairns, the Remote Indigenous Land and Infrastructure Program Office. I think it is great that it is based in Cairns. This is going to enable people to be closer to the majority of remote communities in Queensland, which are on the cape or the gulf—areas like that. There are some in southern parts of Australia, but Cairns is much closer to most than Brisbane, so I congratulate the minister for locating the office in Cairns. It is very much an office that is about bringing together the different state agencies to work on cutting red tape and expediting what happens in communities.

I know that in the last week or so there has been a roundtable with mayors, and they have raised certain concerns about the rolling out of the state’s plans in relation to the housing initiatives, but they are very much federal government initiatives and we want to work in partnership with the state government and with mayors and local communities to make sure that we can see this housing delivered in a very expeditious way. That is very much what this legislation is about. It is about recognising that native title and some of the issues around native title need to be expedited as part of that process.

The office in Cairns will be very much about working through some of the tenure issues. I share the aspirations of many Indigenous people. I was up in the Northern Peninsula area recently and was talking to a teacher up there, James Matysek. He is a local Indigenous man, and he has been teaching in the school up there for six years. He would like to buy his own house in Bamaga, but obviously he cannot; there is no ability for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people to buy or own their own house in these communities because the tenure does not allow that. The state government has a program whereby after six years you cannot live in teacher housing anymore; you need to move into community housing. Obviously in rural communities people can go and buy their own houses and the like, but in Indigenous communities it is a real problem. So he had to get himself onto the local council social housing list. He would like to buy his own house. He has that aspiration now, but there are many other people that would like that now, and there will be many others down the track who will aspire to purchase their own house as we close the gap, create more employment opportunities for people and build economic activity and enterprise in communities. Currently that is not possible.

This legislation is very much about initially cutting through some of the issues around red tape and making sure that the rights of traditional owners are balanced with the need to build this infrastructure. The longer term aspiration must be not only about the 40-year leases and the social housing but also about the ability of people to own their own home so that people like James Matysek in Bamaga can do that.

I have a letter here to Mr David Glasgow, the Commissioner of the Family Responsibilities Commission, from a group of 70-plus residents in Hopevale who are raising real concerns about the move to tenancy management by the state government and now the new rules where they pay 25 per cent of their income in rent. There is a large amount of income going to the state government in rent to manage, maintain and support this social housing. What members are saying is, ‘If it’s that amount of money that we’re now paying, the houses aren’t in the best condition.’ The federal government, through its housing stimulus and its commitment through the national partnership agreement, is investing more in housing and we are upgrading housing, but a number of these people would like to buy their own houses, similarly to James Matysek up in Bamaga. They cannot do that at the moment. They are recognising that 25 per cent of their income goes to rent. A lot of them are working in Hopevale, in the government operations in their own communities or in the supermarkets, the butcher shops and other things.

We are seeing communities starting to be transformed through our ‘closing the gap’ agenda. We need to make sure that we implement legislation that ensures that we get some certainty around social housing. Particularly in terms of the land and infrastructure program office, the state government looks beyond the social housing agenda into the longer term agenda, which is around certainty for 99-year leases and the like for these sorts of individuals.

I congratulate the Family Responsibility Commissioner, David Glasgow, and the members of the FRC in Hopevale—Desmond Bowen, Estelle Bowen, Brian Cobus, Victor Gibson and Doreen Hart—who I met with recently in Cairns as part of a workshop they were having to raise this issue with me. I contacted the member for Cook, Jason O’Brien, to discuss this issue and also the Indigenous Coordination Centre. The ICC, through Mike Fordham, is organising a meeting in Hopevale on 30 November to enable these issues to be worked through and for the Land and Infrastructure Office to explain to local people what the future holds in terms of the rollout of the Pride of Place Program, which is a very important part of our welfare reform trial. The office will also explain what is happening in terms of the tenure changes that we are looking to achieve through this sort of legislation and the ability to build more social housing.

What I am saying to Minister Boyle and to these members who have written to Commissioner Glasgow and others and have raised it with their FRCs is that they are looking for aspirations that are really beyond social housing. I really think it is important that we do not lose track of that agenda and that we do not just create another social housing framework in these communities. We need to look beyond that. Even though this legislation deals specifically with social housing, we need to also continue to be thinking forwardly about those 99-year leases so that we can give certainty to those sorts of people.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek to intervene.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the member for Leichhardt willing to give way.

Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The state government when they overturned my legislation in 1991 promised that they would replace it with the machinery to take up private ownership. It is 19 years later and they still have not done it. I plead with the member for Leichhardt to use his influence inside the government to get the federal government to do it. The state government is not going to do it. After 19 years they are not going to do it, Jim.

Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy. I know he is a passionate advocate for this area. I do understand the issues he is talking about. I talk to Minister Boyle regularly about this and I know she talks to Minister Macklin. This new land and infrastructure office has only just been established. They have effectively got up and going in the last month. I will be continuing to press that, Member for Kennedy; you do not have to worry about that. You have heard through my comments today the sort of vision that I have, which I think many of us share in terms of the longer term aspirations for Indigenous people.

The Attorney-General is here to wrap up in a minute, but I would like to thank him for the involvement and engagement he has had in my electorate and community. Last year he came up and met with the Cape York Land Council, which I greatly appreciated. He also met with Minister Wallace in Brisbane following on from that to see what we can do to get the federal and state governments to work more effectively together. I know that they really appreciated it in Kowanyama when he would go up and visit the local communities for the handback. I look forward to my constructive partnership with him. He made some very worthwhile comments in the introduction of this bill and I look forward to his comments in a minute in his closing remarks around the bill.

I just want to again emphasise that this is very much about ensuring that we can expedite the rollout of our commitment to social housing and other community infrastructure. We do understand that we need to balance the traditional owners’ rights and respect for them. The Attorney-General has put requirements into this legislation, and he can have influence in how those consultations are undertaken with traditional owners. There are specific time periods involved in that. There needs to be a consultation report that is produced as part of that.

In some ways this is going to create, and is creating, some angst in communities, with mayors and councils concerned about their roles into the future. My commitment is to work with the Attorney-General, Minister Macklin, Minister Boyle and the local governments and their CEOs as well as their broader communities to make sure we can roll out this investment in housing. It is $5.5 billion over 10 years. It is a significant investment. It is part of our commitment to closing the gap. Whether it is in housing, community infrastructure, health or education, the Rudd government is making record investments in these practical measures. Also, the first order of business when we came to Parliament House—and I was a very proud new member of the Rudd government—was to apologise to Indigenous Australians. We really are getting on with the job of implementing practical measures while we recognise and respect the needs of traditional owners and the wrongs that have been done in the past as we build a brighter future for Indigenous people. As I like to say in my electorate of Leichhardt, ‘What am I all about? Building a better future for Leichhardt.’ This legislation is very much about that. I commend the bill to the House.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to make some brief comments on the Native Title Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2009. I look forward to this bill enabling the government to put processes in place whereby private ownership of homes can be achieved. Obviously it is difficult to negotiate native title to achieve these aims. In any case, I hope that the government succeeds. I also hope that in the fullness of time—sooner rather than later—that the government’s investment achieves value for money and real change. I worry though, and the source of my concern comes from my experiences within the electorate of Cowan which, as members and advisers might not be aware, is an outer metropolitan area of Perth.

Within the electorate of Cowan there are a couple of what might be called town camps. Cullacabardee is one and the Sydney Road Nyoongar community is another. On 29 May last year, in response to the concerns of a lot of people of the Gnangara area of Cowan—a semirural area—I rose to make a speech in this very place to talk about the concerns of my local people regarding those that lived and operated out of the Sydney Road Nyoongar community. I think there was very little doubt that this was a centre of crime: stolen cars, damage to property, break and enters. Rivalling, if not more important than that, were my concerns that young people of that small community—I think there were only 30 to 40 people living there—were not being properly looked after and did not have access to education. The once proud school that had been built over successive parliaments, starting I think in the term of Gough Whitlam, had been ultimately trashed. There had been some financial mismanagement issues to do with the school causing its closure, followed by excessive vandalism by local people from that small community.

This is tragic and, when you look at the mismanagement followed by the attack on the school, it does not cause one to have great confidence in the ability of that camp to continue to run itself. I had some doubts so I called for it to be closed, but unfortunately, due to the arrangements for the ownership of the land, that was not possible. However, what was achieved was a series of police raids on the following day. Luckily, with the assistance of two West Australian journalists, Dawn Gibson and Flick Pryor, the cause of concern—the crime and concerns about the welfare of young people and children in the Sydney Road Nyoongar community—brought about almost immediate action. Police raids broke up a business based on car stealing and on-selling of stolen cars and parts. Some great progress was made. What resulted was that at the end of May and in June most of the families were moved out to areas where opportunities and access to schools close to the immediate area were possible and, in my view and that of most people in the Gnangara area, to a more positive environment for young people. I welcome that move as do the local people.

The community has not shut down completely. There are one or two houses left where some people live. From my most recent discussions with Senior Sergeant Matt Ray of the Wanneroo Police Station, I have heard that crime figures are hugely reduced. There might be one incident a month in Gnangara whereas there were considerably more in the past. There have been many upsides to it. The people in the Gnangara area are more comfortable now with their personal safety and the safety of their property within the area, including Landsdale where there were issues as well. Landsdale is the next suburb to the south. There are far fewer issues with regards to damage to local houses and property and the stealing of cars has reduced. Overall people have much better access to services because they are not in a closed-off, isolated community with negative influences around them. I think it has been an overwhelmingly positive effort.

I again record my thanks to Dawn Gibson and Flick Pryor of the West Australian. I also thank those people involved from the WA police for their services and for greatly improving the situation. Further, I thank the people of Cowan who brought this issue to me, including our former staff member Millie Rundle, a young Indigenous lady. I thank her, and a number of other people, for bringing this to my attention.

Like a lot of people in this place, I am one who believes in personal responsibility. If you provide people with the opportunities by which they may succeed, you expect them to do the right thing—to try to look after themselves and the property they have been given. So I certainly welcome the government’s move to create a real sense of ownership in communities. I do not profess to have any great experience in outback communities, only having visited several during my time in the Army. But I certainly welcome the government’s attempt to ensure that private ownership is made possible and that people can reach their aspiration of owning their own home. Given the provision of value-for-money assistance as required, I look forward to them accepting full responsibility in looking after the assets provided. I welcome what you are doing, Minister McClelland, and I wish you all the best.

Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank members for their contribution, including the previous speaker, to the debate on theNative Title Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2009. The bill is aimed at improving housing and reducing overcrowding in Indigenous communities. This is, of course, essential to the government’s efforts to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. Decent housing ensures a proper kitchen for the preparation of food, and a door that locks keeps out violence and potential trouble. A safe place to sleep for children ensures proper schooling, and a working shower means better health outcomes.

In November 2008, the Council of Australian Governments committed $5.5 billion over 10 years to deliver much needed Indigenous housing in remote Indigenous communities across Australia. Arrangements that provide secure tenure are necessary to ensure that public money is spent effectively on housing and other services. Land tenure reform accords tenants with the certainty and protection of an enforceable tenancy management agreement that is consistent with public housing standards. At present there is no specific future act process—that is, constructing future development in this case—on native title properties for housing and infrastructure development for the benefit of Indigenous communities. State governments have indicated that this creates uncertainty which results in delays in housing and service delivery.

Alleviating poverty and overcrowding in remote Indigenous communities is paramount. To do this, governments must be able to deliver urgently needed services quickly. The proposed amendments will enable infrastructure to be built on Indigenous held land where native title may exist. The bill requires appropriate consultation with, but is not dependent upon, the consent of native title parties. The new proposal goes beyond just housing to also include a limited range of community facilities for public health, education and emergency services. This is a holistic approach that recognises that community health and wellbeing depend upon the availability of all of these public services. In accordance with the government’s commitment to resetting the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the new process gives native title parties an opportunity to share their views in relation to the design and delivery of urgently needed housing and public infrastructure, and it provides flexibility to allow the native title parties to choose the level of consultation that is appropriate to each individual project.

The new process strikes a balance between the urgent need for these services and the need to engage with native title parties, and protect native title rights and interests. It also contains important safeguards to ensure genuine consultation with native title parties. Acts covered by the new process will be invalid if the action body fails to comply with the notification and consultation requirement set out in the amendment. This encourages governments to undertake real consultation with the native title parties when planning and developing public housing and infrastructure projects. The quality of consultation will be controlled and monitored by a scrutiny of consultation reports. These reports must be provided by government, detailing how they have complied with the requirements of the bill. Further, the non-extinguishment principle, compensation and consultation mechanisms under the new process will ensure that native title rights are not adversely affected in the long term. The bill will sunset after 10 years. The sunset is approximately in line with the duration of the national partnership agreements on remote Indigenous housing and remote service delivery. The sunset provides an incentive to state and territory governments to deliver on housing and infrastructure commitments in a timely manner.

I will briefly comment on some of the comments that have been made during the course of the debate. In respect to the member for Cook’s comments about the government’s Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program it is important to note that the new process contained in the bill we are debating is not generally applicable to that program. That program applies primarily to land under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, which is not subject to the future acts regime in the Native Title Act. However, it is important to note that the Australian and Northern Territory governments are committed to deliver 750 new houses, 230 rebuilds and 2,500 refurbishments of houses in remote Northern Territory communities by 2013.

Work has also been taking place on over 75 housing lots across the Northern Territory, including the Tiwi Islands, Groote Eylandt, Tennant Creek, Wadeye, Palumpa and Gunbalanya. This includes rebuilds, refurbishment works and new houses. By the end of this year we estimate work will be taking place on over 200 housing lots across 15 communities. This includes 50 new houses under construction, and more than 150 rebuilds and refurbishments underway or completed.

As well as the focus on public housing, the government is determined to support as many Indigenous Australians as possible to achieve their aspirations to own their own homes, as well as addressing those issues in partnership to bridge the gap. Although this new native title process is designed specifically to alleviate the urgent need for public housing in Indigenous communities, it must be stated that it neither inhibits nor detracts from the Commonwealth government’s commitment to Indigenous home ownership initiatives. The vast majority of Indigenous community residents are social housing clients and are likely to remain as such for some time to come. The government is pursuing Indigenous home ownership through other mechanisms.

In conclusion, this bill facilitates the delivery of the Rudd government’s unprecedented funding commitment to improve housing and reduce overcrowding in Indigenous communities. The bill will ensure that such housing and infrastructure can be delivered in a timely and certain way, and in a way that respects the rights and views of the native title parties regarding the use of the land. I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.