Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to rise in my place today to indicate my support for the legislation on the table, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006. Indicating one’s view about this legislation does rather depend on whether you see the possible shortcomings in it or the potential that it holds. For my part, I believe this legislation should properly be characterised as a bill which offers an enormous opportunity for growth, empowerment and economic development for at least certain parts of the Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory.

This legislation in particular addresses the fact that there have been 30 years or so of land claims in the Northern Territory, resulting in approximately half of the land area of the Northern Territory being Indigenous-owned but, in that period, relatively little economic exploitation for the benefit of Aboriginal people, traditional owners, of the land that has come into their legal ownership under these reforms, which were enacted in 1976 by the Fraser government. I believe anybody who observes the state of Aboriginal Australia today needs to acknowledge that part of the solution to the very many problems faced by Indigenous Australians is to give them greater access to economic power and the capacity to fund and resource solutions to the problems that they face.

I see—and, of course, the federal government sees and, to a large extent, the Northern Territory government sees—the reforms in this legislation as being part and parcel of the program to give Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory greater economic clout, greater capacity to exploit their most valuable resource, which, in many ways, is the land that is traditionally theirs. These are the most comprehensive reforms to Aboriginal land rights legislation since it was introduced in 1976. I believe it does allow for greater economic returns on land which have not been fully identified, understood and, certainly, exploited.

In many ways, we need to change the paradigm which operates in communities in the Northern Territory. It is a paradigm which could be said to have let down Aboriginal people. I believe that the dynamics and considerations that apply in the rest of Australia—issues such as home ownership and the capacity to secure access to resources that will be an ongoing source of economic wealth—are equally to be exploited within the context of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. These changes will make it easier for Aboriginal people to own their own homes and for businesses to operate in the Northern Territory on Aboriginal land in the way that they operate in other parts of Australia.

Debate interrupted.