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

Last night I was making the point about the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006 that this bill is more about opportunity than it is about a lack of opportunity. The bill represents an important step towards enabling Indigenous people in the Northern Territory to obtain an economic advantage from the land which, over the last 30 years, under the land rights legislation, has been transferred to the ownership of those Aboriginal people. It is important that we therefore consider in this legislation a shift in the paradigm whereby such land might be used for the benefit of its traditional owners. The fact remains that it has been the case that that land has, for the most part, not been available for such economic exploitation, and this has unquestionably worked to the disadvantage of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory.

I want to focus for a moment on one particular proposal in the legislation, which is that it will be easier for Indigenous people to own their own homes and businesses on land in townships. The scheme was developed by the Northern Territory government. It is important to put on the record that it is not an initiative of this government but in fact was proposed by the Northern Territory government. What is more, it is a proposal which is entirely voluntary and would apply only to townships where most of the residents are not traditional owners. Traditional owners have the power under these proposals to set lease conditions and retain freehold title to the land. It is not about the alienation of Indigenous land—at least not for more than 99 years.

The federal government can only offer homeownership to townships if land tenure issues are resolved. Land councils do have a role to play in respect of this, but the decisions are principally ones for owners of townships. The dynamics which these changes engineer are ones which permit a use of land which is much closer to that which occurs in other parts of Australia. For instance, it will be possible now for individual Indigenous people or families to obtain ownership, at least for 99 years, of a parcel of land. It will also be easier to regularise the arrangements whereby a business might operate in or move to a township and have a form of land tenure which is much more like what they might enjoy in another part of Australia.

At the moment, many such businesses, if they operate in those areas, operate under a licence arrangement. It is very difficult to see how any business would be willing to invest a large amount of capital in the growth and development of a particular business when there are such uncertain arrangements about the use of the land on which those businesses are based. I think that this development offers the prospect of much better use by and attraction to business of parcels of land for commercial operations.

It is true that many Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory would not be able immediately to take advantage of provisions that allow them to purchase their own homes. It is true that the level of disadvantage in many communities is such as to not make those provisions immediately available for the use of many people. Senator Siewert made that point in her remarks yesterday. But I would say to the Senate that the fact that not everybody is able to take advantage of provisions of this kind should not be an argument against making it possible for those who can.

The argument that if all cannot benefit then none should is a very weak argument indeed. The fact is that some land councils in the Northern Territory are keen for these provisions to be available; some are ready to take advantage of these provisions and to put in place arrangements for better commercial use of land and for ownership to be transferred to people who live in those townships under the 99-year lease arrangement. I think it is unconscionable for the Senate to stand in the way of those arrangements merely because some people in other parts of the Northern Territory may not be in a position to take up and use those arrangements immediately.

Senator Siewert made the comment yesterday that under these proposals traditional owners lose control of their land for four generations—for 99 years. That is true up to a point but, first of all, the conditions under which such leases are to be granted are essentially conditions that are set by traditional owners before the initial 99-year lease occurs. Secondly, if there is a loss of control for those 99 years, or four generations, it is no more or less than occurs in many other parts of Australia where leases are granted and where a measure of individual or corporate ownership occurs over land that is otherwise owned by somebody else for a period of time that approximates with that 99 years. If it works in other parts of Australia and if it is acceptable as a device for the commercial exploitation of land in other parts of Australia, why is it not acceptable on Aboriginal land?

The bill means that many townships under Aboriginal control will need to have a different way of looking at the land that exists in those townships. But it is clear to anybody who visits many of those communities that there is a serious problem in those communities, a problem rooted in poverty and a lack of opportunity, and a problem which the present settings do not adequately address. I believe that it is important that we rethink our approach towards the issues in those communities, and this is part of that process. It is part of introducing the kinds of motivations, the kinds of commercial dynamics, in those communities that apply in other parts of Australia. I have no reason to believe that the principles that work in other parts of Australia would not work in these communities as well. I emphasise again that the 99-year township leasing program was one that was originally proposed by the Northern Territory government and was supported, at least in principle, by a number of witnesses who came before the inquiry by the Community Affairs Legislation Committee in Darwin a few weeks ago.

The arrangements proposed in the legislation with respect to mining provisions are somewhat less controversial. They make for easier and clearer pathways for decisions to be made on exploiting the potential to mine on Aboriginal land. Again, the whip hand is retained by traditional owners. It is they who determine the essential conditions under which such arrangements are worked out. Many of the somewhat outdated impediments to making decisions on that land are to be removed by this legislation and I think they are widely seen as being appropriate steps in the right direction.

There are other provisions in the legislation dealing with, for example, the potential to create new land councils which attracted some criticism in the inquiry. These are among a number of provisions in the legislation which may have great benefit to Indigenous communities but which may also create controversy if they are used in the wrong way. On that point, I make the observation that if we stood against any legislation in this place which had the potential to be misused, which had the potential to be wrongly applied by individual governments from time to time, we would not pass a great deal of the legislation that comes before this House. But we have to accept that in order to create opportunities some risks might have to be taken that such misuse or abuse of power might occur. I do not believe that any of the governments involved in exercises such as this, and I refer to the federal government and the Northern Territory government, are likely to exploit such provisions to the disadvantage of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory. I believe there is enough goodwill on the part of the governments concerned to ensure that these provisions are used for the benefit of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, and provide for an injection of certainty into arrangements which in the past simply have not had sufficient certainty to allow firm decisions to be made.

For example, under present provisions it is possible to create new land councils in the Northern Territory where a ‘substantial majority’ of Indigenous people support the creation of a new council. That has not been defined. What is a ‘substantial majority’? In the past we did not know exactly what that was. This bill defines that substantial majority as 55 per cent of Indigenous people living in an area where a new land council might be created. That is the kind of certainty which people need in order to be able to make arrangements for the future, to deal on a commercial basis with particular landowners and to identify the issues which need to be identified in order to proceed to negotiate outcomes which are to the advantage of those people who own that land.

There are other provisions dealing with the termination of land claims, for example, the termination of claims over intertidal zones and riverbeds which are not contiguous with existing Aboriginal landholdings. It seems to me that that is an entirely sensible arrangement. Although such claims have occasionally been granted in the past, there really is not a reason why land which is not contiguous with existing Aboriginal landholdings should be treated in that way. Again, this is about an end to uncertainty.

It seems that the opposition and others in the chamber are opposed to these changes. They are intent on defending the status quo. They want to resist the measures in the legislation for greater flexibility, greater accountability and the use of some market principles. That is unfortunate because it is clear that even others within, for example, the Australian Labor Party see potential in these provisions.

I note again that the Northern Territory government gave substantial support to many of the provisions in this legislation while expressing some concern about the time frame in which they were being implemented. Nonetheless, for the most part they accepted in principle the reforms inherent in this legislation, including those provisions which had more recently been added to the proposal by the minister.

It is important to remember that these changes are going to in large part be administered by the Northern Territory government. They are not about the federal government making day-to-day decisions about use of land in the Northern Territory or about creation of new land councils and so forth. Many of the changes which this bill provides for will confer powers in effect on the Northern Territory government, and it will be making these decisions. So, if there is some sort of conspiracy here to deprive Indigenous people in the Northern Territory of some rights over their land, it is a conspiracy in which obviously the Northern Territory government is at least to some extent a partner. I said that we should look at the benefits in this legislation, not the potential for harm, and I believe that is the case.

I want in the last couple of minutes to make reference to a couple of other matters. No doubt members in this chamber will have had a great many emails and phone calls in recent days from members of the community who are concerned about these changes. As members will be aware, that has largely being generated by the GetUp! website, which has begun a campaign on this legislation. I note that in my case, and I suspect it is the case for other senators, there was almost no correspondence on this legislation before the weekend and now there is a flood of it. I think that reflects more the power of sites such as GetUp! than necessarily a genuine basis of concern in the rest of the community. I do not think that people, though, ought to take their information from one single source, a source which has been universally critical of the present federal government, and consider it to be the only source of information to use for finding out about important reforms such as this.

The Community Affairs Legislation Committee report which was presented out of session last week does endorse the legislation being passed, but I need to put on the record that the committee did feel that there was inadequate time to completely and comprehensively cover the issues which were entrusted to the committee to review. This was not a conspicuous example of the Senate committee system working at its best, and I put on the record that I would urge the Senate to consider very carefully putting issues of such significance into committees which already have a very heavy workload. That was certainly the case for the Community Affairs Legislation Committee. (Time expired)