Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I forget when it last was that we were debating this; this bill seems to be a bit of a stop-start affair. In relation to the government amendment that seeks to remove the five per cent cap on financial benefits on the annual rent under the 99-year headlease, I want to indicate that Labor are going to support it. It is something we argued for at the start of this process. We could not understand why the artificial cap was being imposed.

There are two concerns that have been raised with us. One concern is the question of the cap and the attempt to limit the potential financial benefit that might flow to Indigenous people from a lease arrangement. The second concern is why anything other than rent was excluded. Even though we have fundamental difficulties with the model being used, we took the view that, if there were to be development on leases granted under this proposal, people ought to be capable of negotiating at, if you like, the going rate—that is, at what something is worth—rather than at some artificial limit being imposed by the government saying, ‘We are going to take your land, we are going to insist on a leasing arrangement and we are going to limit how much money you can make out of that arrangement.’ That seems to us to be manifestly unfair.

I know the government have changed their approach for other reasons. They have seen the light because, I think, the Northern Territory government and others have realised that the placing of a cap might restrict the capacity to do the deal—to get agreement to the lease in the first place. That reflects the fact that there was not enough negotiation with Indigenous interests about how to progress on these issues. Clearly, from the government’s point of view, if they want to get the leasing arrangements in place, they have to get a deal. I have expressed my concerns about the way the government are going about promoting the leases and the fear that they will be linked to services that Indigenous people have as a right of citizenship, such as access to education, health and housing. Nevertheless, in terms of this issue, Labor believe the cap was unnecessary and counterproductive to the government’s intentions.

Labor have also been strongly in favour of the capacity for traditional owners to negotiate pecuniary benefits other than annual rent. One of the key concerns in economic development issues in Indigenous communities is that, where economic development has occurred, very little benefit has flowed to Indigenous communities. We have had people—developers, miners—that have brought economic development to areas where Indigenous people live or to Aboriginal land, yet we have not seen the trickle-down effect in jobs and other benefits that should come, and are always alleged to be coming, from industry and economic development on Indigenous land. One of the key concerns that ought to be raised, and which Labor are focused on, is that, if there are to be these arrangements with leasing on town sites, one should hope to achieve Indigenous employment outcomes. If Woolworths were to set up a store in an Aboriginal community then one of the things one would want to talk to them about would be employing young Aboriginal people in the store and that sort of employment objective. The social benefits of that are, I think, quite critical to the hopes for economic development.

What worries me about the whole framework the government has adopted is that those things I have mentioned seem not to be able to be negotiated by Indigenous people. The government’s model is: sign up for the 99 years, lose any control over what happens and let things be determined by others. It seems not to be a model that allows Indigenous people to have some say over things. Their being able to identify the priorities that they want from any economic development on their land should be part of any model we adopt. It is certainly part of the government’s rhetoric and everything else, such as shared responsibility agreements and COAG trials. They are all wrapped in this sort of rhetoric about Indigenous communities’ priorities and identifying economic opportunities. But this model, it seems, is not. It is the rigid approach: ‘Hand over the 99-year lease, get the people out of there; the entity runs the lease now.’ We have no detail about how that entity will work or whether or not traditional owners will have any say in how it works, whether they will have any say in the priorities or whether they will have any say in aspects of economic development that occur on their land. As I have said, one of the things that has been raised most often with me is the question of employment—that if there is to be economic development then Indigenous people ought to be able to negotiate employment outcomes for Indigenous people in those communities.

So I welcome the loosening up of these provisions in the sense of the cap being removed and the concession that there might be benefits other than purely rent that can be negotiated. I think that does improve the bill; I commend the government for accepting that change. I know the land council and others think that it will make it a better proposition if that occurs. As I have said, I still have basic problems with the model—concerns about the lack of Indigenous input into how things proceed once the leases have been signed over—but I think that the change that has been made does at least increase the capacity for better and broader outcomes, and for that reason we support it.