Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The minister puts forward some wonderful lines. The use of language is very creative. I guess you have to admire people who can come up with language to create these impressions, these nice sounding things like ‘creating more opportunities for decision making at local level.’ Of course that can only occur with the permission of the minister and can occur in circumstances where it is against the wishes of the majority of the traditional owners. The concept of ‘finalising longstanding land claims’ sounds great, except it is actually wiping out longstanding land claims. These things are being portrayed as advancing the rights of Indigenous people.

The minister gets extra power to reduce the budgets of land councils. The minister gets extra rights to break up land councils even if it is against the wishes of the majority of traditional owners in certain circumstances. The one which has not been mentioned for a while is in relation to the 99-year leases. The lease payments are to come from the Aboriginals Benefit Account which, according to the minister’s own words earlier in this debate, are received by Aboriginal people as 30 per cent of mining royalty equivalents. So the money for Aboriginal people is already there from the mining royalty equivalents. It would be there to be spent to the benefit of Aboriginal people but it will now be used to pay the rent for these 99-year leases and will not be available for other things. Somehow or other, that is also meant to be an advance for the economic benefit of Aboriginal people.

A broader thing needs to be emphasised, and it does not give me any great pleasure to be proven right on this. I have said this in this place in a couple of speeches at the end of last year when the government announced their decision about what they were going to do with leasing changes, which they then instructed the land councils about and did not bother to talk with traditional owners about. Regardless of how good people think some of these changes are, if you make changes that affect the property rights and other rights of Indigenous people without consulting them—which is what has occurred and is on the record as having occurred—and without seeking their consent, then your chances of it working are dramatically reduced. The fact that the government did not do that and still see no need to have done that shows a clear indication that their main motivation is not to make it work. If they were determined to make it work, they would have put that extra time into ensuring that happened.

I would point out that this year marked the start of the second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. Last week was the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. The goals of this decade are to further strengthen international cooperation for solving problems faced by Indigenous peoples in areas such as culture education, health, human rights, the environment and social and economic development. I quote the Social Justice Commissioner, Mr Calma, who said:

To achieve these goals indigenous people must be fully involved in the formation, decision-making, implementation and evaluation of processes on laws, policies, resources and projects which affect us; this is our right.

The evidence given to the Senate committee inquiry clearly shows that that is a right that is not recognised by this government. That is unequivocally a bad thing.

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion (Senator Kemp’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to.