Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to indicate that the Labor Party will be supporting this amendment. As I pointed out in my speech on this bill, we indicated in our minority report to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs inquiry into this bill that we do not support the time limit for the registration of native title rep bodies. We do not believe that there has been significant evidence presented to the committee or even in fact to this government to suggest that that is the way in which they need to move.

Senator Johnston talks about accountability and increased accountability. From evidence presented to the Senate inquiry, the accountability is already there. The one particular native title rep body that was not accountable has not passed the registration process again. All of the rep bodies will now be forced to comply with a more bureaucratic requirement, when in fact only one has not met the expectations in the past. So it is a very heavy-handed approach by this government, in that we are going to make everybody step up to the mark now and be even more accountable—there will be increased accountability and more bureaucratic paperwork—in order for native title rep bodies to continue their existence, when, quite frankly, there is absolutely no evidence that the current system is not working. The current system is working. In fact, when there has been a problem with the rep bodies, we know that the system has moved into place and the rep bodies that have not complied have been dealt with. So there is really no suggestion at all that this system needs to be now overly administered.

We did hear plenty of evidence in the inquiry that people would be spending a lot of time reapplying for registration and that it would severely affect the number or quality of staff that rep bodies can attract. The consistent view was that if the rep body were only registered for two years then that would mean considerable constraints on getting the well-qualified lawyers, anthropologists and other skilled people that they need to come on board, because it would be for only a two-year period. They would not be able to give people extended contracts of employment beyond two years because the rep body would only have the funding for that length of time. So the government is clearly not listening to one side of the industry here in putting these constraints on native title rep bodies.

The minister argues that this is going to make them all the more accountable and going to make the process more transparent. We had no evidence whatsoever in the inquiry to suggest that the system is not already accountable and not already transparent. It is a case of: if the system is not broken then why make these changes? Everybody agreed that native title rep bodies are, by and large, performing well. We have one out of 13 or 14 that is not—and two or three service providers. There has been one problem in this time, yet all of them out there are going to be made to comply with this requirement.

The other issue is that there are some claims that do take longer than six years. For some bizarre reason, there is now a requirement that rep bodies can only be registered for six years. Yet we know that claims have taken much longer than that. So we do not believe that this is going to make the system better. We do not believe that there is a need to impose a time limit on the registration of these rep bodies. So we will be supporting the Greens’ opposition to item 7, schedule 1.