Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It does do that. These amendments take away the requirement for native title representative bodies to consult and be representative of native title holders. The Greens, for one, oppose this legislation. That is why we have also proposed an amendment to oppose that section of the bill. We will be supporting the opposition’s amendments because we do not believe further removing and disenfranchising Aboriginal people from the process when it has not been working optimally is the appropriate way to go. These amendments will make the process more complicated and reduce their involvement even further instead of dealing with the real issues: providing adequate resources and capacity building.

Instead of facilitating greater involvement by native title holders and Aboriginal people in the process by increasing resources and increasing their capacity, the government is trying to remove and lessen their involvement. What the government should be doing is improving involvement by providing extra capacity. Those are the two areas that were consistently and repeatedly pointed to during both the Joint Committee on Native Title and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Account inquiry and the Senate inquiry. A lack of resources and a lack of capacity were repeatedly identified as being the two major stumbling blocks. Instead of actually addressing those two things—resources and capacity—we are removing Aboriginal people’s involvement in native title. The Greens will be supporting the opposition’s amendments.