Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I understand, perhaps better than the minister, because I am more experienced than the minister in this, that the drafting people try their best to produce legislation according to the instructions of the government of the day. It is not something that just comes out of drafting people in some back room. They get instructions from the government of the day as to the outcome that is required, and that is the problem here.

The indecent thing behind all this is that Indigenous people are having their land taken off them in a way which requires compensation, and that is what this section of the legislation is about. If the government were in a mood to be just about that and felt that the need to do that was compelling—and we have heard no argument here at all as to why taking land off Indigenous people is going to protect the children in the way that Mr Brough or the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, would have it—then why isn’t there a description of the values that ought to be taken into account in the just terms arrangements, including the Indigenous values that we are honour bound to respect in this situation? They are swept aside as if they do not exist—well, they do not exist in this legislation. The minister says there is a provision in the Customs Act that is similar to this. Nobody’s land is being taken away in the Customs Act, I can assure you—certainly no land with which people have had a relationship for thousands of years, which is their spiritual heartspring, their ancestral land. There has never before been anything in legislation that is like this. Land has been taken in Australia from Indigenous people. That is part of their history that has led to the horrendous circumstances we know about that are part of the reason we are dealing with this legislation here tonight. But this legislation is compounding that.

Senator Evans is quite right, and Senator Siewert has made the same point, that you do not need to use terms other than ‘just terms’ in here—but you have, quite clearly, because this phrase is in the legislation:

... an acquisition of property to which ... the Constitution applies from a person otherwise than on just terms ...

So it is contemplated that it is not going to be just terms. It says so in the government’s legislation, for goodness sake. There is not going to be an answer out of this. Do you know why? Because the government and the Prime Minister, in their arrogance and disdain, and in the racism that is written right through this legislation, say: ‘Oh, they can go to court. We’ll use the might and power of this government to take from them, and they can go to court and see what they can get back on that.’ We know the trauma that that will cause. We move the balance here off their land—Indigenous people’s land—and put it into our courts. What a dreadful thing to be writing into legislation and asking this Senate to pass. But there it is, and the Prime Minister has got the numbers. This chamber is being used as a rubber stamp, despite the entreaties in today’s paper from Indigenous people not to do that, but that is the morality of this government.

It just needs to be said again that the outcome the government wishes, to protect the children, could be done without all this. But, no, there are other agendas at play here. This is unjust. It is unconstitutional. I would have thought we would never see a piece of legislation like this in the 21st century in the Australian parliament, but here it is. We will live to regret it. The government will live to regret it.