Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I will curtail my remarks because I know others do want to speak. This inquiry into the Tiwi Land Council was set up because it was thought that because there was a forestry operation on the island there had been malpractices and worse. The committee went up there and I am delighted that I introduced myself into the committee. I quote from the Hansard Mr Ullungura, an Indigenous elder, who gave evidence. He said:

… the frustration they—

Indigenous people—

feel about always having to fight to use a very small area, less than five per cent, of their land for economic development—in this case, it is forestry. The potential for jobs is enormous. A harvest is going to happen; someone is going to have to harvest this stuff when it is ready. I know there has been talk about art and tourism and stuff, but you are never going to employ potentially hundreds of people directly, or there is the forestry camp that you guys were at today. People have to be fed and watered, there is a hospitality industry there and the roads have to be done. There is a lot of short-term stuff, when they do the harvest and get rid of the chipping, but then they have to replant it. The potential for employment is huge.

He went on to say:

If it was not for forestry, we would not be sitting here now, we would be sitting out in the long grass. It is not the $10 million or $15 million that the federal government put in, but the initial stages of the feasibility study and all of that was all paid through forestry. Education was recognised on the islands and especially at Wurrimiyanga, this mob’s country, as just a disaster, an absolute basket case. I am a teacher by trade, part of the system that was teaching at Nguiu, and we have been pumping out illiterate kids, 90 per cent plus—literally, kids who cannot spell ‘cat’—for 20 years.

These guys are trying to build a future with five per cent of their land. They recognise, as well as anyone, that they want to look after their endangered species, but there is 95 per cent of the land that is free for the dunnarts to go roaming and all that sort of stuff. These guys have been saying for years that the answer to solving Indigenous disadvantage is jobs, jobs, jobs. You get self-esteem; you get money; you get a fridge full of food to feed your kids. To go out bush, to go hunting—that is all good; you leave it all alone. But you need jobs to be able to buy your car to be able to get out bush to go to your country.

I recommend to colleagues that they read the full transcript of that and of how these Indigenous people want to do things. They want to get real jobs. They are doing it on the Tiwi Islands. But that seemed to find disfavour.