Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am, if that is the will of the Senate.

Leave granted.

The letter read as follows—

Minister Martin Ferguson

Suite MF 23

Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600

Ph: 02 6277 7930

Fax: 02 6273 0434

Martinferguson.MP@aph.gov.au

Cc: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Minister Peter Garrett, Minister Warren Snowdon, Senator Trish Crossin, NLC CEO Kim Hill, NLC Chairman Wali Wunungmurra, Senator Scott Ludlam.

May 8, 2009

To Minister Martin Ferguson,

We are Traditional Owners from the Muckaty Land Trust.

We want you to read this letter and not put it on your table and put it away in the archives, we want you to read it.

Try and make an effort to come down and talk to us. We want to invite you and Minister Peter Garrett to come out in the second week in June, on the 12th -14th, to come out here and come face to face with Traditional Owners.

The Traditional Owners will be the Ngapa, Yapa Yapa, Wirntiku, Ngarrka and Milwayi groups from Muckaty. We want to show you what are we talking about and why are we talking about it.

We want our land to stay in one position, we want our land to be safe so we can have a better place to live in and a better place to go and have a look around the beautiful land.

The old Warlmanpa people really want to see government people come out so we can talk face to face with them without writing letters, because we don’t even know what Martin Ferguson looks like.

We want you to come face to face - you don’t even know what we look like, we’ve only seen each other on TV or whatever, but we want to see each other face to face where we can have a few questions to ask why you are not listening to the biggest forum of people.

We are inviting you to come along for a challenge. The challenge that we want to do is to let you know that we are the Traditional Owners. As the Warlmanpa group, we want to tell you what the country means with the designs and with the paints we have on our body. We want to do the body painting to tell the story about the land, and show you that Milwayi is the main place.

We want you to know that Traditional Owners are waiting to show you that the country means something to them. That is why we want you to come along and to see because we don’t want that rubbish dump to be here in Muckaty area.

We want Amy Lauder to come along. We want Amy Lauder to come and see what we have got for her and we want her to talk first. Martin Ferguson and Peter Garrett ,you come out to the front and listen and from there when she finished talking, we will have Mark Lane or Dianne Stokes or Sammy Sambo talk and then we are going to open up the meeting.

After that we want to get our groups out then and you can see that we are protesting through the body painting, to tell you that we don’t need the waste dump to come to the land.

We want you to hang around and watch us what we do and then we want to tell you what the story means, and what it is and who it belongs to.

Martin Ferguson, we want you to come here, we know you will be in Darwin just before that, we want you to come here. That’s only a one-day trip to see what we do.

Martin Ferguson you travel overseas, you have been in China lately and we want you to come to the local Territory, to come and visit us in the centre of the heart of Tennant Creek. We want you to make an effort just to come here, its not costing about $3000 or $4000 to travel overseas, it’s only into one state, in the Northern Territory.

We want the Northern Land Council, our representatives Warren Snowdon and Trish Crossin and the Greens Senator to come and listen as well.

Come to our beautiful Tennant Creek, visit our beautiful Tennant Creek, come there and listen to us, the Traditional Owners that we are fighting against the waste dump.

We are making a strong effort to tell you that we don’t want the waste dump coming into our land. We want you and Peter Garrett to take it in your minds, in your brains and in your heart to think about us and to have your tongue ready to say ‘no waste dump in the Northern Territory’.

Please reply to this invitation c/o Gerry McCarthy,

Northern Territory Member for Barkly

114 Paterson Street ,Tennant Creek, NT, 0860.

Tel: 08 8962 2205 , Fax: 08 8962 3008

electorate.barkly@nt.gov.au

Signed

Name, Family Group

Lindsay Crane, Wirntikku

Sammy Sambo, Milwayi

Louie Martin, Ngamka

Susan Nelson

Marie Louise Murphy, Ngamka

Ross Williams Jakamarra, Ngamika

Beasley Anderson, Ngapa

Ricky Anderson, Ngapa

Stewart Anderson, Ngapa

Ann Anderson, Ngapa

Sonia Anderson, Ngapa

Samule Anderson, Ngapa

Joshua Anderson, Ngapa

Aaron Anderson, Ngapa

Carmen Anderson, Ngapa

Bruce Anderson, Ngapa

Mark Chungaloo, Milwayi

Shirley Anderson, Ngapa

Heather Anderson, Ngapa

Ray Stokes, Yapa Yapa

Mark Lane, Ngapa

Desmond Sambo, Milwayi

Cyrile Anderson, Ngapa

Sherly Anderson Ngapa

Desley Anderson, Ngapa

Tony Cutta, Ngapa

William Phillips, Wirntikku

Brian Williams, Milwayi

Janet Mick Thompson, Milwayi

Bobby Thompson, Milwayi

Stan Stokes, Yapa Yapa

Joesphine Grant, Wirntikku

Gladys Brown, Milwayi

Betty Kelly, Ngarrka

Janine Lane, Ngapa

Sally Sambo, Milwayi

Christine Chungaloo, Milwayi

Marie Rennie, Wirntikku

Isobel Phillips, Wirntikku

Delaine Cutta, Ngapa

Olive Weston, Ngapa

Anna Weston, Ngapa

Bessie Graham, Ngarrka

Derek Weston, Ngapa

Henry Weston, Ngapa

Frankie Weston, Ngapa

Leon Stokes, Yapa Yapa

Jeffrey Holt, Yapa Yapa

Dianne Williams

Dianne Dickenson

Doreen Murphy

Janice Rankine

Hannah Williams

Beverley Williams

Joan Stokes, Yapa Yapa

Dianne Stokes, Yapa Yapa

I thank the Senate. Senators would now be aware that, until this matter is resolved, the Australian Greens will continue to raise it. (Time expired)