Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection from Senator McLucas. No doubt she enjoys the next paragraph that will ensure that we enable the ‘destocking of marginal pastoral land’. You wouldn’t want to get too far west of the divide to see a lot of sad people in that regard. Again, there is a condemning of our First Australians to absolutely no opportunity—and this I think is absolutely and utterly reprehensible. It is a little bit like saying that this vision is like a national park. Unfortunately, we have now had the report recommending that the First Australians join them. They will be cuddling trees and doing something weird—I’m not sure what—with carbon credits but the vision is not of them actually enjoying the remainder of the opportunities the Australian economy can provide.

Why have we got a different approach? Are we asking the rest of Australia down south, ‘Just cuddle a few trees; just be a bit green. Manage the ecosystem,’ and everything will be right? I can tell you that any economy that is completely dependent on some rubbish idea that you can be sustainable into the future on some sort of carbon credit system and that you can somehow manage the environment while somebody—I don’t know where—is going to pay everybody to do that, is relying on absolute and utter nonsense. I condemn this report and I warn people to look very carefully at it, because if this nation is going down a line which says, ‘Aboriginal people can own land but they can’t use it,’ I think it is a step in completely the wrong direction.

Senator McLucas is from Queensland. The Queensland government has already decided to go and take away the rights of people to use their land correctly under the Wild Rivers Act, and we will be very active to ensure that their rights to use their own land are returned to them.