Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I came to the intent of this par­ticular bill in about 1985-86 when millions of hectares were given to Aboriginal people under DOGIT, deed of grant in trust. That land was supposed to be allocated to the communities under the Local Government Act and anyone who wanted some land to do something would be allocated that land, whether it was 20 acres to grow tomatoes, land for a cattle station or a sawmill, or whatever it was, and that land was allocated to those particular Aboriginal people and then they made their own decisions. That was around 1985-87. I had a bit to do with it. As people would know, I was close to the Premier at the time. In fact, I went around some of these communities with Bob Katter and the Premier. We worked together to give this land to them for what they wanted to do with it. Then that land was taken away from the local communities and put under an act. Aboriginal people walked down George Street, protesting that the Labor government had taken their land away and calling for Bob Katter to come back as the minister. That was the start of it. Now we come to the Wild Rivers Act. This merely is an act that would allow people to be involved in their own communities to make a living out of the land. Not all of it but a lot of it was given under the deed of grant in trust.

So that is the history of this. Then the Labor government tried to come in over the top of a previous government and take that land away. Not only that, what they intended to do and were literally caught in the act doing was to keep that land and put it into World Heritage. It was only Warren Truss who got up in the other House and demanded of the Aboriginal minister at the time that the minister not do it unless they had the consent of the Aboriginal people. Two or three weeks ago, the then minister said, 'I've pushed the pause button and we won't go ahead with it, because we do not have the consent of the Aboriginal people.' That is the main game. That is the commitment to the Wilderness Society that this eventually would be turned into wild rivers. Wild rivers would be the first step, and then it would go into World Heritage. When the minister made his commitment that he would pause, the Wilderness Society said, 'We'll still campaign for this.'

Senator Furner got up and did not know what he was saying—and you should forgive those who do not understand these things, but I would have expected better from Senator McLucas. 'What is there to be ar­guing about,' Senator Furner says. 'You can hunt. You can shoot a pig. You can have your traditional dances. You can go out in the river. You can do all the things that native title gives you.' And that is right. You can do all those things. No-one is arguing that. But we want to go the next step. We want to say to the Aboriginal community and the Pearsons of the world: 'You have got a right to live in the 21st century. You have got a right to go out there and put a farm down that will grow vegetables and then sell those vegetables in the local community.' You cannot do that. You can grow veget­ables, sure. You can grow for your own use, but you cannot commercially put down a farm in what you would call a catchment area.

The Bligh government initially talked about how the impact would only be on a handful of pristine rivers. It turns out that they actually meant to see entire river catchments and basins and, in fact, 80 per cent of Cape York would be subject to yet another layer of regulations, effectively frustrating opportunities for Indigenous people. It captures 80 per cent of the land so you cannot do anything other than have an obscure native title right where you can hunt, fish and have ceremonies. It does not allow any way that you can commercially use that land to provide fruit, vegetables and healthy things in life; go out and have a cattle farm; or go out and do something that will be productive and commercial. Therefore, you are locking these thousands of people—there are 14,000 people who live on the cape—out of any commercial event. You are locking them out of lifting themselves out of poverty.

It is a terrible shame that the Labor Party are doing this. Because Senator Xenophon in his excellent speech quoted another traditional owner, I will quote Senator Pearson—Mr Pearson. One day he might be a senator—and what a wonderful addition he would be to this house.

The exercise of traditional rights and traditional activities is important but that will never lift our people out of poverty and misery. We have to be able to undertake land use that generates economic return for the people who live there. We are not going to be serious about closing the gap as to Indigenous disadvantage if we have this view that all that Aboriginal people should be happy with and all that they should be entitled to is to stand on one leg in the sunset picking berries. Fundamentally this is a racist expectation on the part of governments and other stakeholders to expect Aboriginal people to live in some frozen past.

There is someone who is speaking up for the Aboriginal community. Sure, he does not speak for every one of them; but he speaks for most of them. I would say he speaks for 90 per cent of them.