Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I do understand the rationale and I have some sympathy for the way that Cape York has addressed and does address native title decision-making and agreement-making. We went through some of that during the inquiry. What we did not do during the inquiry was go through these issues, because they were not raised at the time by the Cape York institute when we were discussing the amendments. If you read their submission to the inquiry, they actually took quite a different approach. Through that original submission, they did not agree to this legislation. In fact, they are one of the organisations, if I remember the submission correctly, who were saying that you needed to look more specifically at some of the agreements as to whether they should be revisited or not. As I said, I have some sympathy for the way they make decisions and the approach they have taken. However, the point here is that, with no named applicants, they clearly do not even meet the majority approach under Bygrave. In fact, at least one of these agreements was made way before Bygrave.

So before that decision was taken that the majority could sign on—that is what the Bygrave decision was, that you could go with the majority—at least one, if not more, of these agreements were made. They were made way before that interpretation was put into effect—that is my understanding of the situation. How, with all the goodwill in terms of the way that Cape York run their processes, could the register be clearly inconsistent with the act? That has been happening for a significant period of time. How did that occur? Was this flagged at the time? I understand that this relates to some time ago; I am not having a go at the government. I want to know how this process could have occurred when, as I understand it, there was not even an interpretation at the time that no named applicants could sign.