Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I understand this is a sensitive debate and I'm not about bringing down land councils and Aboriginal organisations. I was part of the Aboriginal health service in Victoria as a first baby in that service when it was established by my grandmother. In those days, Aboriginal services were set up in the name of self-determination. In those days, organisations weren't subjected to oppressive government regimes, as they are today.

Our organisations have to report to the government and adhere to the government's agenda; otherwise, they simply don't get the funding that they need to be able to run a service. I understand the importance of our services—don't get me wrong—and as a Gunnai Djab Wurrung Gunditjmara woman, I've been brought up into Aboriginal organisations and corporations. But what I have seen in the last 30 years is an industry—the black industry—and the only people who benefit from that are the government, the lawyers, the anthropologists and the mining companies. For 30 years I've been watching this.

My first native title meeting in Gippsland was when I was 17, and what was happening then? The white lawyers were sitting up the front telling the elders what to say, what to do. And what did the elders do at the end of the day? They sold off our land. They negotiated a settlement agreement which allows logging. We had a white CEO who came from Parks Victoria and what did he do? He allowed all his mates in to tell our people how great logging is and they approved logging in the Central Highlands. Who benefited from that? He and his mates. What benefit did that give to the Gunnai people? Zero. In fact, it killed our totems.

Corporations these days are creating a middle-class black environment that has forgotten about their poor cousins that are incarcerated, that are hungry, that are struggling to survive. We have a middle-class of blackfellas now that drive the deadly cars and have all the resources. They give a hundred bucks here and a hundred bucks there. But traditional owners on the ground, who you are hearing the statistics about, get nothing. They don't even hear about a meeting to decide on logging and gas. Traditional owners don't hear about it until a year later. Djab Wurrung trees—a million bucks for those trees, a million dollars to knock that tree down. Who benefited? One board member of a native title corporation. All the trees that got taken down along Djab Wurrung country are sitting in a garage on his property still today—still today! No-one questions that. There is no accountability, no transparency.

These corporations need to be looked into. I have had board member after board member plead with me to have some kind of investigation or forensic audit on these corporations that don't care about the people that they purport to represent. People in the Latrobe Valley are so poor that we have young people stealing food from our old people and we have a deadly native title corporation up the road that is raking in millions. You want to talk about CLC? CLC didn't even allow a lawman, Ned Hargraves, who lost his nephew through a shooting at Yuendumu, through the door of a meeting, and he is a member. What do you say about that, Senator Pratt?

This is ongoing and will continue to be ongoing unless we hold these corporations accountable. They must be transparent and they must tend to the needs of the people they say they represent. We have corporations that are going into deals with mining companies and with construction companies and are making an absolute fortune, which is great. But only the board members benefit or the family of the board members. Senator Stewart knows what that's all about. Her husband ran a traditional owner corporation in Victoria, and now he is on the Voice committee. It is also quite valuable to get into the perks so that you can get picked up by Labor. Most of the 'yes' people are heads of corporations and organisations that Labor pay to tell them what to say and do—disgusting behaviour. It's disgusting, Labor, and you know it. You know that your mates in the corporations and the organisations are the ones you need to sign off on the gas projects. Beetaloo basin, Greens! You want to stand up and be all deadly about saving the planet, yet you won't support a motion that stops the dirty deals from happening. Shame!

Gas projects like the Beetaloo happen because Labor need them to happen, so Labor pick their black fella, who is probably hungry, and they say: 'We'll look after you. The mining company's coming, and we'll give you a car and we'll give you a couple of jobs. Just sign this. Sign this so we can frack your country.' And you benefit from that, Senator Pratt. You benefit from that, not the traditional owners at the Beetaloo and not Ned Hargraves, a lawman, a Warlpiri man, who can't even go to his own native title meetings because the CLC won't let him in the door.

Before I became a politician, I did a petition for more transparency and accountability in Aboriginal organisations. There were 250 signatories to that, and a lot of them were CEOs of organisations. This has been going on for far too long, and it is the corporatisation that have killed our communities. It's also the government control and oppressive regime to pick your hand-picks, like you did with your Voice. 'Yep, there's a 'yes' man and another 'yes' man, a 'yes' woman, and we've got them in the corner because they're the CEO of the corporation or the chairperson, so we know we've got them on board. We've got this.' What was the whole Uluru dialogue business full of? Organisations and corporations.

They are leaving the people behind. Do you think we would have half the troubles we have today if we could just have a piece of the pie, a piece of what these corporations are raking in on our behalf? We just want them to share, but we can't even get in the door. We have seismic testing going on on Eastern Maar country—Greens, hello—because some dodgy person signed off on a deal on behalf of the corporation and did a deal with the government and the mining company. I attended the National Native Title conference. Guess where that was? At the MCG. They had all the fandangle—I reckon it would have cost them a million bucks to put on that conference. And who turns up? The land councils, the corporations and the mining companies. The mining companies were at the National Native Title conference with their show bags, conning our people.

Those corporations and organisations, they were set up for self-determining reasons, not to be controlled by government like they are. And Labor need dodgy corporations to get things over the line. Labor have demonstrated that through the dodgy Voice process. They've already demonstrated they'll leave all grassroots mobs behind and anyone who questions what they're doing. 'Just get all the "yes" people and captains picks, and we'll be right.' Well thousands and thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across this land have asked me to inquire into the land councils and the corporations. They've asked me to hold them accountable for representing them in their truest form.

I went to the Macarthur River, and I met TOs there. Do you know they told me? 'We just have to do what the Northern Land Council tells us. We've got five clans here, but we've got to listen to the Northern Land Council. They're our representative, even though we don't agree with what they're saying. We hear about the meetings after they've happened. They don't send a bus for us. We don't get a notice.' And so the dodgy deal just goes ahead anyway. So don't talk to me, Labor, with your whitesplaining speeches on what you think is best for us and what your experience has been. I come from community control and I live for community control, and what is happening in land councils and corporations these days is not community control. It is not. It is so far from it that it makes me sick, let alone the thousands of blackfellas who are missing out, and watching these deadly blackfellas with their million-dollar homes while we've got homeless people living next door or sleeping next door.

I'm not asking for this for the wrong reasons. And it's not what the previous Labor senator said or what the next Labor senator will say, or the Greens senators who are all opposing this, because they are 'yes' people. They are the 'yes' people. They are the ones dealing with the corporations and the organisations to get the deals done. They're not putting the people first. They don't care about self-determination or sovereignty. We need justice in all areas of our lives, and we need less government interference. We need to self-determine our own destiny, but it has got to be transparent and accountable. If we don't stop these land councils from making the wrong decisions, having whitefellas running these organisations and land councils and telling elders what to do and what to say—it's disgusting.

You talk about the National Audit Office. The Audit Office itself said that there were problems in the land councils, so I don't know which page you read. We want accountability and transparency and for corruption to end so that our people get what these organisations are meant to be giving. I seek leave to move some amendments together.

Leave granted.

I move:

After paragraph (a), insert:

(aa) the interactions between corporate governance of these organisations and cultural governance protocols, and challenges arising from these interactions;

Omit paragraph (d), substitute:

(d) the effectiveness of service delivery and ensuring community-led benefit to Traditional Owners;

Paragraph (e), after "impact on the entire community", insert ", including adherence to the principles of Free, Prior and Informed Consent".

Paragraph (f), omit "and any reasons for delays".