Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to continue the debate on document No. 3 on page 7 of the Notice Paper, the Environment, Communications and the Arts References Committee report Forestry and mining operations on the Tiwi Islands. In speaking to this report, which was tabled by the committee, I first of all congratulate the committee staff on the great work they did in managing the committee and the witnesses and in assisting with the preparation of the report.

The committee’s report and recommendations are there for everybody to see, but I want to indicate my particular admiration for the people of the Tiwi Islands. I do not want to malign the motives of those who were instrumental in setting this particular inquiry up, but it seemed to me that it was set up because some senators did not like the thought that there was forestry on the Tiwi Islands and some other senators thought that there may have been improper practices between the company involved in setting up the forestry and the local Indigenous people. Whilst this may never have been said, I suspect from some of the questioning that there were suggestions that the right people were not getting the right money and that perhaps at times the wrong people were getting the money.

I am particularly pleased the Senate looked into it and gave people the opportunity to consider the whole aspect of the Tiwi Islands people and the way they were determined to do something for their families and their children. The Indigenous leaders of the Tiwi Islands made it very clear in the evidence they gave on Tuesday, 19 May 2009 that they did not want their people to be continually in receipt of government handouts. They wanted their people, particularly their young people, to have opportunities in life. Any of you that know the Tiwi Islands will agree that it is a long way from anywhere. It is difficult to establish any sort of industry there. I suspect there would perhaps be opportunities in fishing and limited tourism around there. But several years ago the islanders agreed with an approach that would allow for plantation forestry on the island. It was a managed investment scheme. These schemes have since fallen into some disrepute, but this inquiry and the report were not looking at managed investment schemes; they were looking at this particular project on the Tiwi Islands. The evidence clearly showed—and it was evidence that was challenged by some members of the committee—that what was done on the Tiwi Islands was done in the very best interests of the people of the Tiwi Islands. Money was earned by the islanders and they spent that money in a very appropriate way, which I will come to shortly.

The suggestions that something improper was going on or that these plantation forests were going to destroy the islands were, following the evidence given at the committee, shown to be completely wrong. As you fly over the islands, you clearly see that these plantation forestry areas are only a very small part of the total land mass of the Tiwi Islands, but the suggestion was that by introducing these trees for wood chipping you would destroy the biodiversity and ecology of these areas. It defies logic to make that suggestion. There were suggestions that perhaps this was interfering with the culture of the Tiwi Islanders, but the Tiwi Islanders themselves gave short shrift to that argument.

I would like to quote from the Senate committee Hansard some of the evidence given on the island on 19 May by Mr Ullungura, who is one of the elders of the Tiwi Island people. He said:

These guys are trying to build a future with five per cent of their land. They recognise, as well as anyone, that they want to look after their endangered species, but there is 95 per cent of the land that is free for the dunnarts to go roaming and all that sort of stuff. These guys have been saying for years that the answer to solving Indigenous disadvantage is jobs, jobs, jobs. You get self-esteem; you get money; you get a fridge full of food to feed your kids. To go out bush, to go hunting—that is all good; you leave it all alone. But you need jobs to be able to buy your car to be able to get out bush to go to your country.

The frustration that these guys keep telling me about is that they are always under pressure, and this Senate inquiry is just another incoming bomb attack. What they are actually asking for is a hand, for government and others to actually help them get jobs and give the kids a future.

With the money they got from this forestry operation they built a brand new school with several fabulous, well-run and carefully designed buildings, and that is shown on page 15 and thereabouts of the Hansard of 19 May. They were asked why they put this school out at one end of the island rather than in the main town on the island, and they said words to this effect: ‘We and our children went to the school in this main town. The only things they learnt there were about drugs and petrol sniffing, and they came out of there completely illiterate’—this is the government school. They said: ‘We do not want our grandchildren to finish their schooling in the same state, so we’ve built this magnificent college at one end of the island, remote from the main town, where the children are all housed in individual big buildings that contain their clan.’ They go during the day to the school and mix with everyone else, but at night-time they go back to individual and very well designed accommodation for their own clan group. They are there with an elder or a responsible person from their own clan, and it is a fabulous operation.

The teachers are good and happy. The kids are learning things. They are learning in an atmosphere distant from drugs and the other evils of European society. Every time I think of that gentleman giving evidence, and others like him, I get a little bit emotional because—bless our souls—over the last 50 or 60 years or so, European Australians—

Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Macdonald, I am loath to interrupt you but I do to draw your attention to the fact that your time has expired.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.