Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that Senator Roberts has submitted a proposal under standing order 75, shown at item 16 of today's Order of Business:

The Native Title system in Australia is critically flawed and perpetuates discrimination. A new claim has been lodged by the Woppaburra people for exclusive use over an additional 2,249 acres of Great Keppel Island, despite a prior Federal Court ruling extinguishing Native Title over significant portions of the island, with the effect of potentially closing Great Keppel Island to non-Aboriginal Australians. This situation exemplifies why there is urgent need for a thorough overhaul of Native Title laws to prevent misuse and ensure equal treatment for all Australians regardless of race

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The Native Title system in Australia is critically flawed and perpetuates discrimination. A new claim has been lodged by the Woppaburra people for exclusive use over an additional 2,249 acres of Great Keppel Island, despite a prior Federal Court ruling extinguishing Native Title over significant portions of the island, with the effect of potentially closing Great Keppel Island to non-Aboriginal Australians. This situation exemplifies why there is urgent need for a thorough overhaul of Native Title laws to prevent misuse and ensure equal treatment for all Australians regardless of race

I rise to speak about the racial divisions that continue to be perpetrated by the Liberal-Labor uniparty and their toxic native title system. One Nation 's candidate for the Queensland seat of Keppel, James Ashby, is doing a wonderful job holding the Miles Labor government accountable for its failure to meet $30 million worth of commitments to Great Keppel Island. Further, James Ashby deserves credit for exposing the latest native title claim on the island on the weekend. This claim, if successful, would mean that 84 per cent of Great Keppel Island would be excluded from non-indigenous Australians. One of the jewels of Central Queensland and an Australian tourism icon could effectively be closed off for all time from the Australian people, from local businesses and from international visitors.

This isn't the first time an Indigenous group has tried to close off Great Keppel Island from the rest of us by using a divisive native title claim. In 2021 the Federal Court denied a native title claim over the Great Keppel Island leases held by Tower Holdings because of pre-existing infrastructure of commercial value. One Nation calls on this latest claim to be thrown out, too, and for the Miles Labor government to honour its $30 million promise to clean up and restore Great Keppel Island. Yet we must go much further than that. We're calling for a comprehensive review of the entire native title system and a sunset clause on native title claims, because it's getting out of hand and it's excluding from any consultation on these processes the most important stakeholders of all: the Australian people.

More than 50 per cent of Australia is now under native title claim, yet fewer than three per cent of Australians have had any say in it. The rest of us are excluded from the process. While state governments, councils and the Federal Court get a say, they almost never represent community views, because they don't ask us for our views. We're not asked, because they don't want to hear our views. This is what happened in the lead-up to the Voice referendum. There was a lot of consultation, costing a lot of taxpayer money, but only with Indigenous groups. There was none for the rest of Australia. It's one of the main reasons it was such a spectacular $450 million failure, a flop. Consultation was undertaken in an echo chamber where dissent was absent, where dissent was chastised, where dissent was suppressed. Native title claims are resolved in this sort of bubble as well—a bubble from which most Australians are always excluded, deliberately. Even those people who are specifically intended to benefit from native title are excluded from those benefits.

I often visit remote communities in Cape York and the Northern Territory, and the No. 1 complaint from Aboriginal Australians right across Cape York and the communities I visited in the Northern Territory is the inability of Aboriginals to get land title while unaccountable land councils act as robber barons building fiefdoms. This was expressed to me again by Aboriginal elders who'd heard I was visiting Maryborough and Gympie last week and came to see me and attended a forum I hosted. There's another agenda going on in the background. The Native Title Act's preamble is littered with references to the United Nations policy and declarations. Why is this so? It fits with the UN agenda of attacking private land ownership and locking the land away from use. Unfortunately for local Aboriginals, they're denied the opportunity of actually owning their piece of Australia by buying it to live on, to invest, to build, to develop, to farm or to use as collateral for a business loan to set up a business.

Native title holds Aboriginals back from doing what all other Australians can do with land. It works to maintain the gap, not close it. When British colonists arrived there was no form of landownership on the mainland. There was no recognition of individual landownership, security or passing the land onto heirs. Land title existed only in limited form, in some Torres Strait Islands. The Mabo decision was based on this distinction. It was the Labor native title legislation that extended this to the mainland of Australia—incorrectly. Native title perpetuates racial discrimination in Australia by creating rights based on race. This is wrong and must be reversed. The whole concept is consistent with Labor's policy of waste and arrogance and disdain for Aboriginals and all Australians as part of a global agenda.

Labor is one part of the uniparty. The Liberals and Nationals have done nothing to review this act to fix things for all Australians. Democratic government is supposed to work for the people and serve the people. Instead, in recent decades the uniparty governments have worked to control the people. They push a global agenda to control people and steal property and transfer wealth to the party's corporate globalist masters. We need a comprehensive review of native title urgently so that we can get back to helping Aboriginals get some land.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise and talk about a beautiful part of Queensland, Great Keppel Island. It's a wonderful place and worthy of the visitation and tourism that it receives. I have had the pleasure of visiting Great Keppel Island. I know it's a very proud jewel in the crown for people in Central Queensland. Obviously, this motion that's being debated today and put forward by the One Nation party is all about a state campaign happening near Great Keppel Island in Yeppoon and more broadly in Queensland. It is a culture war designed to get the name of the candidate from the One Nation party in the headlines. It doesn't involve any consideration of community views and it's peddling mistruths about what is actually happening on Great Keppel Island. I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to set the record straight and for the record of the Miles government and the federal government to be recorded.

To be very clear: there have not been any plans, and there will not be plans, to change the name of Great Keppel Island, despite what Mr Ashby says in the community. Despite what Mr Ashby says in the community, there are no plans for the Queensland government to support the current native title claim that has been reported over the weekend for exclusive use of parts of Great Keppel Island. What there is, though, is a plan from the Miles government and particularly led by Brittany Lauga, the state member in Yeppoon, to work with the local community to deliver a $30 million master plan to revitalise tourism on Great Keppel Island, working with traditional owners and tourism operators. That is the work that is underway. Despite the culture wars and misinformation from One Nation and the LNP in Queensland, that is the work that is ongoing. It is being led by a fantastic local member in Brittany Lauga. She is a fantastic local member.

We're going to hear today arguments about the fact that this proposed native title claim will prevent economic development, prevent tourism and stop people from travelling to Great Keppel Island. There will be claims that apparently tourism jobs will be put at risk. I'm not going to stand here and let people from One Nation make those claims, whether they are a state candidate or a member of the Senate or members of the LNP, who will get up here today and rave about the fact that tourism jobs are at risk on Great Keppel Island while they currently have a plan to defer climate action and not do anything to help. What tourism operators actually need all along the coast of the Great Barrier Reef is an energy plan on climate change delivering renewables. It is absolutely hypocritical for those opposite to come in here and argue that they are standing up for jobs on the Great Barrier Reef, like Great Keppel Island, without having a credible plan for how they're going to take action on climate change.

Just down the road from Great Keppel Island is Gladstone. I'm sure you have visited from time to time, Acting Deputy President Polley. This is where one of the supposed nuclear reactors from Peter Dutton and the Liberals and Nationals will go. They want to put nuclear power just down the road from Great Keppel Island.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're a joke!

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can tell you that those tourism operators on Great Keppel Island are incredibly concerned not only because of the proposed nuclear reactors going just down the road from Great Keppel Island but because they know that this plan, led by Senator Canavan and other Nationals members of the Liberal National Party, does nothing to protect the reef against climate change, does nothing to prevent climate change and doesn't do anything to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

Senator Canavan continues to shout at me. He can do that, and he can shout at members of the community about what he believes, but what our government is doing is listening to people about what they want. We listen to tourism operators around the Great Barrier Reef, and they're not interested in debates about culture wars and scare campaigns from over there. What they're interested in is real-time real action on climate change, and that's what our government is delivering. It is really disappointing to see another culture war fought from those opposite, but we'll see this from time to time. Whether it is completely disbelieving that climate change is real and needs action or making up claims about the Queensland government supporting a native title claim, we're going to hear it all today.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an embarrassing contribution we've just heard. We're meant to be talking about the native title system and its desperate need for reform—and it clearly does need lots of change, especially for Aboriginal people, who it's meant to benefit—but instead we've had a government senator come in here and attack the opposition about nuclear power. I don't want to do that, but I'll just quickly say: if nuclear power is somehow an inhibitor to the tourism industry, can someone explain to me the French? Can someone explain to me why Paris is the most visited town by tourists in the world? I'm sure many Labor senators like to spend the cold winters here in Australia over there in the European summer, happily using 70-per-cent nuclear-powered air conditioning in their apartments on the Champs-Elysees.

The clear thing we need here is cheap power for our country, and that will help all industries, including the tourism sector. One of the factors that has limited tourism on Great Keppel Island has been a lack of reliable power. They have needed to use diesel gen sets. It's a dirty form of power, both for carbon emissions and from a more general pollutant perspective. It's also very expensive. They need cheaper power, and wind and solar ain't gonna cut it. There have been lots of people planning to do wind and solar on Great Keppel Island, but it's not enough to run a resort or a modern tourism venture. They need proper power that can last all day. But I actually didn't want to talk too much about that in the limited time I have.

The main reason we need a focus on the native title system is that it has failed the promise that it provided to Indigenous people of this country. It's a good thing that the rights of Indigenous people have been recognised though the Native Title Act, but at the moment those rights are not able to be fully captured by Indigenous people, because of the restrictions placed on the system. We now have a generation of experience of native title—it's been in existence for 30 years—and the biggest winners have been lawyers. The legal industry have laughed their way all the way to the bank over those three decades, and poor and often desperate Indigenous communities have been left behind. We have to give Indigenous people more agency and more opportunity to take the economic benefits that are provided by having a right of property. Instead, we continually see people in this chamber saying that they support Indigenous rights, but whenever an Indigenous community has the temerity to want to exercise those rights—to develop an agricultural district, to build a dam, a mine or a factory, to expand fishing opportunities—the same people in this place who say they endorse Indigenous rights are the ones saying they can't do it.

This was most starkly demonstrated in the saga over the Adani Carmichael mine. The Wangan and Jagalingou people voted 294 to one in favour of the Adani mine, yet we still had people, particularly from the Greens and sometimes from the Labor Party, coming in here and saying, 'No, no, no; the Indigenous people can't have this mine,' even though it was approved 294 to one at the authorisation meeting under the Native Title Act. Thankfully those forces didn't win, and thankfully that mine is operating. The project employs 2,000 Queenslanders, including many hundreds of Indigenous people, and they're very happy with it. Greens senators are welcome to come and check it out. They were up there a lot when it was being proposed, but you don't see them much anymore, now that the mine is operating and providing opportunity. Too often around our country, native title corporations are restricted in what they can do. They often cannot invest in entrepreneurial endeavours. What we need is to have a system which allows Indigenous people to build their own businesses to take care of their own futures so they're not tied like indentured servants to a government run scheme that, as I say, that is leeched on by the legal profession. We have to give them that agency, and it needs reform.

So I welcome this motion being brought forward to bring a spotlight to these issues. We are now seeing again, I think, the abuse of the native title system on behalf of legal interests, where it's being extended, as we mentioned before, to areas like Great Keppel Island, where it was not intended to go. There are clearly areas of our country where native title rights exist, and our focus should remain on getting those rights working for people across the country rather than seeking to use and abuse this system for political purposes and, once again, only benefit lawyers, not the people on the ground.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I want to say that these lands and the sovereign rights of these lands were never ceded. Until Australia has a treaty with its first people, we're in a holding pattern, in a permanent suspension of our rights to exercise our own decision-making and our own determination. I won't sit here being lectured to by others in this chamber about agency and rights, when they've done the most damage, in the referendum last year, to exactly that—the rights and the exercising of the rights of First Nations people in this place.

Woppa, which is the cultural name for Great Keppel Island, is sacred to the traditional owners of that place, the Woppaburra people. I want to put on record the statement from Mr Fred Saunders, who's the chairperson of the Woppaburra Saltwater Aboriginal Corporation:

We are protective of our sacred areas and will maintain our cultural responsibilities, but the Woppaburra people are not about restriction, anti-development and locking up lands.

So Senator Roberts, in bringing this motion to this chamber today, in a very one-sided version, is frankly just dog whistling, and that's what it needs to be called out for.

Let's start with the mini history lesson. First Nations can prove, have proven and already do prove their ongoing connection to this country. Terra nullius was disproved under Mabo, not just once but twice in this country. I've said it before and I will keep saying it: this landmark decision could have and should have really changed land rights for First Nations people in this country, but it has taken so much of them away. This decision should have seen First Nations people enjoying their country, enjoying their rights and doing exactly what the Woppaburra people want to do. The traditional owners of this land want to access this land to help clean it up, to rehabilitate the contaminated areas and to do groundwater testing and fire and pest management activities after that resort was abandoned in 2007. I also note, for anyone who thinks that we get rights just by snapping our fingers like this, that it took the Woppaburra people 17 years to actually have their native title determined. Imagine being in a holding pattern for 17 years.

Nowhere on this great continent have we stopped people from visiting, camping, fishing or even buying a place on our country. Even after we told them about cultural protocols when coming to sacred places and about the importance of our artefacts and protecting our waterways and our sea country, we're still here, in this place, fighting for our legal protections under Western law, not under cultural law—the law of the land.

This urgency motion seeks to undermine the resilience, healing and connections that Woppaburra people, and many other First Nations people across this country, have. It seeks to bury the actual facts, the true and factual story: that those people, the Woppaburra people, waited 17 years for the deed to their homelands and to return there. I invite everyone in this place to go and look it up and to sit and watch the video. The people are crying for their country. They are not there to exploit it.

To the folks out there watching today: this is exactly why we need truth-telling and truth-listening in this country. We want to ensure that everyone understands the true history of Australia—the first chapter, where First Peoples can talk of their experiences, their relationship with the land and the water, our culture, our practices, our celebrations, our ceremonies, and the songlines of our ancestors and the way they link intrinsically to our kinship connections that have helped us to be here, survive and maintain this beautiful country for thousands of generations.

The Greens will be absolutely opposing. I stand here proudly as a First Nations spokesperson, on behalf of the Australian Greens, to stand against this trumped-up, misinformed, paranoid, cooked-up notion that has been brought to this chamber today. It is wrong. It is wrong to continue to talk about First Nations people in this way. It is wrong to refer to legislation that we didn't craft—that we didn't put out in front of us. We've never been in government. We are not self-governing in this country. And yet people come to this chamber and blame First Nations people for the outcomes that have been fed to us. It's disgusting.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is the motion as moved by Senator Roberts be agreed to.