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

I seek leave to amend business of the Senate motion No. 1 in the terms circulated in the chamber.

Leave granted.

I move the motion as amended:

That the following matters be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 6 December 2024:

(a) the effectiveness of the operation of the native title system, and options to improve:

(i) the economic development resulting from native title, and

(ii) certainty over the claim process

My motion is to do with native title. After more than 30 years, it's past time for a comprehensive review of native title legislation and how it operates in Australia. In the early 1990s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations owned 14.22 per cent of Australia's landmass including islands. Under freehold, leasehold and reserve, these organisations, not including individuals, owned 1,094,000 square kilometres of Australia. Following the Mabo and others versus the state of Queensland decision in 1992 and in the wake of the Native Title Act 1993, all vacant Crown land; occupied Crown land, like native parks; and Crown leasehold land—that is, pastoral farming properties—were and still are under threat.

According to the National Native Title Tribunal, on 31 March 2016, native title existed in an exclusive sense over a total of 851,654 square kilometres of Australia, an area greater than the state of New South Wales. Native title also existed in a non-exclusive sense over another 1,488,237 square kilometres. All up, in 2016, native title held by Indigenous people was over 2,339,890 square kilometres of land. This amounted to 30.4 per cent of 7,786,850 square kilometres of land in Australia, an area bigger than western Europe. Then, in 2021, just five years later, 26.6 per cent of Australia's land was under exclusive Indigenous native title, meaning the right to exclude others from the land, and 27.5 per cent under non-exclusive Indigenous native title. The total proportion of Australia's landmass under native title today is 54 per cent, with approximately another 10 to 12 per cent under determination.

Native title land is owned by corporations and Indigenous shareholders, but they cannot sell or, in some cases, use their land. Those who would love to own a home on their own part of Australia are denied this because there are no individual titles. Native title is a farce and controlled by land councils holding Indigenous people to ransom in their squalor and conditions that they experience in remote communities purely to milk the taxpayer funded gravy train. Aboriginals and their corporations don't pay tax on royalties or land leasing agreements. Why?

Perhaps the most galling aspect of native title is the complete exclusion of non-Indigenous Australians from any meaningful say in the process. This country belongs to all Australians, so all Australians should have a say about ownership and title of the land and waters over which all Australians share equal sovereignty. I mention that specifically because in a question without notice last year I managed to get the Labor government to concede that, in principle, this was the truth: all Australians have sovereignty over Australia.

We hear the more extreme activists routinely repeat the line that Indigenous sovereignty over Australia was never ceded. Here's an uncomfortable bit of truth-telling for those activists: you can't cede something you never had in the first place. Sovereignty is a concept that was brought to this continent by British settlement. Sovereignty is a concept of civilisation, which emerged independently in many parts of the world but never touched presettlement Australia. It requires the infrastructure and machinery of estate: government, physical institutions, currency, written records, borders, and armies to defend them. They were not concepts that existed before the emergence of civilisation around the world. Before that, virtually all human beings were essentially nomadic hunter-gatherers with no concept of borders; they just followed the food. It wasn't until people learned that it was safer and easier to grow food and keep livestock near them and the need to defend them against other people that these concepts emerged. It was this competition with others which fuelled invention and created concepts like the sovereign state and sovereign borders. Intense competition with other peoples was not something that Indigenous people ever really encountered before British settlement, so there was no impetus for these concepts to emerge independently in Australia. They were imported here in 1788.

Sovereignty is also something that requires defence. Virtually every civilisation on this planet has been both the conqueror and the conquered. That's very much the story of Britain. Celts, Anglos, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans all invaded and conquered parts of Britain. The English people are a composite of many ancestries as a legacy of these waves of conquest over thousands of years. They routinely sought to dominate the Welsh, Scottish and Irish peoples they shared their lands with. Eventually, they created the largest empire the world has ever seen, but only because they had successfully defended British sovereignty against foreign invasion for centuries. This provided the stability and secure base from which to effectively control more than a quarter of the entire planet by the 19th century.

Australia only became part of this empire because the British lost their previous dumping ground for the transport of convicts in the American War of Independence. Settlement of Australia was brought about by the British, already in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, into contact and conflict with Indigenous people who were still at Stone Age level of technological development. As a result, the conflicts were very much one-sided. Indigenous people could not effectively resist settlers armed with muskets and supported by the British sovereign state. The obvious factor was the different levels of technological development, but an important factor was the absence of sovereignty among Indigenous people.

There's no small irony in the existence of the native title system. It is directly the product of machinery of the modern sovereign state imported here by the British of government, fiscal institutions, borders, armies to defend them, and money, of course—another concept alien to presettlement Australia—truckloads of money. Money provided by taxpayers—97 per cent of which will never be able to make a native title claim or be allowed any meaningful say in the transfer of the land and wealth under their sovereign ownership.

Governments and councils have considerable input in the determination of these claims, but, as usual in this country, this input almost never reflects the views of affected communities. As a vehicle for reconciliation, native title is a complete failure, but it almost completely excludes non-Indigenous Australians from the process. Reconciliation is a two-way street, not a one-sided process. There has to be give and take on both sides. Reconciliation is also a process which is supposed to come to a resolution or conclusion at some point. That's part of the reason I've been calling for a sunset clause in native title legislation, as did former prime minister John Howard. With more than half the continent now under a form of native title, and more land transferred to Indigenous corporations and land councils under state legislation, many Australians are saying, 'Enough is enough.'

In my home state of Queensland, native title claims and state based land transfers are dividing, not uniting, our communities. Great Keppel Island, once the jewel of Central Queensland, is now subject to an exclusive-use native title claim that, if successful, will lock non-Indigenous Australians out of 84 per cent of the island. It's very apparent that this is the reason the state Labor government's $25 million promise to restore and clean up Great Keppel Island hasn't been met in more than four years. I don't think they have any intention of honouring that commitment, or the updated one they made in April this year, because they expect this claim to be successful.

Then there's the small community of Toobeah in the Goondiwindi Shire. Land which has been the beating heart of this community for a century is being claimed by an Aboriginal corporation with a Brisbane office more than 400 kilometres away. The community was kept completely in the dark about the transfer, until I visited the town and demanded some consultation. But there was no consultation. Because of my intervention, and after keeping the community in the dark for over three years, the local council had a couple of meetings at which Toobeah residents were just told what was going to happen. They have no meaningful say in it. I also believe that's precisely why non-Indigenous Australians are never asked: because the claimants, the government and the councils know the answer will very likely be no.

I also remind Australians: what about being denied the right to visit Ayers Rock, or Uluru; the Grampians National Park; Mount Warning; some beaches that we have been locked out of and many other parts of Australia? We can't go there. It's, 'Oh, sorry; it's secret women's business,' or, 'It's because of men's health.' Really? Give me a break! And this is what you're doing. For three per cent—and I question that as well—of the population, we are denying Australians the right to actually go to these beautiful places.

Native title is racist and divisive. It's treating one Australian differently to another, but purely based on race. Last year's referendum proved that beyond a doubt. The Australian people threw it out. You wanted to have a separate advisory body, another layer of government, purely for the Indigenous. Voters have woken up to the many ways that they are being denied the rights that Indigenous Australians enjoy. Non-Indigenous Australians are, in many ways, second-class citizens in their own country, and nothing illustrates this like native title. One Nation is the only party in Australia fighting for these communities and standing up for our rights to be heard and heeded, for all Australians.

My referral motion is for an inquiry that will, I hope, consider a better native title process that includes meaningful consultation with the non-Indigenous; more certainty; and better options, for Indigenous claimants, for economic development and empowerment. Indigenous people have actually come to me and said: 'We can't get any part of the land; we are denied the right. We can't set up businesses. We can't go for loans. We can't do anything.' You're keeping them locked in this squalor, because they can't access their own country. Even people that I visited in some of these Aboriginal communities have said that, although it's native title land, unless they get the say of one of the community leaders, they can't visit the land; they can't hunt on it; they can't do anything. So you're not advantaging anyone here. You're just handing it over to those who want to use it to empower themselves and to the nepotism that happens.

There's also all the taxpayers' money that goes out the door. And, as I said here, they don't pay royalties. Why? Why don't they pay tax and royalties? Why aren't they funding themselves? Why is it still upon the taxpayers to fund these corporations, these organisations, that I have called out repeatedly to be corrupt? No-one is interested in doing an investigation and audit. If you've got nothing to hide, have the audit; do an investigation; find out where the money's gone. But you know, because you know that there is corruption there and you don't want to show them up for what they are.

This whole thing is about division within our nation over native title. As I said, in the early 1990s, 14.22 per cent of the nation was under native title. Now it's over 54 per cent, and possibly an extra 10 per cent or 12 per cent will be given to native title. So over 60 per cent of Australia will be under native title for less than 812,000 people who claim to be Aboriginal. How ridiculous is that? If you really have a good think about this, what are you doing to this nation and future generations? You're not helping the Aboriginal people or the Torres Strait Island people by what you're doing. You're not talking about giving them a helping hand up. All you're doing is to keep funding all the time to keep them in the conditions that they're in, and there is no helping hand up to get them out of it. Or is this a plot to actually divide this nation and have an Aboriginal black state?

That's why we need this Senate inquiry and an investigation into it. You tell me: What are the benefits of having native title? How has it helped the Australian people? Where is our future going to lie if we keep heading down this path?

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting this motion. This motion was nearly identical to another motion put forward by Senator Hanson and rightly rejected by the Senate in September last year. It was nearly identical until it was amended in what appears to me to be a dirty deal and an accommodation with the Liberal and National parties—a little bit of more of that later.

This motion reflects Senator Hanson's disregard of the importance of native title, which is the law in Australia. It is the law in Australia. It is not a motion put forward in any way in good faith. Indeed, I've watched Senator Hanson's approach to these questions over many years now. She says things that are deliberately offensive. She says them in order to create offence. She says them in order to create social harm. She says them in order to create hurt. That's what she is deliberately, maliciously doing in order to further what she has calculated—with others, no doubt—is in the partisan interests of dividing Australians and trying to create a narrow partisan advantage for herself. I wonder why the Liberals and Nationals sign up for this. I wonder why. It is a barely concealed attempt to undermine the native title system, the whole system, and everybody in this place should see it for what it is and oppose it.

You could hear in Senator Hanson's contribution—even if you're not capable of reading the motion itself and seeing it in its context, you could hear it in her contribution—her disdain for Aboriginal Australia and her contempt for the history and the culture. There is already an inquiry into the native title system underway. It's a good-faith inquiry, commissioned by the Attorney-General and conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission. It is a comprehensive inquiry which covers the future of the native title system and explores ways in which it may be made to work better for native titleholders, for Aboriginal communities and for the whole community. It will be conducted by experts in consultation with First Nations people. That's how you go about an inquiry into native title. It's not through a stunt cooked up by Senator Hanson and Senator Cash.

It's been over 30 years since the commencement of the Native Title Act. Native title is a critical part of broader efforts to rectify past injustices in this country and to ensure that First Nations people receive the recognition they deserve. The government is investing in improvements to the native title system. In the 2024 budget, the government committed an additional $20.8 million over four years to improve the native title system. As part of this package, $12.4 million is going to the Federal Court of Australia to increase judicial resourcing and expand the delivery of its successful First Nations led case management and mediation model, $4½ million will go to the Native Title Tribunal to help prescribed bodies corporate and native title holders resolve disputes, and a further $3.3 million is being provided to the Federal Court and the Native Title Tribunal to ensure the vital records provided to them in native title matters—maps, genealogical charts, recordings of songs and dances—are preserved appropriately for future generations.

Today native title is recognised over almost half of Australia's land mass, and I say to Senator Hanson it is the law. I know that in the extremist fringe of Australian politics there is contempt for our law and for our institutions, but it is the law. It is one of our institutions. It matters for the social and economic and legal fabric of Australia. How development projects occur on country and how traditional owners can participate in, lead and share in the benefits of those projects is more important than ever. Indeed, the Prime Minister had quite a lot to say about this and about the way the government would approach economic opportunity for Aboriginal communities on traditional land just a few weeks ago.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people deserve to maintain a distinctive cultural, spiritual, physical and economic relationship with their land and their waters. You would think that these principles are so mainstream, so well understood in this parliament that the Liberals and Nationals would refuse to accept the quisling accommodation with the One Nation party that they are engaged in. They have a choice on questions like this. Quite often resolutions, motions, are moved in daily motions here, and there is nothing more hollow than the sound of a resolution or a motion passing or not passing this place on some foreign policy question. It has no consequence at all. But words in these questions have consequences, and the position of a party that pretends to be a party of alternative government on these questions is very important indeed.

We've seen the extension of extremism, the wacky and dangerous ideas, taking hold in sections of the Liberal and National parties across the aisle here in the Senate. Older generations of conservatives would never have tolerated this. Serious, actual conservatives who care about democratic institutions and the law and tradition and history would never tolerate this extremism. But the extremists are accreting their way into the Liberal and National parties, and we see it in here every day of the week. The old conservatives would have recognised the political danger of drifting away from mainstream Australia. They would have understood that ordinary people in the street want governments that act in their interests and aren't controlled by whack jobs, extremists and cookers. That is the group that is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And they're not just on the coalition backbench; they're starting to play a role in the coalition's political decision-making. It's the extremism that we see in the way that Senator Rennick approaches issues like child care, climate science and energy policy. I look forward to hearing from him about chemtrails and lizard people some time soon. There are the kinds of people who hand out leaflets from Senator Hanson and her party.

Mr Joyce, in the other place, is tilting at windmills around the community, opposing economic development in regional towns. He's out there, with diminishingly small crowds, I have to say, talking about bullets and ballots—bullets and ballots. What is wrong with this bloke? What is wrong with him? But, more seriously, what is wrong with the Liberal and National parties that they do not see the danger and they do not act? What you get from Mr Joyce is a mealy-mouthed, weak apology, and then he goes back to his electorate and pretends it hasn't happened. I get the local papers, the Northen Daily Leader up there, and I see what Mr Joyce writes. It is incoherent. It is a word salad. What he did was pretended he did not say what he did. That is the modus operandi of the extremist: say something provocative, offensive, mean spirited and extreme and then run away from it, and then do it again and do it again and do it again in an effort to try and court some sectional, minor accretion of political advantage.

I tried to list some of the areas that other politicians here are extremists about—Senator Antic, everything, I think, in truth. But what is the approach by what passes for leadership in the Liberal and National parties on these issues? It's to tolerate it. It's to encourage it. It's pats on the back. It's 'don't worry, mate; it'll be alright'. That is what has happened to a once proud political organisation that pretends it's capable of being an alternative government. You don't get to be an alternative government if you drift so far from mainstream Australia that you become purveyors and encouragers of wacky ideas, of extremism, just like this motion.

What sits underneath it? It's a hostility to Aboriginal Australia—to its culture, to its history, to the great task of reconciliation, as complicated and messy as that is. It's a hostility to 65,000 years of history. We saw Mr Dutton refuse to go to Garma. And he said, when interviewed—I thought this was remarkable; it passed without much comment—he was opposed to truth-telling. What does he want people to tell—lies? He's opposed to truth-telling. What an extraordinary proposition. Now, reconciliation, native title, a recognition of our history—sure. These are matters of social and economic justice, no question. Of course they are. But they also make Australia stronger. They make Australia stronger because they knit our community together. Our 65,000 years of Indigenous history are a national asset. Our kids should be proud of it. I know it's a national asset because, when I travel overseas representing Australia at trade conferences and fora all over the world, it is a national asset. It makes us stronger. It particularly makes us stronger in our region.

This idea from Senator Hanson that we should pit Australians against each other, particularly in country towns, when so much good work is going on—I travel much of regional Australia, and I hear a very different story to the story that Senator Hanson tells. I hear from people who are working hard to build their communities, to build strength in their communities and to get on with the task of reconciliation at a national and local level.

We have here just one more example of the One Nation party, the Nationals and the Liberals getting more and more extreme, further and further away from mainstream Australia, further and further away from where ordinary Australians are on these questions, and more and more divisive and determined to make Australia weaker, not stronger, because their political calculation is if they make Australia weaker and convince people that they are losing then they might just win something. That's what this is all about. I've got no hope for the One Nation party on these propositions—it is a definitional question for them; they don't exist without this kind of base politics—but there ought to be a little bit of self-reflection amongst the Liberal and National parties about where this leaves them and where it leaves the country.

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

When I came to this place a few years ago, I hoped I wouldn't have to continue to repeat myself by way of explaining history. It's the reason Senator Shoebridge and I pursued and pulled together a private senator's bill on a makarrata commission. The word 'makarrata', contrary to what the Prime Minister told everyone and continues to tell everyone, is about a struggle, coming together, a conversation. It's the Yolngu word gifted in the Uluru Statement from the Heart from 2017.

History in this country can be turned on its head. History in this country can be manipulated by people opposite for the following of people who listen to One Nation politicians who come into this place with motions like this—a referral to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for an inquiry into native title. Senator Ayres is exactly right; last year there was this same conversation. It feels like groundhog day in this place. We have to get up and continually tell this to people who don't show up all the time, who are not attuned to what is happening in communities, who are not listening to what's happening in committees and who are blind and deaf to the fact that we have 65,000 years of history and culture, connection, people, rock art, song, dance, ceremony, teachings and learnings. That 'farce' Senator Hanson refers to describes this referral; this motion is a farce.

I will highlight some of the things Senator Hanson said. First Nations people don't pay tax in this country. You know how we pay tax? Through our blood, sweat and tears. What happened in this nation was what they did to rip apart our families. In Western Australia and Queensland, where y'all come from, it's the history of the 1905 act—the assimilation policy, the White Australia policy and the history of that, the colonial legacy of this nation. And it's being perpetuated through stunts like this, Senator Hanson, for your donations, for people following you, for social media and, I don't know, to sell gin or vodka or whatever you're selling this week—that this is about how all Australians feel about First Nations people in this country. Well, I've got news for you, Senator Hanson and One Nation followers: it's not how all Australians feel about First Nations people.

I am a very proud Noongar Yamatji woman who comes from five generations of my family being disconnected. The legislation in this country allowed my ancestors to be removed from their country. With the attempt to disconnect us from our native tongue, they might as well get a pair of scissors and cut our tongues off. We weren't given the gift of being able to learn our language. That was your law, not ours. The legislation in this country, at the state level, allowed us to be placed alongside the environment—flora and fauna. That's not a myth. That's actually true. The segregation and the deliberate acts of removal of our children are what helped cause the situation that we are currently in.

When we talk about the law, native title came off the back of the Mabo No. 2 determination. This is like a history lesson, because I feel like I've said this so many times before, about the concept of terra nullius. The British didn't just turn up and find this land vacant. That's not true. That's why the Mabo determination, the two High Court challenges, enabled us to disprove terra nullius. There's 30,000 years of connection and culture that, in my clans, I can prove. I can prove that. The High Court has determined that. They use legal instruments like the Native Title Act, the act you now want to review as part of your erasure policy, to erase us. You want to put your sunset clause in there. That's the bit that you said out loud, and then you thought, 'I'd better not put that there', so you get up and amend it. Well, guess what? It's too late. Everyone sees the hollowness in what it is that you are trying to do.

Senator Ayres was actually pretty on point with what he said about extremism, because this level of extremism is pointed to the first chapter of the history of this nation, the precolonial history, which actually is Australia's history. Australians should be proud of that. We want them to be proud of that. We want to share that. Senator Hanson, you don't want to share that. You don't want that for Australia. That's really, really clear, because every time you come in this place all you do is rubbish Aboriginal people—every single time. It's like you've got people on that side of the chamber now who—

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me, Senator Cox. There's a point of order from Senator Roberts.

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

Point of order: that was a deliberate falsity from Senator Cox about Senator Hanson. She does not come in here and talk negatively, let alone every time. She never comes in here and talks negatively about Aboriginals.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's not necessarily a point of order. It can be countered in debate. I can't, obviously, adjudicate that. But, Senator Cox, please be measured, as we've been.

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

Thank you, Deputy President. I'm not going to withdraw my comment. This continues to be a constant narrative—a constant narrative that is shoved down the throats of First Nations people in this place. People are watching the deliberate, racially motivated narrative that is being churned out as people open Facebook, Instagram and all the other mediums on their phones. Researchers have actually told us that it's like being punched in the face every time there is racism that is experienced by us. It has that much impact, and yet people use this as a platform. It's just horrendous.

This is a continual thing that people use as part of native title—that the native title legislation is racist. Well, how? I want to know how, because if you walk into somebody's house without acknowledging them, without respecting them, and without thinking about what impact you might have on the way that they've been living in that house for a really long time, and then you decide that you're just going to sell that house from underneath those people—'I don't care what they say; I don't even have to ask permission, and I'm not going to give them a dime out of it'—this is why the native title legislation exists. It wasn't just an abandoned house. It is not that Australia didn't have anyone here and there were no sophisticated systems that were set up. We would fish for a day. We didn't have to farm. We had trade routes. We were able to have our tribal boundaries. And it was all removed. The one thing we can agree on is that native title gave that to us. It gifted that to us as First Peoples. Your stone-age interpretation is your warped view of history. We were not part of that. We had sophisticated systems. We didn't need a refrigerator because we had our own systems for keeping our food fresh.

The one thing Senator Hanson did mention is that you can't bring a knife to a gunfight, right? You can't. And that's how we ended up massacred. That's how the frontier wars of this nation happened. The blood is still in the land. And that's the reality of the situation. Yet mainstream Australia, because of people like Senator Hanson and others, wants to come into this place and say we should forget about that, that it wasn't a big deal and that they're just a couple of people's ancestors down the road.

What sort of hurt—the intergenerational trauma of that—do you think exists for First Nations people in this country, from being denied their rights, being denied their children, being denied their culture and being denied any type of economic empowerment for generations? That's not years; we're going to use generations of people. I'm talking about 150 generations of my people that have been denied their rights. The one little shred of right that we currently have and that we hold on to is the fact that we will have native title to identify and to acknowledge that we were here before 1788 and that we have a rich culture, history, knowledges and people.

We don't have formal truth-telling in this country, yet. And the Commonwealth, the government, are denying us that. They can stand up in here and say, 'We respect the law'—I almost thought Senator Ayres was going to break into, 'I'm all for makarrata and truth and justice,' because that's what it felt like. But they're still denying us that.

You have to tell the truth about what's really happening. That's not about, 'An Aboriginal person came to my office and complained about native title because they're not getting their share.' I know that process is not perfect, and I'm not advocating that it is. What I'm saying is that I don't think anybody in this place can possibly sit here and say that they've been hunted off a piece of land, that they've been told not to go there—if they've been respectful—that they've been told that they should get out of the place or that we have ever put up a sign saying 'No whitefellas'. I don't think that's happened. If you can bring evidence of that, I'll entertain it for a little bit. But then I'll go and ask the question: why?

If somebody tells you, 'Don't do that,' there's a reason for it. So what about when someone says, 'That's a sacred site'? I don't see anybody jumping on top of anybody else's grandmothers' and ancestors' graves, yet we think that that's okay? Do we think that climbing one of our sacred sites is okay? Do we think that ruining an area—like the example Senator Hanson used, of Great Keppel Island—and then going, 'We'll just hand it back now; we've come in for a party, we've wrecked the joint and now we're handing it back, and we'll let the First Nations people fix that up,' is okay?

When that's included under native title, or even in the extinguishment of native title, we are questioned about our intention in that. I've read the media statement from the local PBC, who've said: 'Of course non-Aboriginal people can come here to Great Keppel Island. We would never deny that. We want to restore it. We want to make sure that we can share it.'

So I find this myth and the accusation that was made today that First Nations people—the three per cent of Australians that claim to be Aboriginal—are telling people not to go on country absolutely laughable. It's laughable because it's not happening. There are sacred places for men and women's business. There are ceremonial grounds. There are issues that require us to have a little bit of respect for others, whether it be people's religion, their race or their disability, and we've had a whole conversation this week about the NDIS.

But to deny why native title exists is just abhorrent. It is just unbelievable that people can sit in this place, come in here for an acknowledgement of country every morning and still think that they can make accusations that we would run people off country and that we want to money grab. The money was something that was brought in on the boat. That bit you're right about, because we see the value in the land.

We are the custodians of this country, but we cop a lot of negative flack. The racism in this country, since the referendum, has gone up. That is something that is true, and our people have felt and copped the brunt of that. The rise of that is because of this.

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

I support the referral of the native title system to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee because the native title system is currently hurting mainland Aboriginals. In practice, native title is racist against Aboriginal people. I also support the reference because I support Australia and all Australians—one united nation, one nation.

Since the introduction of the Native Title Act into Australian law in 1993, more than 50 per cent of the Australian land mass has come under determinations of the Native Title Tribunal—54 per cent, to be precise. The legislation, though, is not a true reflection of what was in fact determined in the High Court, which considered the unique circumstances of Mr Eddie Mabo's family and the situation on Murray Island in the Torres Strait. The Native Title Act, when drafted, relied significantly on United Nations declarations, which were mentioned six times in a 2½ page preamble. That's what it's all about—United Nations declarations and other agreements related to the rights of Indigenous peoples. Locking up land from private ownership is on the UN agenda.

What is not so well understood is the total failure of the Native Title Act to provide practical benefits to the lives of Aboriginal people living in remote areas of Australia. That's why it is racist. It is hurting and holding back Aboriginals, especially those in remote areas of Australia. Less well known is that some native title claims grant exclusive rights which may allow the native title holder to exclude non-Aboriginals from accessing the land—fact. This may prevent other Australians accessing beaches and landmarks of significance unless they pay for the privilege.

More symbolic than practical, the act has effectively locked up large tracts of land from the use or benefit of individual Aboriginal people. It's locked them out. The only ones who have benefited under the act are those wealthy community barons, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who are part of the white and black Aboriginal industry and rip off needy Aboriginals. Instead, they divert much of the billions of dollars in Aboriginal funding to themselves, sucking it up and keeping it from the people in the communities. Those who benefit are the white and black Aboriginal academics, activists, Aboriginal community leaders, shonky lawyers and dodgy Aboriginal corporations, who do nothing to help individual Aboriginals.

I've travelled widely through Aboriginal communities across Queensland, including every Cape York community—sometimes three times through a community. I've been to all of the communities at least twice.

When we were in Cape York, we met with local community leader Mr Bruce Gibson, for example. He's one of many. He shared his views on native title and its impact on his community. And, by the way, we hear these comments from Aboriginal elders in other parts of Queensland as well, in communities like Gympie and Maryborough—mainstream communities. Anyway, getting back to Mr Bruce Gibson, he said that native title was important for the recognition of the Indigenous perspective of their relationship with the land and for recognising that Aboriginal people were the first inhabitants of Australia and that they had inherent rights to the land. That's fine.

His view was that the Native Title Act was not providing Aboriginal people—and, remember, Mr Gibson is an Aboriginal from an Aboriginal community and a fine man—with something tangible, because they could not use native title to advance any individual interests. It's racist, because white people in this country can go and buy land. They can use that as collateral for a business loan or for building their own family house. Aboriginal people in communities cannot. The land is locked up and given to the barons of the community. Land under native title cannot be mortgaged to help build a home or be used as collateral to support a business loan. The land is essentially locked up and not used to support small projects or family homes. It's racist. It hurts Aboriginals.

This would seem contrary to the effective intention of the legislators. If the act is supposed to benefit hardworking Australian Aboriginals, it's failing, just as the Closing the Gap program has failed. Because the land is not freehold, nobody is able to work towards owning their own home, and the property is now locked away out of reach. The Commonwealth government can reclaim land and convert it to freehold, and some compensation is then paid to the traditional owners. Yet this does not benefit any individuals. With individual landownership prevented, there is little incentive to work towards beneficial community or personal goals.

Bruce Gibson said that he wished to own his own place in his community. He cannot. Why? Because he's Aboriginal on an Aboriginal community. That's why. Native title doesn't look after him. He wishes to build up and expand his small business as a shop owner, yet he cannot buy the premises. He must hope that he can lease the shop from the local traditional owners, if he says the right things. These comments were echoed across the Cape, from constituents to council mayors and council members. It was universal—every community. There was not one person to whom we spoke who had a good thing to say about native title other than it providing some recognition to them as First Australians. That's why native title is racist. It hurts Aboriginals.

Coming back to the Mabo decision, the Mabo decision was based correctly on Mr Mabo's island in the Torres Strait Islands—Murray Island, I think it is. But that was because there was a system of handing down title of land to succeeding generations. It was a means of keeping people who didn't hold title to the land out of their land. That system was in the Torres Strait. It was not on the mainland. There was no system of land tenure on the mainland. That Mabo decision should not have been extended. It wasn't extended by the High Court. It was extended by the Labor Party under Paul Keating. They made that up, and it's a falsity.

I want to go to some key points that I've made in notes. With native title, there are no individual needs being met—no universal human needs. It's just a feel-good policy to make a few people in the inner-city areas think we've handed land back to the Aboriginals, when we never took it, and it hasn't been handed back. It's been taken off whoever had it. It provides enormous uncertainty regarding development, which is holding back Aboriginal communities. There's confusion between native title and the Aboriginal Land Act 1991 in Queensland. They're two separate issues. They're both taking up land in Queensland.

There are many uncertainties in claims of native title, like two families claiming the same land. In some cases, one family from interstate is granted the land when the local Aboriginal people are denied the land. It's rife with these kinds of false claims. Look at Toobeah. Look at Deebing Creek near Ipswich. That hurts the Aboriginals. It also deflects and hides from Aboriginals' core problems, and they have got problems in remote communities, not in all remote communities—they're different; they vary—but there are problems. But they're not being fixed by the white and black Aboriginal industry. The problems are being exacerbated exactly as Senator Hanson mentioned.

Let me tell you a story about my first time as a senator. I was walking up to the One Nation office in Brisbane, and three Aboriginal people approached me. I talked to them, and they said they were from the Northern Territory. I said, 'What are you doing here then?' They said: 'We've come to see Senator Hanson because she's the only one who understands our problems and the only one with the guts to tell the truth. She's the only one.' These are Aboriginal people from the Northern Territory who came down from the Territory to Brisbane to see Senator Hanson because she's the only one who gets it and she's the only one who understands.

There's a flow-on from the guilt and grievance industry, the white and black Aboriginal industry that I mentioned, that's hurting and suppressing Aboriginals, entrenching dependence and entrenching victimhood. The Aboriginal people are wonderful people, essentially salt of the Earth. Why are we keeping them down? Why are we suppressing them under a blanket of bureaucracy?

We need sunset clauses on native title applications, just like the Queensland Aboriginal Land Act of 1991. It had a sunset clause that came into force in 2006. We need a moratorium on native title allocations. We need to review the Native Title Act, and that's why I support this reference. We need to reverse the closing of landmarks. Prominent Aboriginals in this country have admitted that the closing of landmarks is based on obsolete practices. The closing of Mount Warning was strongly opposed by an Aboriginal elder, a woman, but her voice was not heard. It was suppressed. Mr Marc Hendrix is doing a marvellous job of publicising the truth about Mount Warning's closure. It was a bunch of gutless bureaucrats and politicians from the New South Wales state government that succeeded to rubbish. It succeeded to the stuff that comes out of the south end of a northbound bull, and it was spread by a small, tiny group and opposed by Aboriginals, including elders. Wise females were just ignored, just buried. The One Nation MPs, I'm sure, will review the Aboriginal Land Act of 1991 in Queensland, and also we need a review of the Native Title Act.

I'm going to make some comments about Senator Ayres. Labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the incompetent, the dishonest and the fearful. Senator Ayres put together not one single coherent point, just a lot of labels and lies. That was all we got from Senator Ayres. He retreated. He put forward no arguments. It was all just hollow words.

Pauline Hanson is known for her love of Australia and her love of Australians, regardless of skin colour. Let me tell you a story from when we first came to Canberra in the Senate in 2016. We went to the Griffith Vietnamese Restaurant, where a lot of politicians have gone over the years and written on the walls. We couldn't get out of the place because the Vietnamese people, the other Asian people, wanted autographs with Senator Hanson. Why? Because she protects the country. She protects the country and makes sure we keep our values in this country. That's why Asian people, Indian people, Chinese people and Middle Eastern people come to this country—because they like the values of this country. We have got to protect that.

These concerns about native title are echoed right across Queensland and in other parts, including across the Territory as well. We know from prominent Aboriginals that they agree with Senator Hanson and with me. It's way over time for this native title regime to be reconsidered, and I recommend its referral to this committee for the benefit of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and for the benefit of all Australians. Thank you.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had no intention of speaking on this disgraceful and farcical motion, but, unfortunately, I was here at the time Senator Hanson made her speech. And I'm really sorry that Senator Cox had to listen to that speech as well, because I haven't heard such incomprehensible drivel in a long time. On top of that, it was dripping in white supremacy, colonisation and racism.

In some parallel universe, or maybe the dream world—or perhaps, more aptly, the nightmare world—that One Nation live in, they seem to think that they are calling out racism. It would be laughable if it weren't such a serious issue. Here's the truth: no matter where we are in this country, we are on stolen land; sovereignty was never ceded; this is, always was and always will be Aboriginal land. So deal with it, Senator Hanson.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are there any other contributions to this debate? We're past 6.30, so, if someone calls a division, it will have to be deferred until tomorrow. I put the question on the motion moved by Senator Hanson referring matters to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee. A division being required, it will be deferred until tomorrow. The debate is adjourned.