Michelle Landry (Capricornia, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Justice, representing the Attorney-General. Will the minister update the House on how the government is securing Australia's economic future by making changes to the Native Title Act? How will these amendments create jobs and opportunity for Australia while giving certainty to native title rights holders?

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Capricornia for that question and her interest in this issue. As the Deputy Prime Minister has outlined, Indigenous land use agreements provide job opportunities, infrastructure and economic developments for hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Australians. They also facilitate vitally important projects which create thousands of jobs for the wider community. We remain firmly committed to Indigenous land use agreements. But a recent decision in McGlade, a decision by the Federal Court, has resulted in massive uncertainty throughout Australia for all native title and industry stakeholders. This uncertainty will affect at least 126 Indigenous land use agreements, creating continued uncertainty for tens of thousands of our fellow Australians. It is absolutely vital that this parliament moves quickly to protect the opportunities and the projects that are made possible by the ILUA system, and it is absolutely vital that this is done in a timely manner.

Just to give you an example from my home state of Western Australia of what is at stake here: the agreement which the court decision related to was a single Noongar settlement, which has put at risk $1.3 billion in benefits to 30,000 Noongar people across Western Australia. This is opportunity that this community needs. To deal with this, we have introduced urgent amendments to the Native Title Act to resolve the legal uncertainty that has been created by the courts. This uncertainty can only be resolved by the expeditious passage of this bill through the parliament. We provided the Senate with the opportunity this morning to pass this bill quickly—to pass this bill this week. We asked for the Senate to sit until this bill passed so we could resolve the uncertainty for literally hundreds of thousands of Australians and members of the Indigenous communities around the country.

The Labor Party have said that they will support our changes in this bill. Every significant stakeholder is urging this parliament to take action, including the Queensland Labor government, which has written to the Prime Minister begging him to take immediate action to deal with this. Inexplicably, in the Senate today, Labor Party senators refused to debate the bill this week. What this means, because we have Senate estimates intervening, is that the Senate will no longer be able to deal with this until the middle of June. So the billions of dollars in investment, the tens of thousands of jobs and the futures of Indigenous Australians all around the country remain in limbo because Labor Party senators refused to work on Friday. That is what is happening. Labor Party senators will not work till midday tomorrow and as a result have created this future uncertainty for our fellow Australians. It is an absolute disgrace. (Time expired)