Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

I hear the member for Solomon saying that there is no market. I am glad to hear him say that, because his point of view will feed straight into my argument. The department has also conceded that a home on remote lands could cost anywhere between $475,000 and $500,000 to build and, by the time it is handed over to the buyer, could be worth only $50,000 to $100,000.

Forty-two per cent of Indigenous households have an income of less than $264 a week and, on average, they are getting poorer. Between 2002 and 2005, the average Indigenous household income actually decreased from 60 per cent to 50 per cent of the average non-Indigenous income. Statistically speaking, very remote Indigenous people are the poorest. In 2005, over half of Indigenous people—51 per cent, in fact—received most of their individual income from government pensions and allowances. And that does not include those people who participate in the Community Development Employment Projects program.

In many places where incomes and the value of land are very low, and the costs of construction are high, regular public housing is a much more realistic solution. Of course we agree with the value of homeownership in terms of the positive social and economic impacts that it can have on a family’s life. But let us be sensible about it. Noel Pearson, for example, strongly agrees with the premise of increasing personal and family ownership of houses, but he also advocates for homeownership schemes to operate in an economically rational environment. We support the expansion of homeownership and innovative shared equity and sweat equity schemes in a way that makes economic sense.

I now turn to the other area in which the minister has had a lot to say about this leasing proposal—that is, on the Tiwi Islands. Our concerns about the township leasing proposals have only been enlivened, certainly not subdued, by the minister’s efforts on the Tiwi Islands and, I might also say, the Alice Springs town camps example. In December 2006 the federal government began negotiating with the Nguiu people on the Tiwi Islands for a 99-year lease over the new township. On 9 May 2007, the minister released a statement saying that he ‘welcomed the first 99-year lease over a township on Aboriginal land’. This was reported in the newspapers. It is wrong. We were told during Senate estimates by the Tiwi Land Council that the land owners have signed only a memorandum of understanding, which is not legally binding but is more a statement of intent.

So misleading was this representation that some community members launched a legal action against the agreement, seeking an injunction. Once they found out it was only a memorandum of understanding, they withdrew their action. The negotiating team for the traditional owners says that under the deal traditional owners will retain some sort of say through being employed as public servants in the office of the executive director and advising the office through a new consultative forum. The forum would only be advisory in nature, as the land rights amendments passed last year specifically preclude ongoing decision-making powers by the traditional owners in relation to the subleases.

As the Tiwi Land Council is a statutory body that can be called before Senate estimates, in February 2006 the Labor Party submitted a number of questions in relation to the proposed deal. These questions were largely the same questions that had been raised by people on the islands about how the model would work practically on the ground. We have never seen the answers to those questions. However, during Senate estimates at the end of May, the Tiwi Land Council admitted it was a complex issue that people on the ground did not fully understand. Government senators, including the Minister for Community Services, Nigel Scullion, told us the department would be able to tell us ‘what the effect of these changes would be’. I have to say that this really is not acceptable. A memorandum of understanding has been signed. People should by now understand how it will affect them. This lack of public information has fuelled a lot of fear and division in the Tiwi Islands and in the broader Indigenous community. As Marion Scrymgour, the Territory member for the Tiwi Islands, has said, the deal has ‘divided our people like no other issue’.

Another example we have is the minister’s housing and land tenure reform proposal for the Alice Springs town camps. Town camp people do not hold freehold title but have 99-year special-purpose leases over the land. The town camps existed originally as ration depots and labour camps for people who had survived dispossession of their traditional lands. It is important to understand the history of the town camps if we are to comprehend the depth of feeling of people living in these camps. Given the time I have available, I want to go through a brief time line of recent events.

After touring the camps in May 2006, Minister Brough said:

These people deserve to have a better outcome than they’re getting now, and I expect to be able to make fairly urgent decisions and put in place policies, if you will, initiatives that will turn their lives around very, very rapidly.

About 10 months later, in March 2007, the minister finally put a deal on the table. The deal consisted of $70 million worth of infrastructure and housing for town camps. In exchange, the town camps had to surrender their leases and the management of housing to the Northern Territory government. About a month later, on 18 April 2007, a concession was offered in relation to the leases. The town camps could sublease the residential areas to the Northern Territory government for 99-year leases, rather than surrendering the entire lease. To recap the events: the minister said he was going to change things in a year. It took his department 10 months to put a specific proposal on the table. One month later the deal changed substantially and then he gave the town camp people one month’s deadline to decide, threatening that otherwise the money would be spent elsewhere.

One of the reasons the town camp people did not sign up was that the deal included one non-negotiable term—that they relinquish housing management to the Northern Territory government. The environment was politically and emotionally charged and the time line was certainly unreasonable. With desperately needed funds dangling before them, the chances of people being able to make these important decisions in a free and informed way were undermined. We are still hopeful, I have to say, that a resolution can be found. But finding a resolution should be an imperative of the government, and an understanding is needed that it will take time and a willingness to negotiate.

To sum up, Labor cannot support this bill because the model has not been negotiated with Indigenous people and because of the way the federal government has gone about advancing its adoption on the ground. We do support homeownership schemes that cultivate financial responsibility, provide accredited training opportunities and are economically sound. We understand the need and the desire for economic development and empowerment in Australia’s remote regions, working with Indigenous people, not taking away hard-won land rights.

See this speech in context