Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I said last night, I am very honoured to speak on the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007 as it is another step in improving opportunities for Indigenous people on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. This is vital for the social and economic development of the Territory.

The amendment bill seeks to establish an office of Executive Director of Township Leasing to enter into and administer township leases on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. The township leasing scheme is established under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act and enables Aboriginal landowners to issue long-term leases over their land to promote economic development.

The bill specifies the functions of the executive director and provides for appointment by the Governor-General. The bill also provides for the terms and conditions under which the executive director will hold office, the way in which the executive director may obtain the assistance of staff and consultants, and reporting procedures for the executive director.

The Commonwealth had anticipated that the NT government would establish an entity to hold township leases. However, to date this has not occurred and the office of the executive director is being established on an interim basis pending the establishment of a Northern Territory entity. If—and it is a big ‘if’—and when this occurs, the township leases would be transferred to the Northern Territory entity and the office of executive director would be abolished.

I commend this bill to the House and congratulate the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs on seeking to create real generational change for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory which will give Territory Aborigines the chance to have opportunities like other Australians.

Nguiu on the Tiwi Islands is the first community to take advantage of 99-year leasing, which offers the chance of private home ownership and business enterprise development on Aboriginal land. The 99-year lease over the township on Aboriginal land will be held by the new Commonwealth statutory officer, the Executive Director of Township Leasing, which will issue subleases, collect rent and administer the headlease.

The issues go beyond Aboriginal land under the Aboriginal land rights act. Earlier this month, the federal government urged Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs to reconsider its decision to turn down the federal government’s offer of $60 million to upgrade town camps in Alice Springs. Tangentyere should accept the offer. There is an urgent need to improve conditions in Alice Springs town camps and to impose the rule of law on areas one of my parliamentary colleagues described as ‘ghettos of despair’. Town camps have become associated with Third World living conditions, poor hygiene, extreme violence and alcohol and child sexual abuse.

The Territory Labor government has done too little since 2001 to remedy this situation or to improve the lot of Aboriginal town camp dwellers. Its response was a task force report—the Alice Springs Town Camps Task Force report, it was called—which was published in 2006. It reviewed infrastructure, services and living conditions in town camps. The report highlighted the urgent need to bring power, water, sewerage, roads, rubbish and rates into line with standard arrangements for other parts of the town. This will build a healthier and safer community for residents of the camps, as will the proposed alcohol courts. All town camps have historically experienced poor infrastructure and service provision. The dual impacts of high demographic growth and regional mobility have created a crisis. High visitor numbers, overcrowding and a lack of alternative accommodation options are putting substantial pressure on town camp residents, infrastructure, Tangentyere Council and the wider Alice Springs community. The report’s recommendations include standardising municipal services, upgrading and maintaining infrastructure, addressing visitor accommodation needs and upgrading the existing housing.

Town camps are small communities made up of family members or members of the same language groups. The majority are permanent residents. Many are now third, fourth or even fifth generation who live in these camps. Many of the visitors to those groups tend to stay for extended periods and this causes serious overcrowding in many camps. The federal government has proposed providing short-term accommodation visitor sites, using transportable houses to combat this problem. The current bill under consideration and a number of other federal government initiatives offer a normalisation solution for town camps and communities, in contrast to the neglect shown by the Northern Territory Martin Labor government. No-one can reasonably deny the need for the wholesale renovation of town camps. Their squalor has no place in contemporary Australia. There are 19 legally established camps in Alice Springs and two camps are without leases. With regard to Tangentyere Council, the key requirement of the proposal on the town camps was to sublease to the Territory government and to transfer houses to Territory housing. This would allow homes to be properly managed as well as provide private home ownership opportunities. This is an essential element in normalising town camps. The leases being transferred do not represent traditional lands, only special purpose leases granted to legitimise occupation of the camps.

The release last week of the third Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage report has reinforced the need for a generational change approach to tackling Aboriginal issues in the Territory. Just about every indicator shows that Aboriginal Territorians are well below the national average in terms of disadvantage. While some progress has been made in achieving falling rates of infant mortality and increasing educational opportunities, more has to be done. Indigenous housing is one area which needs improvement, and a new local government model that will improve governance and service delivery is urgently needed as well. The amendment bill before us today must be seen in the context of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill of 2006, passed in August last year, which provides more choice and opportunity for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and allows them to realise the economic potential of their land.

The amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act will allow changes to land tenure in Aboriginal townships, streamline processes for land development and raise performance and improve accountability of land councils and royalty bodies. It will foster economic opportunities for Aboriginal people through a new, streamlined procedure for exploration and mining on Aboriginal land. Land councils will be funded on their performance and outcomes. If traditional owners wish to, they can give individual property rights to other Aboriginal community residents, not necessarily Aboriginal people, through long-term leases. The leasing arrangements will ensure that traditional owners are paid appropriately for the use of their land. The reform to the land rights act will help create future opportunities for Aboriginal people. These amendments allow for 99-year leases, which will make it easier for Indigenous people to own a home or establish a business or enterprise in Aboriginal townships. People will be assisted to buy their home through funding available from the Home Ownership on Indigenous Land Program, which provides low-interest loans and other assistance. Leasing provisions and the conditions of the lease are entirely voluntary for traditional owners. The rights of traditional owners are maintained and the land will remain inalienable Aboriginal freehold title. Unlocking the economic potential of Aboriginal land will benefit all Territorians.

To put this current amendment bill in context, let me talk a little about the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. It was passed by both houses of the Commonwealth parliament and imposed exclusively upon the Northern Territory in 1976. At the time, pressure was building for land rights and the political climate was ripe for change. In the Northern Territory, the Aboriginal stockmen of Newcastle Waters and Wave Hill had walked off the job, demanding equal pay. It was a strike that struck a deep chord in the Australian psyche and became symbolic of Aboriginal dispossession when the Gurindji at Wave Hill turned the pay dispute into a demand for the return of their land. I argued some years ago in a paper to the Bennelong Society Conference that the Aboriginal land rights legislation is in a sense a rights act, not a land management act. It was about putting things right, about appeasing the national conscience and international opinion in the only place that the Commonwealth could, in the Northern Territory. I argued that it was not about good land management, land administration or planning for the future exploitation and productivity of the land; it was about the protection of land as a right, the preservation of culture, defending Aboriginal people and their land from the intrusion of outsiders, be it pastoralists, miners, tourists or anyone without a permit—even their own future government. The land rights legislation has left the Territory a legacy that has soured relations between the Northern Territory government and the land councils ever since. To defend the rights of Aboriginal Territorians, the act stipulates that the Territory parliament could not acquire Aboriginal land for public purposes for fear that a Territory government would repossess Aboriginal land en masse. So the legislation was imposed exclusively from above.

Today, almost half of the Northern Territory is under Aboriginal title. The Commonwealth act prohibits any compulsory acquisition of land under the act by the Territory government. The power of the land councils has grown in equal measure. Land council administration costs have eaten up mining royalty moneys, and whatever little is left has gone to some benefit of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory.

But, despite this protection, many Territory Aborigines today are land rich and dirt poor, trapped in a welfare dependency status. The reality is that it is difficult to find a functional Aboriginal community anywhere. The federal Indigenous affairs minister has highlighted this problem in the past year or so. Sexual assault, domestic violence and other violence, antisocial behaviour and drunkenness are all too common today in many communities. The Howard government wants to break that cycle of despair; it wants to encourage land councils to work proactively towards engaging Aboriginal people with private enterprise and economic development.

Some years back, the then minister for Indigenous affairs, Phillip Ruddock, produced an options paper for the future of the land rights act. One option was repatriation of the act to the Northern Territory government. It would have meant at least some control by the Territory government over 50 per cent of the lands in the Northern Territory. As history shows, the offer was ignored by the Northern Territory government and Chief Minister Clare Martin, and by the land councils. I believe it was a missed opportunity.

The land rights act has failed because, while it has created Aboriginal owned land, it has also reduced Territory Aboriginals to a welfare dependency status. The royalty flow from mines located on Aboriginal land has been used by land councils to fund the administration costs of a powerful bureaucracy, and an elite Aboriginal leadership has emerged. Moneys have been distributed to select groups and individuals on a grace-and-favour basis, with little flow down to those at the bottom. Decision makers in the royalties distribution business have in many cases been beneficiaries themselves in the process.

I argued at the Bennelong Society that the land council system should be disbanded and replaced by a regional trust, with royalty moneys flowing directly to those trusts. My view is that the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act should be repatriated to the Northern Territory as soon as possible, basically with its current provisions but with the Commonwealth installing safety clauses to guarantee some of its provisions as it sees fit. I know this is easier said than done. In the Territory, the Commonwealth has played the role of protector of Aboriginals, formally adopting the role after the 1967 referendum—the 40th anniversary of which we celebrated only two weeks ago.

The land rights legislation sets out to provide Territory Aboriginals with community ownership of traditional lands and protects that ownership through land councils, land trusts and a court of land commissioners. The Commonwealth specifically excluded the Territory government from doing anything to interfere with its newly created process, except as an applicant to land title hearings. The lands right act sought to establish a sanctuary where Aboriginals would be able to return to hunting and foraging on their newly acquired land and to reassert their spiritual link to the land.

Of course, the reality has been far different and today a different model is far more appropriate. This amendment bill is one more step towards simplifying the arrangements for established traditional owners to enter into lease arrangements or joint ventures that would allow mining, pastoral, tourism and other private enterprises to proceed. These reforms are a result of almost 10 years of consultation between the Australian and Northern Territory governments, land councils and Indigenous communities.

As I said last night, the Aboriginal people to whom I speak are not that different from the rest of us. They want jobs and they want the opportunities that jobs provide. They want schooling for their children, access to good health services, proper roads in their communities and rubbish collection. They want access to a whole range of services that are provided by the private sector. In very few places—in fact, I know of none—in the Northern Territory can you go into an Aboriginal community and see a market garden, a butcher shop, a hairdresser, a bakery, or any of the other things that we take for granted in mainstream Australia.

Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory want access to those services just like the rest of us do. For too long it has been too hard for business to establish itself. Businesses have not had the opportunity to set up on Indigenous land, and they should be given that opportunity not only for the commercial profit to be made in some of these ventures but also, and most importantly, to give Indigenous people in the Northern Territory access to the same services that those of us in the wider community in Australia tend to enjoy. I support the bill.

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