House debates

Tuesday, 12 June 2007

Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 24 May, on motion by Mr Brough:

That this bill be now read a second time.

8:37 pm

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

I want to start with some lyrics from a beautiful song by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody called From Little Things Big Things Grow:

And Vincent sat down with big politicians

This affair they told him is a matter of state

Let us sort it out, your people are hungry

Vincent said no thanks, we know how to wait

It is important to remember just how hard and for how long Indigenous people have fought for land rights. The struggle has been underpinned by absolute determination and dignity. That determination should not be underestimated by anybody in this parliament. The song documents the struggle of Vincent Lingiari and his people, but the lyrics resonate strongly today as Indigenous landowners are being pressured to accept land reforms with little negotiation on the model for reform. The Alice Springs town camps were offered $60 million in housing and infrastructure to agree to land reform. They responded, ‘No thanks, we know how to wait.’

Today I am speaking on the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007, which follows the government’s amendments that were pushed through parliament last year amidst a great deal of controversy. One of the most contentious amendments in last year’s legislation included a 99-year township leasing proposal. This now provides that traditional owners can grant a 99-year headlease over a township located on their land. The headlease would be held by a territory or Commonwealth approved entity that would then grant subleases in accordance with the conditions set out in the headlease. By making it simpler and faster to obtain a sublease, this entity model aimed to reduce transaction costs for businesses and services on Aboriginal land and encourage economic development. But it also removed direct control by traditional owners over development on township land.

This bill seeks to create an Office of Executive Director of Township Leasing to enter into and administer township leases on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. The bill specifies the functions and resources of the executive director and provides that the executive director be appointed by the Governor-General. The cost of the office will be met from up to $15 million to be provided over five years for the township leasing scheme. The necessary funds will be sourced from the Aboriginals Benefit Account, which is essentially Aboriginal money derived from mining royalties. Since the changes went through parliament last year, the Northern Territory government has allowed detailed community debate about the proposals. The Northern Territory government’s position has always been that Indigenous people should have the time to understand and discuss the model and to negotiate what form the entity should take. The Commonwealth on the other hand is not interested in negotiating on the form of the model. Through the bill before us today, the government seeks to create its own ‘approved entity’ to fill the gap until one is established by the Northern Territory. It is not clear what will happen if a model developed by the Northern Territory government is incompatible with the statutory model. Could we have duplicate, incompatible schemes operating in the Northern Territory?

Last year Labor opposed the 99-year leasing proposal because the model had not been negotiated with traditional owners. Today we oppose the creation of this statutory office, to be funded out of Aboriginal money, for the same reason. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was the first and strongest legal recognition of the profound connection that Indigenous people have to their country. It recognised the communal nature of landownership in traditional Aboriginal law and culture through a form of freehold title. The act, back in 1976, represented the most significant set of rights won by Aboriginal people after two centuries of European settlement. It returned about 50 per cent of the land area of the Northern Territory to its traditional owners.

The government now is seeking to radically reshape that land rights regime. It fundamentally seeks to alter the principle of communal landownership which is at the heart of the land rights regime. The government has taken this step without proper negotiation with traditional owners and without their consent. It is hard to imagine that any other group of Australians would have their property rights treated in this way. Before the changes were passed last year it was already possible for a lands trust to give a 99-year lease over a township to a particular body under the act. What has been common practice in the past, though, is the granting of individual subleases over parcels of land within townships.

The minister argued last year that amendments were necessary to provide a clear pathway, or prescribed model, for traditional owners to adopt. The Tiwi Land Council has said that, by issuing smaller leases over individual blocks rather than a headlease over the entire township, you stand to diminish the value of township. However, it has also been asked why it would not be appropriate to have an Aboriginal land corporation hold the 99-year lease, as opposed to a government entity. Indeed, when the traditional owners of Wadeye put a proposal to the government for an Aboriginal corporation to hold the headlease, they were swiftly rebuffed. They told the minister:

The concept of a Town Corporation controlled by the traditional owners, the Diminin people, is a critical aspect of the lease.

The government is arguing that land rights have not delivered economic outcomes, and is therefore seeking to construct a Hobson’s choice for Indigenous people. Choose between your rights to land and your rights to economic development. I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of traditional owners and the government to devise land tenure arrangements which streamline transaction costs without fundamentally undermining Indigenous ownership and control of their land. Our approach—and this is our approach across the portfolio—is to review the evidence and assess each idea on its merits. We do not believe in taking an ideological approach to these very important issues.

What we do want is an informed, open and transparent debate about the details of 99-year leases over townships. What we do want is for traditional owners to be able to negotiate a deal that is fair, underlines their aspirations and anticipates their concerns for future generations. What we do not want is decisions being made in a rushed or politically charged environment. We do not want land tenure reform being made a condition of funding for basic services. And we do not want there to be any doubt that the consent offered by traditional owners is anything but free and informed. Unfortunately, the approach of Minister Brough has not inspired such confidence or trust. In fact, it has spawned the opposite.

One of the main arguments that the government have put forward in support of the 99-year lease changes is that they want to increase homeownership. Of course, Labor supports improving opportunities for homeownership, so let us look at the government’s progress. The Indigenous Home Ownership Program has been operating for a number of years and has assisted many Indigenous people in urban and regional areas through discounted interest rates. Since July 2006, over 500 loans have been approved. There is a 12-month waiting list for this program due to housing affordability being a major problem in urban and regional areas.

However, the largest injection of new money into Indigenous homeownership has been for remote Indigenous land. In the 2006 budget, the government committed $107.2 million for a homeownership program on Indigenous land. That program was predicated on there being a 99-year lease over the land. As no 99-year leases have been negotiated, no loans have yet been delivered. So now the minister is staring down the barrel of an election without one Indigenous homeowner on Indigenous land under his 2006 budget measure. The four new homes in the Wadeye outstations of Nama and Wadapuli were funded not from this budget measure but from public housing money, because they will not sit on a 99-year lease.

As a result, nearly $100 million of much-needed money for Indigenous housing remains unspent. It is feared that a great deal of this program funding will be tied up due to negotiations over land tenure reform for quite a long while to come. About $23 million from the $107.2 million allocated for homeownership on Indigenous land is money for Indigenous Business Australia to ‘create incentives and manage land tenure changes’. About $500,000 has been allocated to the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination for ‘negotiations’. That money, allocated for negotiating tenure changes, could have built another 60 homes in remote Indigenous communities.

There has been a lot of political rhetoric about the great Australian dream in the outback. But let us look at the economics. The department has described the program as targeting people who want to buy a house on Indigenous land in an environment where maybe the market is stagnant or there is no real appreciation in value possible.

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

Mr Tollner interjecting

Photo of Jenny MacklinJenny 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.

8:57 pm

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

I am very honoured to be standing here today speaking to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007, as it is yet another step in improving opportunities for Indigenous people on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory are not that different from the rest of us. Aborigines want jobs. They want schooling for their children. They want access to good health services. They want proper roads. They want their rubbish collected. They want access to a whole range of services that are provided by the private sector: butchers, bakers, hairdressers and fruit and vegie shops. They want access to a range of services that most of us in Australia take for granted. Under the current system, a lot of that is not possible.

This 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 was established under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 and enables Aboriginal landowners to issue long-term leases over their land to promote economic development. It allows them to promote those things that most of us take for granted in mainstream Australia: the ability to have a grocery shop, a hairdresser, a butcher’s shop, a proper school, proper health services and proper roads on their land. The bill specifies the functions of the Executive Director of Township Leasing 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.

Debate interrupted.