Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on what I regard as an exceptionally important bill, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. In doing so, can I say we all want action, but we must make sure that we get it right. We must make sure we take the Indigenous community with us, rather than set up at some point in the future yet another confrontation. We have to engage the Indigenous community and finally start to get this right so as to ensure that we make fundamental change where it counts. In that context, this is a controversial bill within Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. It is therefore important that we step back and try to work out a negotiated outcome, rather than the government imposing a temporary fix just to get through the forthcoming election.

I say to Minister Brough that people such as Willie Tilmouth in Central Australia know better than him when it comes to local Indigenous issues. They are more concerned with business and commercial development than most people in this House. They have been cutting deals with the private sector for most of their lives to try to do the right thing by their local communities. They are capable of negotiating a settlement that is long lasting. That is what this debate should be about, not a temporary fix for short-term purposes for political reasons.

The bill is an interim measure to establish an Office of the Executive Director of Township Leasing, to hold 99-year leases over townships on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. We should not forget that it is Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory and it goes to the question of 99-year leases. How will we actually encourage and attract economic investment which is a secure investment for the private sector in partnership with the Indigenous communities, so that we all benefit from such investments? We believe the intent of the bill is important, but we also think it is about time the Howard government did the hard yards to guarantee that we bring the Indigenous community with us. It is appropriate that some criticism be directed at the Northern Territory Labor government because I think they should be doing a better job of engaging the Indigenous community in the Northern Territory. They have also played race politics from time to time to suit their own political needs, just as the Howard government is doing at this particular time.

Many Indigenous communities are clearly supportive of the 99-year lease concept but they are not prepared to cede control of their land to a bureaucrat from Canberra. They support the principles but, just like anyone else in the commercial world, they want to negotiate with the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments about the nature of the entity in which the leases will be vested. As shadow minister for transport, 99-year leases remind me of a similar concept going to the operation of airports around Australia. The private sector, in taking over responsibility for our airports around Australia on the basis of 99-year leases, expects to be properly consulted and to have the right to negotiate the terms and conditions of those leases. Why is it now suggested by the Howard government that it is different for the Indigenous community but it is all right for the Macquarie Banks of this world and the major superannuation funds to have the right to negotiate issues when it comes to the operation of commercial leases of a 99-year nature on airports? I personally believe this is a reasonable expectation, but unfortunately the Howard government is not patient enough to do the job properly.

Having said that, the Labor Party clearly accepts, as the opposition, that the townships need to be fixed. We have just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the political enfranchisement of Indigenous people. I must say, it is a rather hollow celebration. Even in the last few years, since proper measurement of social and economic indicators commenced for Indigenous Australians, we have gone backwards, not forwards, in too many areas. The Indigenous rate for kidney disease was five times as high as the non-Indigenous rate in 2001, but in 2004-05 it was much worse—10 times as high. Between 2002 and 2006, the imprisonment rate for Indigenous women increased by 34 per cent and the imprisonment rate for Indigenous men increased by over 20 per cent.

Forty years on from the 1967 referendum, the life expectancy of Indigenous people is still around 17 years lower than that for the total Australian population. Death rates in all age groups are higher for Indigenous people than for non-Indigenous people. For those aged between 35 and 54 the death rate is five to six times higher. And the record gets worse. Twenty-one per cent of 15-year-old Indigenous children are not participating in school education compared with five per cent of non-Indigenous children. Indigenous students are half as likely as non-Indigenous students to continue to and complete year 12 or to complete a post secondary qualification of certificate level III or above.

The unemployment rate for Indigenous people is about three times as high as for non-Indigenous people but the Indigenous labour force participation rate is about three-quarters that of non-Indigenous people. Gross weekly household income in Indigenous households is just over half of that for non-Indigenous households. More than half of the Indigenous people received most of their individual income from government pensions and allowances, followed by salaries and wages at 34 per cent and CDEP at 10 per cent.

About a quarter of Indigenous adults live in homes owned by or being purchased by a member of the household compared with three-quarters of non-Indigenous adults. Indigenous children are nearly four times as likely as other children to be the subject of substantiated abuse or neglect. This is an area of shame for all of us, for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Australia, with the rate of substantiated notifications increasing across the board in the first years of the 21st century.

The Indigenous community might have the vote but what else do they have? Here we are debating about not having proper consultation or negotiation and about us in this elite House in Canberra imposing our will yet again on the Indigenous community. When it comes to Indigenous communities, it is clear from all these indicators that political freedom has not delivered economic social freedom and wellbeing. Without a job, the right to vote is not worth that much. I must say I find myself agreeing with the Prime Minister on one thing when he said:

The human value of having a job, the sense of self-worth and esteem it brings is incalculable.

We are concerned about employment because having a job puts food on the table, it makes homeownership possible, it puts shoes on kids’ feet, it pays for school uniforms and school books and it even opens up the possibility of having a holiday. But having a job is also about a sense of pride in yourself, your family and your local community. It is about building a future for families and local communities. That is why improving access to jobs, training, education and housing is the key to closing the gap between the quality of life of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians once and for all. Yes, it is about economic development, but it is also about making sure the Indigenous communities are involved in the decision making. That goes hand in glove with the decisions of the private sector to engage Indigenous communities in sustainable, long-term economic development.

There can be no progress for Indigenous communities without economic integration and without policy reform. We also contend that township leasing is part of that reform. But to pursue this we have to get it right and take the Indigenous communities with us. It has to be done properly, not by coercion, bullying and threats—as has been claimed by Alice Springs communities. Both the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory governments must put the effort into bringing the communities along with them and recognise that negotiations are a legitimate and necessary part of the process of reform. It is about emancipation and encouraging Indigenous communities to make decisions in their own best interests and in the interests of Australia as a nation.

Part of the 99-year lease negotiations must include proper documentation setting out the rights and obligations of the parties, not just a promise by the minister saying, ‘Trust me, I’m from Canberra.’ The truth is that governments come and go, ministers come and go and secretaries of departments and people in the field, with the best will in the world, come and go. We want to sustain this process and to do so we have to make sure that the Aboriginal communities that are expected to survive as a result of the process are part of the decision making. That means the process will be locked in because they own the outcome of this decision-making process.

I am hopeful that, with patience and a willingness by government to engage, an agreement can be reached for the Tangentyere Council with respect to the Alice Springs townships which desperately need the $60 million on offer from the Commonwealth to improve living standards for their people. That is the desire of Willie Tilmouth and those engaged on behalf of the Tangentyere Council in trying to work out the lease problem. It has to be a two-way street. The minister has his view of life, but life is about compromise. It is no different to industrial relations, commercial negotiations or even sitting down at home with one’s family. You can never have your way all the time. To get a sustainable outcome one has to be prepared to compromise and take people with you. That is the key to long-lasting sustainable development in Indigenous communities in the future, something that we all desire. Without that investment and the creation of jobs we will not be able to overcome the social problems that I have alluded to today. In recent years we have gone backwards on all the available social indicators—be it life expectancy, health, education or employment. The House knows it as well as I do. These are issues that are confronted by people in places such as Alice Springs from morning through to night. Everyone in Alice Springs wants solutions to these problems, not just the Indigenous community.

The memorandum of understanding reached with the Tiwi Island community of Nguiu is a good first step, but more has to be done. The landowners themselves have appropriately made the decision. They are confident that Nguiu will remain a Tiwi town and that the social and economic future of their people will be improved by entering into these new arrangements. They were capable of making these decisions. Traditional owners will retain underlying title to the land under the agreement, which includes the provision of 25 new homes and an additional $1 million in health initiatives. But divisions remain within the Tiwi Island community and every effort must be made to address those in determining the final lease agreement. Let us step back and try and do what is necessary to take the whole Tiwi community with us as one. If we go forward divided in the Tiwi community, at some point in the future a cancer will eat into the agreement and undermine sustainability.

Similarly, the Wadeye community—better known by some as Port Keats—is a community in great need. It is a community with huge social and housing problems. There is high unemployment. At long last there has been better attendance at school, but that raises serious questions as to whether the Commonwealth money allocated to some of the Indigenous community schools is being appropriately accounted for and spent in Indigenous communities. I await the decision of the human rights commission on that matter. It is extremely important to make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent appropriately on education in Indigenous communities rather than being creamed off for some of the major townships in the Northern Territory where there are fewer Indigenous people engaged in education.

It is now a little over four years since a shared responsibility agreement between the Commonwealth, the Northern Territory and the Thamarrurr Regional Council was signed to trial a new approach to the delivery of services to Indigenous communities based around the principle of mutual obligation. It sounds a little bit like the Labor Party’s concept of mutual responsibility with respect to employment. We are prepared to invest in education and training to get people job ready, but they also have to accept their responsibility to take jobs on offer. It is about making sure that they give something back to the Australian community in return for the investment of taxpayers’ money.

We also have to accept that we need consultation. In a consultant’s evaluation to the Australian government in May last year—three years after the agreement was signed—it was stated:

With regard to housing, the community has seen 4 houses for indigenous occupants built over a period of three years. During that same period some 15 houses were made uninhabitable for periods of up to three months through gang violence and an additional 200 babies were born into the community. In these circumstances, there is little prospect of the chronic overcrowding being reduced in the foreseeable future despite the efforts being made under the COAG trial. Overcrowding is the most frequently identified cause of ill health within Wadeye.

The report went on to say:

The future of housing and other developments at Wadeye will be dependent upon the claims by the traditional owners of the town site, the Kardu Diminin, being recognised and resolved through the granting of appropriate land tenure arrangements ... the traditional owners of the town area have indicated that until their land needs have been appropriately recognised and dealt with, they will not approve any further house blocks or town development at Wadeye.

This is an issue that clearly has to be resolved. It is up to all parties, including the Indigenous community, the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments, the Diminin and the NLC, to sit down and get it fixed once and for all. The community is not opposed to the concept of a 99-year lease and the principles of mutual obligation, but equally they are not prepared to simply hand over control to Canberra.

The Howard government has attached its Indigenous housing program to a condition of ownership being transferred from local communities to state or territory housing authorities, or being made available for purchase by individuals. The objective is to cut out Indigenous run housing corporations, many of which the government believes are corrupt or inefficient. I simply say to the minister that we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If we are to empower Indigenous people with control of their own future we cannot leave them without ownership structures. There must continue to be a role for them in the lease entity.

This year will see a record $3.5 billion in spending on Indigenous specific programs. Let us make sure it is money well spent. It must not be squandered, but the fact is that it will be if we cannot get the support of Indigenous communities through their own involvement in these programs. Housing is obviously one of the most important priorities but so is the creation of real jobs and real enterprises, like the Tiwi Islands forestry venture. That takes me to the issue of Great Southern Plantations, which is delivering real jobs and real income for the Tiwi community. On the latest figures I have, out of a full-time workforce of 58, 29 Tiwis work for Great Southern Plantations already, which I think is a tremendous achievement and somewhat akin to the achievement of Rio Tinto at Argyle in the diamond industry—real jobs for competitive wages and not CDEP or dole pittances. These people are now emerging as the leaders of these communities because of their employment status. This is where we have to go: a partnership between the private sector, all tiers of government and the Indigenous community.

I raise the issue of forestry in the climate change debate because I think that is potentially an area of real progress in Northern Australia. The area of Port Keats and Wadeye has been identified for potential plantation development. Building on the success of Tiwi, we should be pursuing further plantation developments in Northern Australia. The Indigenous communities want it. They understand the issue of climate change and the potential benefits from the greenhouse debate—carbon sinks and the creation of sustainable jobs for the Indigenous community in tending to those forests. I urge the government to encourage this type of investment side by side with education and training. That will do something about overcoming Indigenous disadvantage, creating jobs and real wealth for future Indigenous communities. I know that is the desire of the Indigenous communities; I have spoken to them firsthand about that in recent times. It is also the desire of the forestry division of the CFMEU, led by Michael O’Connor, and of many business houses in their desire to be seen to do something on climate change and to do something firsthand with Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory on this front. It is about economic and social empowerment, and it is about ending welfare dependency.

The opposition opposes this bill and calls on the government to develop an appropriate structure for the entity holding 99-year township leases—one that includes representation of traditional owners. It is not a big ask. Let us take the Indigenous community with us. This bill goes too far in taking away their rights and weakening the empowerment that comes with them. Only then will we get sustainable economic development in the Northern Territory and in other Indigenous communities, because the Indigenous communities, through their involvement, will feel ownership and a commitment to the final outcomes. Canberra imposing its will represents a further potential disaster in the future. Step back, pursue negotiations and get the right outcome—a potential long-lasting, sustainable outcome which improves the social indicators. (Time expired)

Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. I am pleased that the ALP will be opposing this bill. Professor Mick Dodson, when delivering the Mabo lecture in Cairns on 7 June, had something to say which I think is worth quoting to the House. He said:

·              Indigenous people all over the world understand that it is a constant and continuing battle to retain our land rights, to exercise our responsibilities for the land and waters, to practice our culture and languages, to build our families and communities, whether in the cities or in the bush, because we are the first peoples—this is our country and we must defend it. And as its the Traditional Owners who ought to decide who comes here, onto our land, and we should say so more often, because the consequences of sharing our country with the colonisers are devastating. And I know we can’t kick them out but is it too much to expect a fair go.

After 11½ years the Howard government has had a chance to show its record on Indigenous affairs. Unfortunately, it is a sad record and one that will haunt this Prime Minister to his grave when he eventually leaves this parliament, voluntarily or involuntarily. In the first budget in 1996 we saw $400 million ripped out of the Indigenous affairs budget—it was a budget that slashed across the sector. On the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum what do we see in relation to Indigenous health? Twenty-four per cent of Aboriginal men reach the age of 65 and 35 per cent of Aboriginal women reach the age of 65. And we call ourselves a civilised country!

That is why Aboriginal people in many respects are wary about governments of whatever political persuasion. Their history of dealing with Aboriginal people has not been good. It has been paternalistic. It has been patronising. It has not been sitting down in the sand with them and talking to them and working through what are very hard issues. When I was Aboriginal affairs spokesman, from 1996 to 2000, it was an eye-opener for me. I had not appreciated the extent of the problems in my backyard. It was not until I sat down with Indigenous people and talked to them that I realised that they too were concerned with what was happening with their communities, but they wanted to be part of the solution. Self-determination, self-empowerment, meant working with them, not hectoring them, not lecturing them, like this government seems to have done for more than 11½ years. This legislation is another example of that. What is it designed to do? It is designed to steal their land, to impose our conditions on them, to set conditions before they obtain benefits that everyone in the city obtains. In my electorate, if we tried to withhold the benefits of health, housing and other essential services on condition that householders surrender their leases or their land to the control of some other entity, or if they were required to give away their individualism, all hell would break loose. But it seems to be acceptable when it comes to Aboriginal people.

I was part of a bipartisan report from the House of Representatives Aboriginal affairs committee under the chairmanship of Lou Lieberman, who is no longer in this House. We talked about the Aboriginal land rights act and said: no changes unless there was the informed consent of the Aboriginal people. That recommendation was unanimous. It has not been considered by this government in the spirit in which the recommendation was given. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser deserves credit for picking up the land rights act that the Whitlam government proposed and passing it in 1976. That is what makes him markedly different from this Prime Minister. What we have is the member for Solomon saying, ‘Let’s hand it all back to the Northern Territory government.’ I would not trust the Northern Territory government as far as I could throw them, whether they were Labor or conservative, because both have an attitude when it comes to Indigenous people. It is an attitude we should not accept. The argument against the member for Solomon is exactly what he quoted in his speech: the 1967 referendum, which gives this parliament the constitutional authority, the legal authority and the moral authority to protect Aboriginal people from the states and territories. That was the mandate that was given to this parliament by the people in 1967.

In the second reading speech the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs stated:

·              The government is therefore acting to establish a mechanism through which the Commonwealth can hold and administer township leases.

Sadly, as I said, we are again debating legislation that works from the premise that the Commonwealth determines what is appropriate for Indigenous communities. What I say is that we work with Indigenous communities. When I was the shadow minister I was their advocate; I did not advocate against them. What we see here is an assimilation principle of previous years underpinning Commonwealth legislation; we see the whitefella deciding what is good. We are not the same—we have different values, we have different hopes, we have different aspirations. To try and run a policy on the basis that we want to make them like us is a policy that is doomed to failure, as the stolen generations report showed: when we took the children to try and make them like us, and destroyed communities and families, and impacted in such a way that even today there are devastating effects. And we cannot get an apology from this Prime Minister on what was official government policy at the time. Every state and territory leader has apologised. The sky has not fallen in.

If I seem too harsh, then consider the report which prompted this legislation: Living in the sunburnt country. This report was prepared on behalf of the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs by PricewaterhouseCoopers. One does not have to go past the first few pages to realise the likely outcomes. Pages 11 and 12 identify the consultations conducted between May and August 2006. Of 46 organisations specified, seven were identified as industry groups, 11 were identified as Indigenous groups and 28 were identified as government groups. I repeat: 28 were government and only 11 were Indigenous. There can be no real doubt about how the outcomes of the report were going to be skewed. The government appears still, after all these years in office, not to understand the need for proper consultation at grassroots level with Indigenous communities. I know it is hard at the moment because Indigenous communities are doing it tough and a lot of them are copping it from their communities. They are under siege in a very difficult environment and morale is low. Why? Because we have got a government and particularly a minister who loves to run out and blame the victim. That is the minister’s approach to life: to go on current affairs programs and run his public policy through Lateline and other programs. We know there is a problem there, but that is no way to run public policy.

In terms of the financial impact of this legislation, the explanatory memorandum states:

The costs of the office of Executive Director of Township Leasing will be met from up to $15 million to be provided over 5 years, from 2006-2007 to 2010-2011 for the township leasing scheme.

And note this:

The necessary funds will be sourced from the Aboriginal Benefits Account.

Aboriginal money is being used without consultation with the Aboriginal community. It reminds me of a number of programs this government announced and ATSIC was forced to foot the bill, dollar for dollar. There always was a cost to the Aboriginal community of a new announcement by this government: it was coming out of their purse. In the 2006-07 budget the key reform announced in relation to Indigenous Affairs involved additional funding for Indigenous housing of $293.6 million—funding which would provide about 730 new homes in remote areas. That was welcome. It is currently estimated by the Ministerial Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs that there is a current shortfall of up to 18,000 houses. This is in addition to the backlog of repairs and maintenance, estimated to be in excess of $700 million. The budget papers also revealed underspending of $60 million in the current Indigenous housing program for 2006-07.

According to Professor John Altman of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the ANU, the new Remote Indigenous Accommodation Program has three aims:

... to shift Commonwealth expenditure to focus on remote Australia, where only 25% of the Indigenous population lives; to abolish the Community Housing and Infrastructure Programme—

I always thought that it was a reasonable program and operated well—

and to shift or force Indigenous people instead into public housing (thus cost sharing with the States) or into private housing, conditional on traditional owners leasing their lands to the state and meeting negotiated behavioural conditions.

Professor Altman also points out that in this year’s budget the government announced it would assist Aboriginal people to buy their own homes to the tune of $300 million over four years. The same budget allocates $863.8 million to members of the ADF as financial assistance for home ownership through a subsidy for interest payments. Do not get me wrong: I do not in any way begrudge the ADF, but I make the point to illustrate where this government sees Indigenous people in its priorities. Indigenous people are entitled to and deserve more in terms of the problems with their communities. We cannot have a patchwork approach.

Inevitably, there is more than one side to any argument and, from my experience with the Indigenous community, I can categorically state that those views are considered and clearly articulated. I am impressed with the leadership of the Aboriginal community and I am impressed with the young people coming through. The sad part is that, for a long time and still now, this Prime Minister and government did not engage with a section of leadership of the Aboriginal community because they saw them as being too close to the previous Labor government. That is how this government dealt with them. The fact of the matter is that the government should be dealing with all members of the Aboriginal community who have an interest in their community. We should be mentoring the leaders and bringing them through, irrespective of their political persuasion.

There should not be a situation where, if you happen to be a blackfella who sings the government song, the government looks after you, but if you are a blackfella who does not sing its song you are not engaged with. That is the attitude of this government. That is what happened to a number of investigations of organisations within the Indigenous community. The dogs were set on community organisations because they were not aligned or sympathetic to the government; they were independent of the government. In the end they went belly-up because it was impossible to resist.

In the current debate over Indigenous town leasing, there is more than one view. Early in May this year the Aboriginal community of Nguiu in that Tiwi Islands signed up to the government’s private home ownership scheme. This is on the basis of a 99-year lease. The Commonwealth provided $5 million as a lump sum payment to control the land for the next 15 years. The minister described this as a type of cash advance.

The agreement will be recouped, according to a report in the Australian on 10 May, ‘through rental payments from sub-leasing over that 15-year period’. In addition, the Nguiu will receive $13 million for a high school, 25 new homes, better health services and an upgraded football oval. A senior Mantiyupwi landowner, Walter Kerinaiua, is quoted in the same report as saying:

The negotiations have not been easy, and we have stood our ground on a number of important matters. But we are now confident that Nguiu will remain a Tiwi town and that the social and economic future of our people will be improved ...

The ABC’s PM program reported on 17 May that not everyone in the community was happy with the outcome. Traditional owners at Nguiu agreed to the government’s proposal, but those who were not traditional owners were reported to be unhappy with the decision. One resident said on the PM program:

I know there’s still a lot of unrest in the community especially with the Retipi group. Yeah, we’re just a bit concerned that we might be rushing a bit.

In Alice Springs we saw the opposite reaction—residents refused to sublease their land in return for $60 million. The Weekend Australian reported that Tangentyere Council had rejected the deal because ‘residents would not have had any say over how housing would be managed’. While being described as ‘deeply disturbed’ by the decision, the minister spoke of his concern about behaviour in the Alice Springs town camps and the impact that had on township children. He then took the $60 million off the table. The Melbourne Age reported on 24 May 2007:

... Mr Brough said the government would not spend the money unless the residents subleased the camps to the Northern Territory Government for 99 years and gave up control over public housing in the camps.

On 18 April 2007, Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, released a statement to be made on his behalf at a general meeting of the Tangentyere Council. The council met that night to consider the government offer on town leasing. It is worth quoting some of Mr Calma’s comments in detail:

Our land is our most important asset, and maintaining a voice on how the land should be utilised and developed is integral to our self determination and to our futures. Changes in tenure will have a long term impact on our communities and are not easily reversed once done. They should not be done lightly, and indigenous peoples must fully understand the implications of any changes.

Mr Calma continued by raising his concerns that the government was insisting on changes to land tenure arrangements in order to ensure that investment in services to the community would continue to be provided. Mr Calma concluded his statement by saying:

And you have my full support in ensuring that both the NT and Australian government meet their human rights obligations in providing services to your community, as is your right as a citizen of this country. And this means without coercion.

I am profoundly disturbed by these comments and the trend which may be emerging to coerce Indigenous communities by withholding funding for services if land leases are not granted. At the annual session of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues concerns were voiced about this government’s plan to introduce private homeownership on traditional lands. Mick Dodson said that it was a ‘take it or leave it’ plan which was designed to benefit non-Aboriginal people. Mr Bryan Wyatt, of the National Native Title Tribunal, supported Mr Dodson’s position and reinforced his views by saying that the Tiwis had been conned into signing away management control of their communal lands for four generations in exchange for homes and services that the government provided other citizens without such preconditions.

It is valuable in debating the legislation today to consider analysis on the issue of individual land title provided by Tom Calma in the Native Title Report 2005. Commissioner Calma discusses the experience of the World Bank. In some developing countries there were trials of individual title over communal title primarily in the 1970s. He states on page 120:

The World Bank experienced difficulties in achieving outcomes under the individual titling approach to economic development. According to empirical economic research, the results exposed high costs, few benefits and in Africa, where farming prospered, it appeared to do so within the framework of customary rights, kinship and social contracts.

The commissioner noted that a key value element of the World Bank approach is the agricultural use of land, which is not necessarily the case in remote Australia. The World Bank experiment does, however, provide important lessons for the Australian experience. Quoting from the World Bank 2003 report, Mr Calma concluded:

The World Bank has taken the view that tenure security is vital to promoting economic development; however the nature of that security is not necessarily tied to formal individual title.

Commissioner Calma says the World Bank acknowledges customary title as a means of facilitating economic development, and recently noted that, subject to minimum conditions, customary title is generally more effective than premature attempts at establishing formalised structures.

This debate still has a long way to go, and without close and meaningful consultation with Indigenous communities it will be meaningless. On 23 June 2005, the National Indigenous Times hypothesised that it is not impossible that this government is considering ‘unpicking Aboriginal land rights’. Professor Mick Dodson, in a media release on 7 June took this further when he said:

My argument is that we are getting slaughtered by the colonial imperative to steal our land, to strip our culture and demoralise us as peoples and nations ... we must defend our identity and our inheritance in the land and sea.

The tragedy is that all the government want to do can be done, but it needs to be done with the Aboriginal community, in cooperation with them, taking them with them, bringing them through the process, not hectoring and lecturing and taking an assimilationist approach, not ignoring their pleas, and not adopting a take it or leave it attitude. Nowhere else in our community would we as representatives of our community cop that for our community. Self-determination is about making your own decisions, proceeding with the help of government; not government attacking you day in and day out.

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to strongly commend the remarks of my colleague the member for Banks and acknowledge his long-term commitment and contribution to Indigenous people both by service in this House and also more broadly through his advocacy in the Australian community, and reinforce his closing remarks about the need for this government to come to the negotiating table with Indigenous people on the basis that they will be listened to and that their rights and interests will be acknowledged. Labor oppose the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. We continue to have significant concerns over the 99-year leasing model that is proposed under section 19 of the act. In the course of this entire debate we have certainly been saying to the government that they need to pause and take stock of the approach that they are currently in the middle of and recognise that there are significant interests, particularly in relation to traditional owners and to the Aboriginal communities affected, which need to be given better and due consideration.

In the budget this year the government brought down a number of initiatives for Indigenous people, some of which were well received. But there was one that I want to make particular mention of and that was the provision of funding for housing. The CHIP review has found a shortfall cost for maintenance alone of some $705 million a year and an underspend. In fact not only are there insufficient funds to deal with the shortfall and the lack of Aboriginal housing but, in addition, the amounts of money that have been identified have not been properly allocated. This is the context in which we debate these amendments in the House today. All Indigenous housing money needs to be particularly focused on the fact that the housing shortfall and crisis in remote and urban areas—but certainly in remote areas—have become more chronic as each year passes, and it is of great regret that the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement funding has not been increased in order to meet that responsibility.

So in that context we see proposals from the government to amend the Aboriginal land rights act and in particular to provide for a 99-year leasing model ostensibly to deal with the issues that have arisen concerning both the quality and availability of housing and also the questions of economic development in communities. Labor recognise and acknowledge that there are significant issues attaching to ongoing sustainable economic development in Indigenous communities, particularly remote communities. That has been said on many occasions in this House. But we do not accept the model that has been put forward by the government and, in particular, this amendment bill that has come into the House today.

When the House considered the first tranche of amendments to the Aboriginal land rights act in June of this year we were guillotined in the House. We certainly said at that time that we recognised that there was a need for reform and improvement. But I note that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Unlocking the future report considered questions of necessary consent and notices that ought to be given when amendments to legislation—which are so important to Aboriginal people and particularly to traditional owners—are being brought forward by the government. In particular the committee identified two absolutely crucial and critical considerations: firstly, that the traditional owners’ understanding of the nature and the purpose of amendments and their giving of consent are absolute prerequisites and, secondly, that any Aboriginal communities or groups that may be affected need to be properly and adequately consulted and given sufficient opportunities to express their views prior to any final determination being made.

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was amended in the House to facilitate 99-year leases. It was our view that these amendments represented some of the most significant changes to the act since its original enactment some 30 years ago. We noted at that time—and I spoke about it in the House—the significant contribution of both the Whitlam and the Fraser governments in getting the original land rights legislation up and running. In particular, I then noted the hurried and rushed way in which the government was approaching the amendments at that time. The debate was guillotined and a Senate committee was given one day to conduct a hearing, which even government members agreed was inadequate. This was really a complete betrayal of the principles of the act, which require adequate and comprehensive consultation, and did not allow the parliament significant opportunity to properly assess the implications of those amendments.

I note that the Reeves report and the reviews that were undertaken at the time continually threw up an objection which pertains to the amendment that we have in front of us. For Indigenous people in communities, particularly traditional owners who exercise great responsibilities over land and where issues of economic development and of occupation and ownership of land are highly critical and sometimes highly divisive, it is essential that there be adequate and proper consultation and that any proposed measures are not rushed through. In fact, the complete opposite has happened in the history of the amendments to this act and it is happening here again today as we debate this bill in the House.

The matter that we have to consider regarding these amendments concerns the Commonwealth establishing for itself an entity that would issue subleases. This is to cover the possibility that the Northern Territory will not establish a township leasing entity in this period of time as a consequence of concerns that have been raised in the Northern Territory parliament, particularly by Indigenous members of parliament, about the first proposed lease that is being considered at this time—that is, the lease at Nguiu on the Tiwi Islands.

The reason members of the Northern Territory parliament, opposition members in this place, Indigenous people in communities and others are raising concerns is the wide-ranging scope of this potential amendment and the powers that a headlessee will actually exercise in relation to leases over land in the Northern Territory, land which is of extraordinary cultural value and potential economic value to Aboriginal people. The fact of the matter is that very little detail is being provided by the government about the operation of headleases. In this case, a number of concerns have been raised, some by legal commentators and others by committees that have examined the issue and certainly by members speaking in the House. They are real concerns that go to the substance of the proposal that the government has by way of this amendment.

It is simply not acceptable not to provide thorough and adequate information in relation to how the headlease and the leasing entity will actually operate. Information is very sketchy at this point in time about what is being proposed. Where are the accountability mechanisms? What sort of structure is going to be contemplated? What kind of power and what duties will the leasing entity be required to exercise? These and a number of other very serious matters have not been addressed by the government as it seeks to push this amendment through the House. Clearly, there is no parliamentary oversight for any later action that the leasing entity might undertake.

The reason there is significant opposition from Indigenous people and from Indigenous politicians in the Northern Territory to this amendment is that, under its current terms, it is clear that the granting of a lease to sublessees opens up the possibility for non-traditional owners to occupy traditional lands without the already existing customary consent that would normally attach to such an exercise. This is a profound and deep point that goes to the core of our objections to the legislation—namely, that in prescribing the capacity for a leasing entity, and in the case of the Tiwi proposal for the whole of the township in question, the potential for there to be a complete crossing over of the existing traditional and, in some cases, legal responsibilities that are exercised by TOs with any subsequent decision that the leasing entity might make will create a series of problems that have not been considered or fully explored in the House, and they need to be.

That certainly explains, to some extent, our criticism of the new leasing scheme. In particular, the scheme seems to be rushed and, really, what the minister has been arguing over the last 18 months to two years is that, if communities do not agree with schemes of this kind as they are proposed then they will not be in receipt of the necessary infrastructure and resources that they really desire in their communities to enable them to deal with issues of education and housing.

For example, landowners at Galiwinku will not get 50 new houses unless they sign up to a 99-year lease of their land in a town where chronic overcrowding is a major issue—a town where the former lead singer of the Warumpi Band made his name and tragically most recently passed away. Similarly, up to this point in time we have seen Wadeye under pressure from the government if they want to receive $9.5 million in housing that was allocated to them as part of the COAG trial, a trial that was distinctly unsuccessful, despite all the media attention on Wadeye at the time. There was a clear case that the Wadeye community had an alternative proposal that they wanted to put to the minister, and still there was the suggestion that one of the most overcrowded and rapidly growing communities in Australia would not receive moneys that they were effectively entitled to unless they did what the government wanted them to do. Again, on the Tiwi Islands there was the suggestion that a new high school would be forthcoming if Tiwi Islanders and TOs signed up to this particular agreement.

It needs to be noted, in particular, that under this bill, which establishes an Office of Executive Director of Township Leasing for some five years, and where the funding for the functions comes from the Aboriginals Benefit Account—and here there are some serious issues of concern, given that ABA moneys are generated from royalties from mining on Aboriginal land and now, in effect, TOs will be required to subsidise their ongoing land tenancy arrangements—there is no legislative requirement for the executive director to undertake ongoing consultation or negotiation with traditional owners and land councils once the lease is granted. And these are leases that go for some 99 years, an extremely long period of time to be contemplated by communities which quite often, because of their current situations, are under considerable pressure on a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month basis.

In relation to the Nguiu people and the negotiations for the Tiwi Island lease, on 9 May the minister announced that a historic agreement had been reached with the Mantiyupwi people for the lease of the town of Nguiu on the Tiwi Islands. But, in actual fact, it was not a specific, legally binding agreement; it was merely a memorandum of understanding. From this time onwards, despite a consultation process undertaken by the government and others, there have been consistent and increasing criticisms from the local community on the basis of them not having a full understanding of what is entailed in the proposal that the government has put. Tiwi local government president, Lawrence Costa, said:

I would have liked there to be more workshops and more communication ...

Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, has expressed real concerns regarding the level of information that was provided to people on the Tiwi Islands. Marion Scrymgour, a member of the Legislative Assembly in the Northern Territory parliament, has raised a raft of serious conditions that I think need to be noted by the government, particularly in relation to what is being proposed on Tiwi. Here there is a question in relation to whether or not the entity itself that will be set up to start issuing these leases and subleases is the right structure to enable the people of the Tiwi Islands to fulfil some level of economic independence and to have a say about what will go on in their own town.

The government has always said that the scheme is voluntary and yet consistently we have seen suggestions made by the minister that funding for schools—funding for a high school in one case—will not be forthcoming unless the community signs up. But here the most critical thing is that there are a number of people on Tiwi who, at this time, are clearly not in a position to fulfil the criteria identified in the report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Unlocking the future, with regard to the level of consultation and the provision of adequate information to enable them to know clearly and fully what it is they are being asked to consent to. I quote a local woman, Teracita Puruntatameri, who said:

We’re being rushed into signing the lease ... I think we’re being hurried by some people.

This is a serious matter before the parliament. It is clearly a serious matter when members of the community feel that, in one way or another, they are being pushed by a government into something that they do not fully understand and do not fully contemplate. The question here is a simple one: why doesn’t the government simply wait? Why doesn’t the government simply postpone its insistence on establishing an entity of this kind when there is still serious community disquiet—when there are still clearly feelings not only in the community but also amongst leading politicians in the Northern Territory that there ought to be more information and that the way in which this entity is being imposed upon people needs to be reconsidered properly?

I have to say that, at this stage, there is the prospect of communities being placed in a situation where they feel they have no option other than to consider entering into an arrangement which would grant significant and additional powers to an entity—powers of a kind which in the longer term will bear down very strongly not only on their economic fortunes and the sorts of decisions they might want to make in determining what happens to their land in the future but, additionally, on the sort of cultural decision making which is an extremely important and necessary part of life and living in Aboriginal communities. It may be the case that the community here has not been as well served by its land council as it ought. That may well be the case but, at the end of the day, it is the government who is proposing this amendment in order to meet a short-term political problem, not a long-term policy problem, which clearly requires additional consent and consideration by those people who are affected.

This comes after a number of years of an approach by the Howard government, and now by Minister Brough, which is simply failing to bear fruit. What we see is that, in some instances, communities such as Tangentyere in Alice Springs decide that they will reject the offer that is on the table and then of course it gets taken away from them. The very clear message which would go out to Indigenous communities right around the Northern Territory is that you either do it the government’s way—you take the resources that are on offer—or you do not do it at all, and that is not acceptable in the conduct of Indigenous affairs in this country. We have to, at all times, I think, ensure that it is an equal partnership between government and communities, particularly, in this instance, in the Tiwi Islands, where there are large levels of community disquiet and concern about what is being proposed. It is time for the government to take one step back and not consider advancing this proposal at this point in time.

If we look at the COAG trials, we can see that they have basically failed. If we look at the way in which this legislation has been rammed through the House, we can see that the potential for open and clear discussions about the faults or merits of the legislation has been denied. If we look at the concerns that people have on the ground, on the Tiwi Islands, concerns that have been echoed by Aboriginal leaders like Tom Calma and Mick Dodson, we can see that this is a recipe not for the empowerment of Aboriginal people but for the disempowerment of their interests. This bill should be opposed. (Time expired)

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I thank the member for Calare, whose speech I listened to closely, for his observations. I say to the member that he need not worry about the strength of feeling that there is within the Labor Party about these proposals; the fact is that we will be dividing on them.

I was also encouraged by the contributions which have been made by others in this debate, notably the member for Calare, as I have pointed out, and also the member for Kingsford Smith, the member for Batman, the member for Banks and of course the shadow minister. I am not at all enthusiastic, of course, about the contribution made by the member for Solomon, which I am sure comes as no surprise here.

I thought that the member for Calare showed a keen appreciation of the historical circumstances that surround the opportunity for the leasing of Aboriginal land prior to the amendments which were passed in this place previously, which amended section 19 and put in a new section 19A. His observations about the executive director under this new legislation are also apposite and something that we need to be most concerned about. I am sure once Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory understand them they will be very concerned about them. His observations summarising the concerns expressed in the Bills Digest at the conclusion of his contribution make it amply evident that, should this piece of legislation go through this place, this office be established, a township lease be signed and the responsible body be the executive director, there will be no cause for that person to have any dealings with Indigenous people—Aboriginal traditional owners—about the future of those leases once the lease is signed. That is very clear to me, as it was clear to those people who wrote the Bills Digest.

This bill will establish an Office of the Executive Director Of Township Leasing to enter into and administer township leases on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. We need to understand what that means and be very clear about what it means. The bill states:

The functions of the Executive Director are:

(a) to enter into, on behalf of the Commonwealth, leases under section 19A; and

(b) to administer leases granted to the Commonwealth under section 19A, including administering subleases and other rights and interests derived from such leases, in accordance with their terms and conditions; and

(c) any other functions that are prescribed by the regulations, being functions relating to the matters referred to in paragraph (a) or (b).

Section 3AA, Approval of NT Entities, subsection 2, of the original act—in this case referring to a Northern Territory entity but no doubt in this instance it will mean this entity—states:

(2) If an NT entity is the Northern Territory, a Minister of the Northern Territory, on behalf of that entity, may:

·              (a) enter into a lease under section 19A; and

·              (b) exercise all the powers of a lessee (including granting a 27 sublease).

We need to be most concerned about this piece of legislation. We are told that this is to be an interim office until the Northern Territory government establishes its own entity, if it does. The office would hold all 99-year leases on township land, it would grant subleases in accordance with headleases and conditions under the provisions of section 19A of the principal act, and it would be funded to the tune of $15 million from the Aboriginals Benefit Account. That, of course, is adding insult to injury, as has been commented on by both the member for Calare and the member for Kingsford Smith. This legislation will create an administrative framework for the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs to further his scheme of privatising Aboriginal land. Let there be no doubt about it: the essence of this is to undermine the core principles of the Aboriginal land rights act. That is epitomised in the comments made by the member for Solomon and have been the observations historically made by the minister when he has commented on collective ownership. I think they are testimony enough to where the minister is coming from.

Let me for a moment leave aside any question of fact and ideology. Under the leasing proposal the land would be held by an entity—in this case the executive director—under a headlease. The entity, as described by the parts of legislation which I have read out, would have the power to sublease the land to outside business interests and to residents, who presumably may use their leases as collateral for finance to open businesses or to build or buy their own homes, should they wish to do so. Outside interests may relinquish the lease, in which case it is my understanding that the entity has the power to transfer that interest in the land to another party or parties, although this has not been made clear in the discussion of the proposal. It is clearly not something that was addressed in any public fora that I have observed. It means that, unlike the situation operating under the principal act, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, where a landowner not only has no right to determine who gets to use his or her land, their wishes would not be taken into account about any future transfer of interests.

I am sure that there has been no discussion at any point along the way with either the people in the Tiwi Islands, the people at Galiwinku, the people in Wadeye or the people on Groote Eylandt that this is the impact of this legislation. There has been no detailed negotiation or discussion with those people about the impact of this legislation upon them and their control of their land. Once granted an interest through a sublease, of course, there is another implication—and that is that the sublease holder, or his or her employees, then gain access to Aboriginal land without any formal approval or approval process such that exists under the current permit system, but which, of course, we know the government would like to get rid of. Again, this point has not been made clear to those people who are currently contemplating the proposal for leasing. It adds significant weight to my contention that this is all about privatisation—the privatising of Aboriginal land.

I note that the Commonwealth government proposes to make free with other people’s land—in this case Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory, under the various land trusts. Yet, under the terms of the Crown Lands Act 1996, as it applies to Norfolk Island, for example, land may be leased only to a natural person who is granted residential status or general entry permit status under section 8(1)(a) of the Immigration Act 1980, or, under section 8(1)(b), a community organisation, which means a body corporate or an unincorporated association which is not carried on for the pecuniary profit of its members and which has as its principal purpose the provision of community service, or a form of assistance to persons living or working on Norfolk Island, including the provision of sporting or cultural facilities. The intent of that is clear: it is intended to maintain the integrity of the landholding system of Norfolk Island and to stop unwanted intervention or interference from outside and, from the Norfolk Island perspective, to maintain its cultural and environmental heritage.

Similarly, Lord Howe Island is a place of immense environmental value. In New South Wales the Lord Howe Island Act 1953 governs the issuing of leases in perpetuity for the purpose of residence. Section 21 of the act provides that the minister may lease areas of not more that two hectares of vacant crown land for the purpose of residence and that a lease may be granted only to an islander aged 18 years or over. The lease is to be a lease in perpetuity and, according to subsection 21(7), a condition of residence is to attach to the lease.

Let us now consider the Tiwi Islanders. Under the proposals in this legislation, they will not have the same protection offered to the residents of Norfolk Island or Lord Howe Island. In exchange for being denied their existing rights, they are being offered inducements such as money for services, infrastructure and facilities that other Australians regard as their right as citizens. A memorandum of understanding was signed by the minister and the Tiwi landowners at Nguiu in early May and I attended a public meeting at Nguiu on, I think, 10 May. When commenting on the memorandum of understanding, Mr Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner—who has been referred to previously—said:

The Government has effectively given the Tiwi one million dollars worth of health services, a new school and some improvements to recreational areas in exchange for control over their land. Every Australian citizen has a right to appropriate housing and health services—no-one should have to trade their land for these essential services … some of the services offered address long-standing and urgent needs facing the Tiwi people—these are overdue. But they should never have been made contingent in this way.

Nor should they have. Mr Calma also said that the new arrangements strip the Tiwi people of their power to stop development that offends their cultural and environmental sensitivities in return for houses or services. That is clear in the legislation; it could not be clearer. Any potential they have to control land that is made the subject of one of these town leases will be removed. Of course, the minister has already made propositions to the people of Wadeye, Galiwinku and Groote Eylandt, and I will come to the issue of Alice Springs shortly.

I will now make a couple of observations to get rid of the spurious notion that, somehow or other, under section 19 of the land rights act it was impossible or inappropriate to lease land for commercial or housing purposes. Of course, that is just a nonsense. There is any number of examples of short-term commercial leases—something less than 99 years—including, for example, a tuckshop or a fast-food outlet, two of which exist on Galiwinku and which have leases under the section 19 provisions of the land rights act. There is absolutely no need to remove the ability of traditional owners to deal in land through land trusts and land councils and to put it in the hands of a third party who has no connection with or responsibility to those people—none whatsoever.

I have been involved in this area of public policy for nigh on 30 years and I have never heard such spurious arguments as those put in the debate on the original proposals for the leasing provisions amending section 19 in the last bill passed through this place or the proposals before us today. They suggest to me that this is all about a set of beliefs, not an understanding of what is happening on the ground or the desirability of ensuring that Aboriginal people in Australia, in this case in the Northern Territory, have the right to self-determination. That right will very clearly be taken from them as a result of this legislation. It could not be clearer.

We know how the government deals with these things. It has threatened to take $60 million from the town camp community in Alice Springs because the community is not prepared to accept the conditions placed on that funding by the Commonwealth or the Northern Territory governments. In fact, they want a set of arrangements that preserve their right to self-determination and to control the housing that is proposed to be built at the town camps. They are not opposed to the idea of leasing or people purchasing homes. However, they are opposed to losing control.

It should not be beyond the wit and wisdom of people in this place or elsewhere to come to an agreement about how that control should be exercised. Nor should it be beyond the wit and wisdom of people to sit down around the table in good faith and to say, ‘We are prepared to deal with you. We understand the terms and conditions you want to put into any arrangements we might agree upon. We will not impose arbitrary deadlines. We will provide an opportunity for proper consultation and ownership of the decision-making process.’ That is not what has happened.

What has happened is that preconditions have been placed on the negotiations at the outset and in the first instance by the Commonwealth. There should be no preconditions for these discussions, if the ultimate objective is to improve and alleviate the appalling living conditions that exist in the town camps around Alice Springs. Similarly, if the government’s real intention, through these proposals, is to provide opportunities for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory to purchase houses, or to provide new infrastructure on Aboriginal land, then let us discuss that matter. Let us not have it dressed up in some ideological framework which is designed to undermine the essence of the land rights act. There is no need to. Aboriginal people are entirely reasonable, as the negotiations and discussions with the people of Wadeye would attest. What they did, when confronted with the proposal from the Commonwealth, was to go back to the Commonwealth with an alternative proposition for leasing for a lesser period. It is entirely proper for that to happen. As the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs can now attest, he came into this place proposing all sorts of funding which would be expended on Aboriginal housing at Wadeye—commented on properly and appropriately by the shadow minister—and said very clearly that what we are about is building houses. If you want to build houses, sit down and negotiate the building of houses. If you want to provide the capacity for people to purchase their homes, I am sure they would not be opposed to that idea, but do not impose artificial and nonsensical preconditions upon that set of negotiations, which is entirely what has happened in this context.

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007 is unnecessary—as the amendments in the first instance were unnecessary. Ultimately Aboriginal people may decide, ‘We’re going to cop this,’ and the Tiwis might decide that they are going to cop it—as is their right. If they do so, why is it that the government will not say to them, ‘Why not make the entity the Tiwi Land Trust’? Why shouldn’t the land trust, the land-holding bodies and the landowning bodies be the entities, so that the right of control remains in the hands of traditional owners? Why is it that an office is being set up over which the traditional owners will have no control and will have no impact on? I can only say that it is about developing the economic interests of people who are not Aboriginal—or, in this case, Tiwi Islanders. That concerns me greatly. We do need to provide opportunities—there is no question about that. Opportunities can be provided, but they will not be provided by governments arbitrarily imposing their view upon people in the way in which it is proposed by this government.

I go to the comments made by the member for Calare about assimilation policy. That is what this is about. We are seeing the clock wound back ostensibly to prior to the existence of the land rights act, to give a different set of landholding and land management arrangements to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory which are consistent with the ideology of this government. It is not good enough. This legislation should be opposed and will be opposed.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Up until the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs moved this legislation, I was the only living minister who had moved land rights legislation which purported to deliver ownership to Aboriginal people. For those who may be younger than me, the legislation in Queensland was the subject of five very laudable 60 Minutes reports during those years. The Queensland legislation on landownership is the subject of two textbooks, one by Roslyn Child and one by Frank Brennan, and those textbooks are in universities throughout Australia. The whole front page of the Weekend Australian said one weekend ‘The Elders Wept’. It showed the elders at Yarrabah all jumping for joy in front of stacks of little kids waving Aboriginal flags on the handing over of the deeds of grant at Yarrabah. We were lauded from all sides and from all parts of Australian society.

To what do we owe this magnificent achievement of which I had the honour of being one of the centrepieces? We simply went out to every community in Queensland where we called public meetings. We had to do a lot of work to get people to turn up to those meetings. We then asked them for a vote. I said, ‘At the present moment, all of the six million acres in Queensland are owned by trustees appointed by the Governor in Council. Effectively, therefore, that land is owned by the state government.’ A lot of them chirped a bit at that. They said, ‘We own it,’ and quite rightly so. I said, ‘Settle down. We believe morally and legally that you do own it. That means we have to hand it over but, in handing it over to Yarrabah, I have to put somebody’s name at the bottom of this piece of paper. I want to ask you people: do you want traditional ownership?’ I regret to say that my honourable Independent colleague the member for Calare, for whom I have very great respect, and the member for Lingiari both talked about traditional ownership. You have a choice: either you can look back and be chained and manacled by the past or you can look to the future and ask, ‘What are the mechanisms that we need to carry us into the future?’ Traditional ownership is manacling people to the past.

I asked Yoshi Hattori, the head of the Bank of Tokyo, ‘Did the MacArthur Constitution change Japan?’ He said: ‘Absolutely. Before the war, no matter how dumb or stupid or lazy you were, no matter how arrogant or objectionable you were, if you were Samurai’—or of upper class—‘you ended up rich and powerful. After the war and after the MacArthur Constitution the world changed. Those that were lazy, indolent and arrogant fell by the wayside and more deserving people moved forward to positions of power and ownership.’ When you talk about manacling people to the past, you are talking about feudalism. You are talking about a feudalistic land tenure system. Do we think that in the year of our Lord 2007 we should be looking to a feudal regime where the traditional head of a family, the eldest son, effectively owns all of the area under the feudal regime of the particular lord or baron?

We asked the people whether they wanted traditional ownership—we explained to them that traditional ownership meant that the original tribe would own the land—or whether they wanted land council ownership. They were very well aware of their land councils. We said they could have shire council ownership because we were setting up local shire councils; the Yarrabah Shire Council was being set up. We said they could continue with government ownership or they could have private ownership—where their own family owns their own house, farm, cattle station, shop, service station or whatever. All of the questions zeroed in on private family ownership. When we took a vote and asked, ‘All those in favour of traditional ownership?’ three hands were raised. A total of 3,800 people attended the meeting. Only three hands were raised out of 3,800. When we asked, ‘All those in favour of land council ownership?’ not a single hand was raised by people from any of those 28 communities in Queensland. No hands were raised when we asked who was in favour of shire council ownership. No hands were raised when we asked who was in favour of government ownership. When we asked who was in favour of private family ownership, all 3,800 hands were raised—except for the three people I mentioned earlier.

The wonderful, incredible, exciting thing we did was to simply to go out and ask the people what they wanted. It was no surprise to me that they wanted to own their own home, their own shop, their own farm or their own cattle station. As we were not a proper body we handed it over to the shire council, to the state government, to decide who should own which property, house, farm or station. We felt the local shire council should do that, with a mechanism to devolve it.

The previous two speakers made a good point when they said that there is an element of compulsion in the minister’s approach to this issue. One of the mistakes we made was that we did not include an element of compulsion in the bureaucratic process. Applications just got bogged down with machinery, and people had to shoulder the burden of suddenly becoming part of a shire council and having to run their own affairs. The huge and colossal administrative burdens slowed down the process dramatically. That is when the government needs to intervene to speed it up. But there does need to be some element of compulsion in this speeding up. It is not a case of forcing somebody to do something but, if a person applies to own his own home, the onus of proof should shift to the council. There was then in the old legislation an avenue of appeal—for the sake of better words—to tribal elders for the area.

I am sure the situation in the Northern Territory is not greatly different to that in Queensland. Native title was absolutely disastrous for us in Queensland. Arguably, 40 per cent of Australia’s Aboriginal population is in Queensland. When you talk about Aboriginal affairs, the vast bulk of the people you are talking about live in Queensland. Of the 28 communities—and I exempt the Torres Strait Islands—there are about 15 or 16 communities in towns very much separated, in every sense, from every other town. Yarrabah may be close to Cairns but it is across the inlet, so it is a million miles away from Cairns. These communities are very different from other towns in every sense of the word. Each of these communities was artificial; it was set up by the government or by a mission. In fact, only about seven or eight per cent of the population of those 16 communities are from the original tribe. At Yarrabah only about 60 are from the original tribe. On Palm Island only about 12 are from the original tribe. Yet there are some 3,000 or 4,000 people living in those two communities. So 4,000 people should be dispossessed to deliver traditional ownership? Give me a break here! The native title regime has caused endless trouble. Because I am not entirely white and I come from Cloncurry, I am considered one of the mob. I am very proud to be able to say that. They confide in me ‘It is a plot by the migaloos’—the whitefellas are migaloos—and many say, ‘To get us to kill each other, like in the old days’, which was substantially true; most of the killing in Queensland was done by black troopers.

There were other issues which the leadership wanted to pursue. We had already set up the shire councils at that stage. The Aboriginal Coordinating Council in Queensland wanted inalienability, so you could sell to another Yarrabah resident but you could not sell to an outsider. Who was a resident was a matter to be determined by the council, with an appeal to two tribal elders. One was an appointee of the government and one was a magistrate from the conventional magistrates system. That was the body that was set up that you could appeal to.

There has to be some compulsion here because to my knowledge not a single, solitary case ever went through to a magistrate. Many people desperately tried to get their houses through but it got bogged down in the machinery of the shire councils. The councils were trying very hard but they had an enormous amount of work to do in order to learn how to run their own affairs.

The only thing that I disagree with the minister on here is the 99-year leases. I cannot for the life of me see why fee simple cannot be given to an individual while tying in the inalienability clause. He did not have the advantage that I had of having shire councils set up in each of these communities, and I was dealing with a much better educated group of people in Queensland. There was hardly anyone in these communities who had not worked for whitefellas or outside communities at one time or another and held down very responsible jobs. We were dealing with a much more sophisticated group of people than the minister is dealing with in the Northern Territory.

As has been rightly said in this place on a number of occasions during this debate, the blackfellas of Australia are very distrustful of the whitefella, particularly whitefella governments of Australia. And they are entitled to be, because this is a pretty sad story that I am telling here. The legislation was greeted with the second longest filibuster in Queensland parliamentary history. Like today, everyone was getting up and saying that all sorts of dreadful things were going to happen under private ownership and how it was some sort of government plot to do something or other. We met with the black leaders. A number of them came down and had a press conference. They said that they gave the legislation guarded approval. It was stridently condemned by Father Frank Brennan and, rather ironically, he later wrote a book stating that everyone should follow the Queensland example. I do not want to criticise him for that, because I think he had the same suspicions as everyone else of the Queensland government at the time.

As I said, we held meetings in Hopevale, which was then the most sophisticated Aboriginal community in Australia. Of course, that community produced Noel Pearson, and for those who follow the great game of Rugby League it also produced the person who should be playing fullback for Queensland tonight, Matty Bowen. The first black member of parliament in Australian history, Eric Deeral, who I had the privilege of serving with, also came from there, as did one of the first Aboriginal ministers of religion in Australia, Pastor Rosendale. It is a very sophisticated community. The Lutheran Church at Hermannsburg have done a remarkably successful job, which is in very sharp contrast to other religions which were not very successful at all.

We went to Hopevale, and Lester Rosendale, the brother of Pastor Rosendale, was effectively the clerk for the little community organisational group that they had there and which worked with the church. He said, ‘We already know what we own.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘We have already got this place broken up into family ownership. We have private ownership here.’ I said, ‘On the government register it says it is a trust area.’ He said, ‘I do not care about that. Come over here to this map.’ He had a map of Hopevale and they had already divided the place up into their blocks. It was nothing to do with government. Under the leadership of the Rosendale family, all the people decided that they would have private ownership. So Hopevale had already headed down that pathway with an agreement between the people and the mission, who were the trustees of the area. They had already moved to private ownership.

The next place, Pormpuraaw, was more ‘primitive’ in the sense that a lot of people did not have any education at all and they still spoke in language. They were not primitive in the sense that they were backwards, but primitive in the sense that they were still very much in a tribal regime. Pormpuraaw was then called Edward River. Jackson Shortjoe met us there. He said that he would like to have a shot at the cleanskins. Let the truth be known: his cousin—I will not mention names—was already mustering the cleanskins on the place. There is nothing wrong with that; in fact I would highly commend them for it. But he reckoned that, if someone was going to clean up the cleanskins on Edward River, it should be him. That is where his family came from. I said to him, ‘If you want to do the job properly you have to build yards, Jackson. You’re not going to be able to get those wild cattle together if you have not got yards, yard wings and some fencing to hold them.’ I said, ‘We cannot put up the money for that.’

This is the nub of it at all. This is where the rubber meets the road. If we want to make these communities commercial areas where people can look after themselves then they have to get some money from somewhere. Government will not give it to them. The government’s fingers have been burnt a thousand times, so it will not give money for commercial operations. Because a huge amount of money is needed to take maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people forward and to finance, for example, these cattle stations, they have to go to the banks. A bank will not loan you money unless you have a mortgageable document. What the minister is doing today should be absolutely applauded. This is a historic event. This is the first recognition by this parliament that these people need the same machinery that the British people were given in 1272 in Quia Emptores when they effectively abolished the feudal system. That enabled the English to get ahead of the rest of the world commercially. It is the same system that Lincoln gave to the people of America under the Lincoln Homestead Act—and we have all seen the movies where they race to put the stake in the ground—that made them the great juggernaut of agriculture in the world. Roberts Ardrey, in his book The Territorial Imperative says that one person at the plough in America can free up 30 people to work in other areas. It takes 30 people at the plough in Russia to free up a single person.

Mr Deputy Speaker, 42 per cent of Australia is technically owned by the Aboriginal people. Believe me—and I was brought up in the town that was half Aboriginal in descent; I have played football with these people and it takes a lot of organisational capacity to run a football team onto an oval, as I have done all my life—there is no reason why these people should not be standing equal to everyone else in Australia, except because they are not allowed to own land. If we lock them into traditional ownership then all I can say to you is that we are locking them into a feudal regime and they will have the same results as Russia and all those other countries that had feudal ownership until very recently—last century in most cases in Europe. When the MacArthur constitution came in in Japan, that country was a moderately backward Asian country. It was the most advanced of them, I suppose, but it was still moderately backward. Within 40 years under that constitution they became the richest people on earth. Their income was $US32,000 per person. The American income was $30,000; the Australian was only $19,000. That is the sort of constitution that the minister is delivering today.

I take the point made by the member for Calare and the member for Lingiari—it was a good point—about the oversighting group that holds the headlease. I ask the minister to look at that and I will talk to his officials about ways that this model can be refined. The local people who live there—I am not talking about traditional owners—should have something. When we argued the point of traditional ownership in the halls of power with the black people of Queensland again and again it was decided unanimously on every occasion— (Time expired)

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I thank the member for Kennedy for his passionate recall of history and for reconfirming to this parliament that Indigenous Australians are like the rest of us. They absolutely want the opportunity to own their own homes, run their own businesses and not be dependent upon welfare. They want to be able to make their way in the world as equals. Unfortunately, due to well-meaning but poorly directed policies in the past, that has been a dream, and nothing but a dream, for those people who live in certain parts of our country—some of them still in Queensland, in the Northern Territory and South Australia, and even in Western Australia. What we have to do and what the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007 does today is to enable Indigenous Australians to make a choice for themselves.

I will take up one issue with the member for Kennedy. We are not actually forcing anybody to do anything—not a thing—because we do not need to. There are 130-odd Tiwi Islanders who are the traditional owners, the rightful owners, of Nguiu. For those who do not understand, Nguiu is a town: it has streets, football ovals, police stations, community buildings, childcare centres et cetera. The difference is that nobody under any circumstances can own anything there. There are 130-odd Australians who own that land. That is beyond dispute, and we know exactly who they are. But, as they have said to me, and in public, for the last 100 years they have had absolutely no say over what happens on their land. I ask the members of the gallery, I ask anybody listening to this broadcast today: could you imagine for one moment, as another Australian operating under the same constitution and the same laws, having to have other people living on your plot of land and doing whatever they wanted on terms that they determined, with you having no say, no recompense and no control whatsoever. It is such an alien thought and consideration that it is laughable. But that is in fact what occurs.

So over the last 14 months I have been travelling in the Tiwi Islands and meeting with the Tiwi Islanders, down here and on the phone. We have had six, seven or eight personal meetings with these people, and over that period of time they have come to a realisation that the great hope of land rights back in the seventies was in fact a fraud in giving them control. It was not a fraud in handing over land—the member for Kennedy mentioned 42 per cent of the Australian landmass—but what has it actually delivered? What it has delivered is very little when it comes to anything that has been of real benefit in ensuring that children get out of poverty, that they have a school education, that they can speak English, that they can move and be mobile members of the Australian society. That has not happened.

What they have discovered with what we have put on the table here is that, for the first time in 100 years, in the township of Nguiu, on Bathurst Island, in the Tiwi Islands, those people who are the rightful owners beyond dispute will get compensated in a reasonable fashion for others, including government entities, using their land. It is unbelievable to think that you can have a government office on your land and not be paid something for it being there, but that happens. Others just determine under what conditions all sorts of public facilities get built on your land. The lease arrangement that we put on the table for their consideration was that those traditional owners could collectively decide that they wanted to enter into a negotiation and ultimately an agreement with the Commonwealth government that we would pay them directly a financial recompense for the use of that land. It is not for the Commonwealth to use it; there is no profit to be gained here. Some of those who sit opposite tried to make out that somehow the Howard government or some notional shadowy figure was going to benefit. No; this is all about providing certainty.

Again, as the member for Kennedy said, unless you can wave around a document called a mortgage, a bit of security, a title, a deed, you will not get investment in these places. When you go to these locations, you sit down with these people and you say: ‘You’re not going to have any jobs here. It is just living a lie to tell you that somehow a government is going to turn up and create the thousand jobs that are required.’ Governments do not create jobs; they create the environment that allows business to create jobs. That is what has happened in the wider Australian community. So if a businessman turns up at Nguiu and says, ‘I want to put in a fishing resort and I’m going to have to get title over the land,’ he cannot get it. They cannot get it in a sustainable way which—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, they can!

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we go: Mr Ideology—the man who stood up here not half an hour ago and said, ‘I’ve been up there for 30 years and I’ve been looking after these people for 30 years.’ Well, for 30 years you have been an abject failure and a fraud on the people of the Northern Territory. You have done absolutely nothing, as the member for the Northern Territory originally and now the member for Lingiari, other than to stand in the way of progress and letting these people have a real say in their own future.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I can tolerate a lot of insults but I am not a fraud and I ask him to withdraw.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not sure that that—

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If he is offended by the term ‘fraud’ I will withdraw. I have no qualms about that whatsoever.

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

Ms Macklin interjecting

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw unconditionally and I now say about the member for Jagajaga and the member for Lingiari that the two of you came into this place and told more untruths today than I have heard in the last 11 years that I have been in this place.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just tell the truth!

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reality is that you do not have the leadership of your former party president, Warren Mundine, an Indigenous man of this country, who fully understands the needs of his people and says that people should have the right to own their own property. The two members opposite sit in this parliament and, unlike many others on the other side who have embraced these concepts, do not say that Indigenous people should have the right to choose. The member for Lingiari and his hatchet men have been in Nguiu trying their hardest to persuade the traditional owners not to agree.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Snowdon interjecting

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can speak; you can shout; you can say what you like. The reality is you are condemned by your actions. If we turn to Alice Springs, where we have the special purpose leases, you have been the member for Lingiari for the best part of the last 20 years, including 13 years in government. You have been the president of the Labor Party in the Northern Territory, and you have done nothing. You have seen children abused and you have seen murders occur. As late as only a couple of weeks ago, a 23-year-old woman was murdered.

The people that are given the money to run those camps in the suburbs have failed miserably. The Commonwealth government is trying to give children the opportunity to go to school and not to live in fear at night. I received a letter from Lavinia, who said, ‘In the town camps every night I cried myself to sleep with the threat that I would be stabbed at night.’ She used the terms, ‘I escaped from Central Australia.’ This is Central Australia we are talking about, where the member for Lingiari, who has been the federal member for years, stands condemned for his inaction. I wonder what his motivations have been over those years when something positive could have come for these people. Now there is an opportunity with this bill and you are condemned—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I ask the minister to reflect upon what he has just accused me of. I am not going to repeat it. I ask him to reflect upon it and withdraw. If you want to argue a substantive motion about my behaviour as a member of parliament, please do so. But do not make those gratuitous insults; I ask you to withdraw.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, do you propose to withdraw?

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have nothing to withdraw, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lingiari has asked you to withdraw and it would assist the convenience of the House if the minister withdrew any imputations.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There were no imputations. I have said he has failed as a member of parliament and I restate that. He has failed the Indigenous population of the Northern Territory and his actions in this place today condemn him yet again.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have asked him to withdraw. You can check the Hansard

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Brough interjecting

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not going to repeat the allegation. I ask you to reflect upon the Hansard when it is available and you will see the imputation which was in it. I ask him to withdraw. I can tolerate all sorts of insults, but I will not accept those sorts of imputations. I ask you to withdraw.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Lingiari has asked for a withdrawal. The minister has indicated that he will withdraw any imputations that were unparliamentary. I assume that that withdrawal is without qualification. If that is the case, we can pass on. Is that the case?

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There was no imputation. I cannot withdraw any imputation if there was none. There is nothing to withdraw. I said he has failed as a member of parliament and has failed the Indigenous population of the Northern Territory, and I stand by that.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He can say that as much as he likes and I will not oppose it. I will oppose what he says but I am not going to ask him to withdraw it, because it is just banal. But he did make an imputation which was quite different from that, which I am not going to repeat, and I ask him to withdraw it.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The request for withdrawal has been made. The minister previously said that, if there was an imputation that was unparliamentary, he would withdraw. It would assist the business of the House if the minister withdrew any imputation that he made, without qualification. I do not have in my mind the specifics of that imputation because I was distracted at the time, and I apologise. But it would assist the business of the House, and it would be easier than going back to the Hansard and having this matter repeated later in the day, which would inevitably be done if the minister does not withdraw.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I invite you to go back and look at the Hansard. There was no imputation other than what the member for Lingiari perceives in himself. The people of Tiwi are the people that we are here to discuss, because they have met with me and said on numerous occasions that this is something that they want. The members of the Labor Party today stand condemned because they are not letting the first Australians make that choice for themselves.

This piece of legislation does nothing more than enable Aboriginal Australians to have the same rights as everyone else has, if they choose to have them. At the moment they do not have them and the majority of the Labor Party, including the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, agrees with this. It was her idea. It is her party president, the member for Lingiari, who is condemned for his inaction over the poor health and wellbeing of the constituents he has represented for the best past of two decades.

This bill will allow one person, to be known as a statutory authority, to hold a headlease. The allegations by the member for Jagajaga that this somehow abdicates or removes the rights of Indigenous people in those places to have a say over what occurs in the next 99 years is wrong, because built into the lease are conditions about people being residents on the Tiwi Islands and about who can have a lease and under what conditions—and it can be reviewed. There are reviews built in for the very reason that they do not want the opportunity of making a decision for a 99-year period to lapse without the next generations being able to have a say and changing things as they go. What is so offensive about giving the first Australians the right to be able to determine who lives on their land and under what conditions? Absolutely nothing. That is the lie that is the Labor Party’s position in relation to this whole piece of legislation. This legislation—unlike the member for Kennedy’s thoughts that this is somehow forcing anybody—does not force; it is enabling legislation. The fact is that the people of Nguiu have said to me that for the first time men are walking with pride in their chests and their heads held high because they have some direction and some control over their own future. And the Labor Party wants to stop it.

When I have sat down with the traditional owners at Wadeye they have said, ‘We want to think about this,’ and I have said, ‘Go and think. Take your time. When you want to come back, you come back to us.’ We have given an offer to the people of Groote, saying, ‘When you want to, you come back to us.’ The Galiwinku people said, ‘We would like to be able to negotiate with you.’ I say to the First Australians, the people of the Northern Territory, that the reality is that because of the lack of leadership from the Labor Party’s side if there is a change of government at the end of this year those people who are looking for a brighter future for themselves and their children—building businesses, building employment opportunities, improving their health, giving kids the opportunity to go forward—will find that that is going to be snuffed out in a moment because of the ideology of those who sit opposite. They talk about paternalism. Their idea of paternalism is that they will decide what the First Australians can do, when they can do it and how they do it.

The member for Lingiari, as the member for the Northern Territory and his current seat for the best part of 20 years, oversaw the circumstances in the Northern Territory Alice Springs town camps—which have gone further downhill—and he has done nothing about it. The federal government comes in and stands up and says, ‘Yes, this is a Northern Territory direct responsibility. No, these are not traditional owners. These are special purpose leases. We will work with you but it will not be on the same basis that has failed before, where houses are not maintained and rents are not collected. We will change that.’ The member’s own Labor Party Territory government has agreed 100 per cent with the Commonwealth. It is only this dinosaur, the member for Lingiari, who is the President of the Labor Party up there, who is in total opposition to his own Chief Minister and his own former president of the federal Labor Party, Aboriginal man Warren Mundine. These people have spoken against him, yet he stands up there and condemns his own people by his actions.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one has said that. Why can’t you be honest?

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This piece of legislation today will enable Indigenous people to make a decision for themselves.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why can’t you get an agreement? You are incapable of getting an agreement—absolutely incapable!

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The normal thuggery, the normal loudmouth and the normal hollow rhetoric that comes out of your position. That is all that you ever do. Going back to Hopevale that the member for Kennedy mentioned, this is something that is not new to the rest of Australia, but it is spreading across the nation. It is people from Hopevale and people like Vince down there at Yarrabah, whom I spoke to only the other day, who have been waiting on the Queensland government for five years for the same thing that we are offering here to the Northern Territory. I say to the people of Hopevale and Aurukun and all of the cape communities: if I had my way and I could, I would legislate today in this place to give you the right to own your own homes as well. I would give you the opportunities so that your kids can see what it is like to have some leadership and what it is like to make your way in the world. But no, those that sit opposite, if given the chance to sit on this side of the chamber, would snuff that out for the people of the Northern Territory.

If this is something that people do not want to do, why is it that when I look into the eyes of the elders of the people of Galiwinku they say to me, ‘We know that this opportunity may be snuffed out by the Labor Party in the next six months. We want to act now. We want to have a go at doing this.’ Why is it that members of Groote, where you have got 40 men earning over $100,000 a year in the mines there who want to have the opportunity not to live in a rented house for the rest of their lives but actually put something into their own homes and put some roots down for their children like the rest of us do and be proud of what they hand over, are opposed by those opposite?

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They can already do it.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All the time we get one charge from those that sit opposite: they can already do it. Why the heck haven’t you managed to do it for 20 years as the federal member? Why is there still 95 per cent unemployment in these areas? Why are children not going to school? Why aren’t people owning their own homes? It is because the Labor Party does not want to see that happen. That is why. Today the people of Nguiu move one step closer to recognising and realising their dream. Their dream is about ensuring that their children can determine their own future, that their children do not have to move to Darwin to own a home, that they can start a business—a bakery, a fruit shop, a hairdresser, tyre repairs, whatever it may be. Go to Google—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They can do it now, idiot!

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Interjections are disorderly.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If they could do it now and it was so simple, why hasn’t the Labor Party, through both the Territory government and the member for Lingiari helped that occur for the last 20 years? The reality is that the member for Lingiari does not want to see change because change will bring down some of those people who have controlled these towns with an iron fist and have prevented people from getting ahead.

Today, unfortunately, we have far too much child abuse. There should be zero child abuse. We still have drugs in these towns and we have school attendance as low as 20 per cent. Up in Queensland, on Mornington Island, the Labor government set a target of just 75 per cent school attendance. Can you imagine any other part of the country saying that if one in four kids do not go to school we don’t care? This is the sort of rubbish that the Indigenous Australians, our First Australians, have had to put up with for so long. It is time the Labor Party listened to the Noel Pearsons and to their party president, Warren Mundine. It is time they listened when Indigenous people say, ‘We made a mistake in the past. What we delivered in the past did not deliver for our people. We need a brighter future.’

The coalition government, under the leadership of John Howard, has said to the First Australians, ‘You can now enjoy the same rights as every other Australian. We are sorry we did not do it sooner. We want you to have the chance so that your kids can see a purpose in getting a job and so that they can make a way for themselves without having to worry about passive welfare with all of the spin-offs and negatives that come from it.’ This legislation allows that to occur. This legislation will allow people who want to make a choice for themselves to do so and do so without the encumbrance of knowing that they are going to be dependent upon others to determine their future. This is why this legislation is a positive step for all Australians.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister, but before I put the question, I did consult with the member for Lingiari and confirmed his recollection of the remarks with the member for Jagajaga. I will require the minister to withdraw what was understood to be the imputation that the member for Lingiari was associated with or in some way responsible for the rape and murder of persons in town camps. That is the imputation that is understood. It would assist and benefit the House if it were withdrawn. It was understood in that context. I am sure that the minister did not intend it, but it should be withdrawn.

Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To assist the House I will make it quite clear that I do not blame the member for Lingiari for those things and I withdraw unreservedly if that was his understanding. That is not what I was suggesting.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister.

Question put:

·              That this bill be now read a second time.