Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. I will speak to all the others as well, because they link together to a fair extent and some of them, I might say, are issues that have been raised already in previous amendments. As I said, there tends to be an intertwining between various amendments from the Democrats, Labor and the Greens. Amendment (17) amends item 28 of the bill to set out criteria to establish a link between recognition and funding. If limited-term recognition periods are introduced, as they are going to be, then there ought to be some formal legal link established between recognition and funding so that the periods are the same. If we do not do that, it would result in two periods subject—potentially anyway—to independently exercised discretions, each of which will effectively determine whether the body concerned continues to be able to perform its role. To me, that seems to be unnecessarily bureaucratic and extra red tape in an act where there is already quite a lot, particularly on the rep bodies themselves.

The various other items of schedule 1 which we seek to oppose—and, again, a lot of them were mentioned previously in Senator Siewert’s earlier contribution—all go to matters that, to a large extent, I think are not particularly necessary, about transition periods and the like. I should emphasise that a lot of these amendments are derived from submissions provided to the Senate committee inquiry, in particular submissions and proposals from Tom Calma, the social justice commissioner covering Indigenous issues under the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. It is reasonable to state that Mr Calma knows what he is talking about with regard to the Native Title Act and how it operates. I think any suggestion that we have got the wrong end of the stick here and do not quite understand what is going on would, quite frankly, be a reflection not just on him but on a number of others who put in submissions to the Senate committee inquiry.

I would make that broad point again: the people who gave evidence to the Senate committee inquiry—as Senator Johnston would know, because he was on the committee at the time when we had the public hearing, before he moved on to his current esteemed role—were not engaging in ideological frolics. They were not putting forward evidence with an aim of trying to score political points or trying to slam the government or put forward some other form of ideological nirvana; they were talking about what they thought would work. I think that a lot of what the government has put forward does have that intent as well, the intent to make the legislation work better, but I suppose from the Democrats’ point of view—and this is a wider comment as well as specific to native title—things are more likely to work better in the native title area as well as other areas if affected Indigenous groups and people themselves believe it is a process that they have some genuine input into and have a fair go at, rather than just this morass of red tape or an uneven playing field. If you focus solely on what might seem to be a straight, quick, best outcome in terms of just getting the job completed, without looking at the nature of the job, it is perhaps not surprising that we are ending up in two different locations, even if we nominally desire to get to the same place. But that is probably a broader comment about the differing approaches that various parties are taking to this issue.

Turning to amendment (17) in particular: it does stand alone, as I understand it. Amendment (17) in itself would be beneficial. It would reduce some red tape and add some certainty for native title rep bodies, which, as we have said a number of times, do not have as much certainty as would be desirable and certainly do have very significant accountability requirements. We all support accountability, but we also need to get the balance right between accountability and excessive bureaucratic control.

This is a government that likes to have control. It likes to have micro control of a lot of things. It is a government that has made major power grabs in a whole range of areas. It has centralised power in a whole range of areas. In the Indigenous area it has removed power from Indigenous people and taken more control itself. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in this area as well—as we saw last year in the land rights legislation for the Northern Territory—there are heaps of areas of discretion for the government and the minister and heaps of obligations on the part of the Indigenous organisations. Amendment (17) would at least streamline one of those processes.