David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

In summing up this second reading debate on the Native Title Amendment Bill 2006, I would firstly like to thank all senators for their contributions on this important area and thank members of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for the work they did in reviewing this bill. Listening to the opposition’s commentary on the bill, I noted that the majority of the opposition are unhappy with the direction in which these amendments are going. Yet there is a dearth of detailed resolution to the problem. It is all very well for senators opposite to say the system is not working, but the point needs to be made that it is their system. This system was inaugurated by the government of the day in 1992. To call it a dog’s breakfast would be to understate the situation.

The Howard government has grappled with these provisions for 10 years and, at every turn of every corner, the opposition has ‘stood on the hose’. What has been the result? Aboriginal people have barely advanced at all over that period. This is the opposition’s system. This is the dog’s breakfast of native title. The Attorney-General and I, and other members of the government, have been determined to make it better, and this bill is one step towards that end. What do we get in response? We get complaints and accusations that this is not the way to go. But, of course, as is the usual circumstance of those complaints, there is no constructive engagement; indeed, there is no policy. The hallmark of the opposition in this chamber has been the black hole of policy emanating from it. The government, as always, welcomes constructive engagement. To that end, the opposition has proposed some minor amendments that we will be accepting.

At the last federal election the opposition’s general policy on native title reform comprised the magnanimous and deeply thought out contribution of three sentences:

A federal Labor government will review the Native Title Act to ensure its workability.

That has not happened.

Labor will not amend the act without comprehensive consultation with Indigenous Australians, miners, pastoralists and other governments.

Obviously, that consultation has not taken place over the course of the last 2½ years.

Labor’s review of the Native Title Act will consider prescribed body corporates’ operational funding needs.

I am glad they are going to consider that. We are yet to see the result of such considerations. So the bottom line is that the opposition have not put forward any proposals for reform since the last substantial amendments to the act were passed in 1998. Indeed, the amendments before us today have one common underlying, recurring theme, and that is to reject the measures without any real proposals to amend and enhance the act to make it work better from the opposition’s perspective. Why? The answer is simply that the work that is required has not been done.