ALP failed on 'right to negotiate'
By Bob Brown
In respect of land use, native title holders would be little more than onlookers under proposals from both the ALP and Coalition.
Imagine a large piece of leasehold land near the sea. The pastoral company holding the lease gets the go-ahead from the state authorities to woodchip the woodlands on half the lease. It will be able to do so without federal impediment under the legislation which passed the Senate in December, because the traditional owners have no negotiating rights.
In the run-up to the Senate "Wik" debate, Aboriginal-Australians cited negotiating rights as a key issue. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission warned senators that under John Howard's 10-point plan, "A wide range of activities, potentially going well beyond what is authorised under pastoral leases, will be allowed without consideration or with only minimal consideration of the position of native title holders. This will again nullify the effect of the Wik decision. It will reduce native title holders to little more than onlookers in respect of land where they may, nominally, have native title rights."
There are two major components to developments affecting native title. One is mining, which involves huge amounts of money. The Senate majority insisted that negotiating rights be given for mining, although not for the mineral exploration.
This raised the prime minister's ire more than any other amendment. He fulminated against Aborigines being afforded negotiating rights. His reaction has helped obscure the fact that rights to negotiate against all other forms of "development" were knocked back by the Senate when put forward by the Greens and the Democrats.
For the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, a major concern is what happens to the land itself. The prospect of broad scale land-use changes on leaseholds across central and northern Australia causes great misgivings.
Yet the Greens and the Democrats were outvoted by the combined Coalition, Harradine and Labor majority on this issue. The majority disapproved of indigenous negotiating rights for pastoral lease developments, with Labor backing "consultation" but not negotiation.
To return to the woodchips on the imaginary pastoral lease: if the company wants to put a wharf into the traditional owners' "offshore waters" (as the seas are called in the bill), it has no need to negotiate. Indeed, if a fishing company wants a licence to exploit the traditional fishing grounds on these offshore waters, no negotiating is allowed. And there will be no negotiating for traditional owners when it comes to oil derricks, dredging, marinas and fish farms.
Next, the company seeks to get the state authority's approval for a dam on the nearby river, a traditional onshore fishing ground for the Aboriginal clan. And a canal is required to bring water to the lease for a large new cotton-growing development.
These projects will drastically alter the landscape, blocking traditional walking paths and eliminating hunting rights. However, the company will be able to go ahead because the Senate has ensured that indigenous people will be neither seen nor heard at the negotiating table.
The same applies when a contractor is brought in to remove soil to create a canal to run water from the dam to the crop lands. The same also applies for a vast array of potential developments which, in the biased language of the native title debate, involve the "upgrade" of pastoral leases.
The sweeping denial of negotiating rights for traditional owners was a major reason for the Australian Greens' vote against the bill on both the second and third readings. Presumably because the government, Labor and Harradine opposed traditional owners having these rights, they dropped from view in the press gallery's analysis of the Senate outcome.
Earlier this year I visited the coastal bush near the Gulf of Carpentaria with a sagacious and spirited woman of the Ganggalida people. Pointing to a native fruit tree, she said: "My mother told us, 'When your mother gives you food, you do not break her finger. So when the tree gives you food, do not break it either!'"
We talked of the deep spiritual bond between her people and their land, and their supreme right to have a say in what happens to it. When she gets to hear of how comprehensively the Senate has stolen from her people's say in that future, her heart may break as well.
[Bob Brown is the Australian Greens' senator from Tasmania.]