By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — The Queensland Indigenous Working Group (QIWG) is considering a court challenge to the state ALP government's native title legislation, tabled late last month.
Peter Beattie's first legislative act as premier was to put the Native Title Bill before parliament. The bill is an attempt to validate existing pastoral leases granted between 1994 and 1996, and to ensure the state's 3000 grazing homestead perpetual leases, which cover about 20 million hectares, extinguish native title.
Beattie's move to ensure "certainty" for Queensland pastoralists has won the full support from the Liberal-National opposition, but provoked protests from Aboriginal organisations and their supporters.
Lawyers for the QIWG are examining whether a central tenet of Beattie's bill — that the perpetual leases extinguish native title — is correct.
In a letter to Brisbane's Courier-Mail on August 21, Jennifer Tannoch-Bland, coordinator of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation in Queensland, pointed out that the legislation has the effect of pre-empting the discussions of the premier's working party on native title, set up to represent the stakeholders in the issue.
"By conferring automatic blanket extinguishment of native title over a range of land tenures, there would be very little left to talk about", she stated.
"By pushing its own native title bill through state parliament, the Beattie government is revealing its clear commitment to mining and pastoral interests and its opposition to Aboriginal land rights", Graham Matthews, the Democratic Socialist candidate for the federal seat of Brisbane, said on August 22.