Bob Brown: Stop Howard's Wik plan!
By Jennifer Thompson
The Coalition government plans to have its "now you see it, now you don't" native title amendment bill through parliament by December, according to Liberal Senate leader and environment minister Robert Hill. Despite the pitch that the bill is a compromise between the interests of miners and pastoralists on one hand, and Aboriginal people on the other, it obviously discriminates against Aboriginal traditional owners. The result, according to Australian Greens Senator BOB BROWN, speaking to Green Left Weekly, is a tragedy in the making, and all Australians should stand up against it.
Brown had just returned from a visit to Domagee, 80 km from the site of the planned Century Zinc mine, where he had discussions with the Aboriginal traditional owners unhappy about mining company Rio Tinto's insistence on transporting the ore by slurry pipeline.
The community of Domagee, in Queensland's Carpentaria Gulf country, had clearly been split by the mine proposal — agreed under existing native title negotiation processes — said Brown.
Criticisms of the way the negotiations were conducted are profound, according to Brown, warranting a full public inquiry. "The companies haven't heard the last of that opposition; it won't just go away because they think they've made a decision."
The reason, Brown said, is the clash between Aboriginal community discussion and the fast-tracking of projects, which involves heavy lobbying of individuals in isolation from the community.
"That process is bankrupt as far as Aboriginal culture is concerned and is being used to abuse Aboriginal processes and to come up with wrong answers which leave a legacy of resentment."
John Howard's 10-point plan — expressed in the Native Title Amendment Bill about to come before parliament — will make these problems worse, he said. "It's handing 42% of Australia which is currently under leasehold to less than 20,000 people, including a strong contingent of millionaires and billionaires, like Kerry Packer and Janet Holmes a'Court, and in the process it's leaving Aboriginal people with less access to land."
The leaseholders — "without paying a penny" — are getting a far greater ability to use and abuse that land, Brown said. "Instead of cattle grazing, they're going to be able to extend into any form of land use."
The 10-point plan and resulting bill have been rejected by native title representative bodies, which met in a national workshop in early August, for failing to recognise the fundamental relationship between the land and the maintenance of Aboriginal culture.
The statement of the National Workshop of Native Title Representative Bodies said it was angered that Howard's plan "curtails our common law rights, removes our property rights for the benefit of others, and winds back severely the right to negotiate — a most important provision that recognises and protects our cultural and spiritual rights".
Although there was acceptance amongst traditional owners of the Century Zinc mine proceeding, Brown said, there has been massive objection to the pipeline. The Gangalidda traditional owners stopped the pipeline from going directly to the Gulf, "but Century Zinc has got the go-ahead for the 300 km pipeline [running] in a big arc to the east and north to Karumba on the gulf".
There will be extensive dredging of a port at Karumba and dumping of the dredge soil out in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
"Aboriginal people that I spoke with are very opposed to that pipeline and the environmental hazards in the gulf, not least shipping hazards in a high cyclone frequency area", said Brown. "But they feel they've been run over."
The company got the necessary signatures, he said, but other people refused and feel aggrieved that the pipeline is going ahead when the alternative, the railway line to Townsville, already exists.
Both the company and the Port of Townsville Authority have found that method of transporting the ore more costly.
The cost is there because it employs more people, Brown points out. "Miners always claim jobs, jobs, jobs in these developments, but they are doing everything they can to avoid creating long-term jobs in a railway facility which already exists."
The cost estimate is spurious, he says, because no monetary evaluation has been made of the actual and potential environmental damage of the pipeline, dredging and shipping.
The Aboriginal community in the gulf country will continue to campaign against the pipeline, Brown says, emphasising that they need the rest of Australia to "be aware that this pipeline is about to be built, that [the Aboriginal community] oppose it and to help them have the alternative, the railway line to Townsville, adopted instead".
For Brown, the most outrageous component of Howard's proposed amendments to the Native Title Act is the prohibition on arguments to do with spirituality being used by Aboriginal people where fast-tracked developments are being discussed.
For Aboriginal people, Brown says, that is on the road to cultural genocide, a complete deprivation of their spiritual connection with the land.
Brown is also concerned about the provision for native title on pastoral leases to be compulsorily extinguished without any right to negotiation. There will be monetary compensation for the Aboriginal people, but, he says, "They don't want their spirituality bought out for dollars".
And where money compensation is paid for the change in rights to land, the taxpayers pay the millionaires. "It's not them paying for upgrading of their leases: the taxpayer is going to pay for that.
"So the whole thing, from compensation through to spirituality, is wrong, and it's going to take decades, if not centuries, to sort it out if [the bill is] allowed to get through in its current form."
The number of federal and state politicians and senior party officials who will benefit because they are pastoral leaseholders leaves a real question mark over the propriety of the action, according to Brown. "Nobody is going to believe that those people haven't had undue access to and influence on the present government's policy."
The government's draft bill has been changing since it was first presented in late June. But the government has argued that while it may consider some amendments, the substance of the 10-point plan is non-negotiable.
The Labor Party said last week that the version of the bill it had just seen had been significantly redrafted.
According to the native title workshop statement, the government is adding to the restrictions on indigenous rights.
"We learned that mining interests have instructed the government to add a new exclusion to the right to negotiate — in this case, over areas subject to mining for alluvial tin and gold", Brown said.
Late last week the government also indicated it would make more changes in favour of miners and pastoralists — making the test for recognising native title even tougher and extinguishing native title on 4700 perpetual grazing leases covering 37 million hectares in western NSW.
The Greens "reject the package outright — it's so bad that it's not redeemable", said Brown. If there were positive amendments that would significantly improve the bill, the Greens would support them, "but as we see it, it's so far beyond the pale that it's better for us not to be involved in negotiating over it".
Brown is not convinced that the ALP will maintain its opposition to the bill. "I've watched the Labor Party backflip on Hindmarsh Island, and on compulsory work for the dole and so on."
The Labor Party has put forward a "three-point plan" to amend the bill:
- Aborigines with coexisting title over a pastoral lease should have the right to negotiate if the land is compulsorily acquired by a government, or subject to "extreme" changes in use.
- Native title should not be extinguished if title is transferred from one government to another or a statutory authority.
- The time limit on lodgement of native title claims should be abandoned.
The government responded by saying the proposal was "useful" but that it would stick to the 10-point plan.
Commenting on the growing number of community groups opposing the bill, Brown said he'd been concerned that the bill had been seen as simply an Aboriginal problem.
"My very brief visit to the north confirmed beyond doubt what a terrible plan this is for the people most affected, that's Aboriginal Australians.
"But the rest of Australia has to understand that there are enormous dollar penalties and environmental penalties involved. It's 42% of Australia transformed as far as the ability of parliament to control the use of land, and therefore to protect and ensure a proper return, on what is a public asset."
Asked about coexistence as it currently stands between Aboriginal people and pastoralists, Brown said that the political atmosphere has caused coexistence to deteriorate rapidly.
"Whereas recently there was relatively free movement across these properties by Aboriginal peoples, as they'd been doing for millennia, they're now facing locked gates and signs warning of prosecution. The process is moving towards locking Aboriginal people out and paying them dollars ... we're repeating the robbery of Aboriginal Australians of their relationship with this land."