NT land rights under attack
By Margaret Allum
A review of the 1976 Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act released on August 21 contains recommendations which many say are an attempt to extinguish land rights throughout the NT.
Building on Land Rights for the Next Generation, by John Reeves QC, was tabled in federal parliament when it was out of session. Aborigines and their organisations and supporters have widely condemned the report's recommendations, with the review process coming under almost as much fire as the report itself.
The tabling of the document when parliament was out of session, the fact that secret submissions were allowed for this "public" review and the claim that many oral submissions in Aboriginal languages were not translated for the reviewer all contributed to the widely held view that the review's findings are not based on an accurate and unbiased appraisal of the land rights act.
Reeves introduced the review by stating that this generation needs to look afresh at the provisions of the act. He argued that the act needs to be reconsidered taking into account arrangements as they have evolved over time, the current social and economic circumstances of Aboriginal people, and the broader social, political and economic conditions prevailing in the NT and in Australia generally.
The NT's Central and Northern Land Councils said they welcomed any fair appraisal of the Land Rights Act, but were particularly concerned about the political context in which the review was taking place. They said that various government submissions have confirmed their fears — the thrust of these submissions being to roll back hard-won Aboriginal rights.
The councils' newspaper, Land Rights News, stated last September: "The Reeves report has been delivered into a hostile political environment dominated by opposition to land rights and a serious lack of recognition and respect for human rights and issues of significance to Indigenous peoples". They quote PM John Howard's comment published in the Sydney Morning Herald on July 4, 1998: "Land rights is fundamentally wrong, because what land rights inevitably leads to is a large scale alienation of enormous sections of Australia to a very few people".
Land Rights News reported that traditional landowners would be the big losers if Reeves' recommendations are implemented.
Government-appointed control
Reeves' main recommendation is to establish a Northern Territory Aboriginal Council (NTAC) to replace the four land councils. Currently, membership of the land councils is chosen directly by Aboriginal people, but the members of the NTAC would be appointed by the federal minister for Aboriginal affairs and the chief minister of the NT.
Reeves recommended that 18 smaller regional councils be set up under NTAC's control, but with minimal resources. According to Land Rights News, this under-resourcing and duplication would lead to fewer staff, less consultation and more decisions made without proper consent.
The report also recommends a change to the Aboriginal Benefits Reserve. At present, the ABR is controlled by elected Aboriginal representatives. The review recommends the ABR be controlled by NTAC.
Traditional owners currently receive a share of the money from entry fees to tourist sites such as Uluru. Royalty Associations made up of traditional owners decide how royalty money is spent, but this would be taken over by NTAC.
Much of the funding now given to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) would also be handed to NTAC.
Controlling land use
The Northern and Central Land Councils say the recommendations would take away from traditional owners and land councils the ability to make decisions for themselves about land use. They say that under Reeves' recommendations, traditional owners would lose their right to consent to development on their land. These decisions would be made by the government-appointed regional land councils, who may or may not consult or seek consent.
Control over who enters Aboriginal land is currently determined through a permit system. This would be abolished and traditional owners' powers to evict people from their land to protect sacred sites and Aboriginal culture would be very weak. Jurisdiction over sacred sites, even on Aboriginal land, would be exercised solely by the NT government, with the land councils having no function in site protection.
Another recommendation is that certain NT laws (including laws for essential services, conservation and administration of law and order) should override Aboriginal traditional law on Aboriginal land. The Central and Northern Land Councils maintain that this is unnecessary as Aboriginal people have never prevented essential services or other important government activities from being carried out.
The NT government would also have compulsory acquisition powers over Aboriginal land for "public purposes". Yet the current system of negotiation works well, says ATSIC.
Reeves' recommendations would weaken Aborigines' right to say no to mineral exploration; those decisions would be made by the government-appointed land councils, not the traditional owners of the land in question.
ATSIC says there is no reason to weaken Aboriginal rights in this regard, citing the large number of exploration leases that have been approved on Aboriginal land by the Northern Land Council (NLC). Last December, 17 new mining exploration licence agreements covering approximately 45,500 square kilometres were approved at the full council's first meeting in Darwin. NLC chairperson Galarrwuy Yunupingu said these agreements prove that the land rights act does not hinder development in the NT.
Delegates at the Central Australian Aboriginal Health Summit last October rejected the recommendation to set up the NTAC because it would centralise control of the economic and social well-being of Aboriginal people in a government-appointed body. The summit resolution states: "This proposal ignores the specific expertise that our people have developed over many years in a range of sectors such as land management, health service delivery, education, infrastructure, legal services and other areas vital to the health and well-being of our people".
The delegates said they recognised that land rights alone would not lead to better health for Aboriginal people, but that free and legally recognised access to land is an essential requirement for health.
Multiple flaws
An ATSIC report on the Reeves' report claims that it is fundamentally flawed in three way: the reporting process, the anthropology and the law. It says the "degree of consultation undertaken by Mr Reeves falls short of even minimal requirements" and that the report is a poor reflection of the meetings that took place. "There was not a single submission from Aboriginal interests that proposes any of the major recommendations made by Mr Reeves ... any changes to the land rights legislation can only be dealt with effectively if they are consistent with the aspirations of the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory."
ATSIC's NT (North Zone) commissioner Josie Crawshaw said on June 9 that the Reeves report is "flawed legally, economically, anthropologically, morally. By setting up the proposed regional land councils under an over-arching body, the report asks Aboriginal people to break their own law by speaking for someone else's country."
Former Aboriginal affairs minister for the Malcolm Fraser Liberal government, Ian Viner, who introduced the land rights legislation, said the Reeves report puts land rights in the NT seriously at risk. "The intellectual basis is probably the poorest that I've ever read in a report of this kind", he said.
A visiting fellow at the faculty of law at the Australian National University, Ernst Willheim, said the implementation of the recommendations would breach Australia's human rights obligations (under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), be inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act, or could not be effected because of constitutional requirements. This advice has been submitted to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, which is examining the Reeves report.
The report's recommendations are designed to seriously erode the most progressive piece of Australian legislation for the rights of indigenous people. In contrast to later native title legislation, which compromised Aborigines' land rights and has been further compromised by the Howard government, the NT land rights act was the direct result of a large, strong movement for land rights in the 1970s. Also products of this movement, the NT land councils have been relatively powerful, and often outspoken on indigenous issues.
It is because they are in the front line of land rights defence that the NT legislation and land councils have become primary targets in the Howard government's racist offensive against indigenous rights in Australia.