DARWIN — There seems to be a movement by stealth to dispossess many small, remote Aboriginal communities by a heartless application of laws set up to control large business corporations.
It is targeting communities who struggled for years to get living areas away from the problems of large mixed communities and town fringes. The Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations is de-registering many small Aboriginal corporations for non-compliance with reporting requirements demanded from large companies.
Four very old women live on a small lease from Inverway station. They are happy on their small block away from problems elsewhere, and their families come to visit. None of these ladies read or write English, and they speak just enough to get by.
The Central Land Council discovered after the event that Brisbane lawyers for the registrar commenced an action to liquidate their modest corporation. The CLC assisted the group to travel to a meeting and fulfil their compliance obligations. The registrar then discontinued proceedings, and eventually waived costs sought by his lawyers, which the old ladies would never have been able to pay.
Those old ladies were put through some considerable anxiety and their living area and houses were saved by chance. Consider the plight of other small remote groups, however.
The Ukaka Corporation struggled for years to get title to a small piece of traditional country. It consists of one square kilometre of land on which 60 people live. They have houses, a small school, teacher's residence and a clinic.
The Brisbane lawyers Minter Ellison recently approached the CLC in an effort to recover costs of $11,501. The CLC has never acted for Ukaka in the matter, and it is very likely the taxpayers will have to pay. Due to the bureaucratic application of law meant to be beneficial to Aboriginal people, and "culturally appropriate", the community now has no incorporated body to hold title to, or to keep control of its land.
On the successful Aboriginal cattle station, previously Mistake Creek, is the small Mistake Creek Aboriginal Corporation. It holds title to a small parcel of land which is home to two extended families, numbering about 20 people.
The members hold one of the two shares setting up Bluegloss Pty Ltd, which runs the Mistake Creek station. Bluegloss is a trustee company and that share brings in no income.
The CLC received a letter from Mr Ebbage, the liquidator appointed by the Queensland Supreme Court on August 11, 1999, asking what were the assets of the corporation. The deputy registrar dispensed with the requirement to gazette this application. Had it been gazetted, the CLC would have seen the notice in time to help the small community. Now they stand to lose all they have.
Like many others, most of the members have little or no skills in reading or writing English. There is no organisation set up to help them with complex requirements of the act or the bureaucratic language of letters sent to them.
As the registrar now conducts the legal proceedings through a firm of lawyers in Brisbane, they do not appear in the NT court lists, where the land councils would pick them up. The Northern Lands Council engaged a Brisbane barrister to gain information from the Brisbane courts for them. He found out that: "In the view of the Registrar of Corporations, out of the existing 3500 Aboriginal corporations in Australia, 600 are defunct". That view seems based upon the non-reply to letters sent out from his Canberra Office.
The registrar is doing a "spring clean". Minter Ellison hold instructions to wind up 218 corporations. Much emphasis was placed upon the lower cost of winding up corporations in the Queensland court: "Savings of $469,800 to wind up 218, and $1,293,000 to wind up 600". The court was also asked to dispense with advertising and gazetting the applications to wind up these corporations.
Apart from the trauma added to the lives of people who don't understand what is going on, what is the real cost to the taxpayers? Most of the people have little or no assets that can be sold to pay costs. Is the registrar going to take away their title to the land for which they struggled so hard and waited so long?
Many years ago a federal government committee investigated living conditions and problems around large towns. It recommended that the federal government expand the Community Development Employment Project funding and encourage people to move to outstation communities in their homelands for reasons of social and community health. Now the government is reversing this process.
In 1978, the minister for Aboriginal affairs, Ian Viner, wrote in an NT News article, "The outstation movement has grown out of the realization that former administrative policies of gathering Aboriginal people together in missions or settlements did not always work. We have seen that the return to traditional lands has enabled Aboriginal people to structure their life style in the form in which they feel most secure. We have also found that the general health of people living in outstations has improved, due no doubt to the removal of psychological stress caused by living in a synthetic environment."
What this current dispossession will do to the psychological health of a people who suffer great stress, and have the worst health and the highest suicide rate in the country, you hardly need to guess. It is causing people great anxiety about their future and the fate of their land titles and living areas.
The act provides the registrar with authority to grant exceptions to organisations which have difficulty in complying with the strict rules of the act or if their situation warrants exemption. That exemption provision also applies to corporations that are not Aboriginal ones.
The service charter of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations states as "Our guiding principle: In recognition of the traditions and cultural diversity of Aboriginal groups within Australia, we will do what we can to make the work of the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations culturally appropriate and we will place a high priority on simplicity and flexibility."
So far there has been little sign of either. Despite much correspondence over 10 years in which the Central and Northern Land Councils have pointed out the nature and problems of the Aboriginal remote corporations and have offered to help though they are not funded to give such a service, and despite appeals to be notified of problems so that they could help, there has been very little cooperation.
The councils have pointed out the need to have field officers attached to the registrar's office who could assist people with their problems and notify the registrar of the circumstances. No-one from the registrar's office has visited communities to find out why they are not replying to correspondence, or what the problems are.
The land councils suggested that the legal costs mounted by this push to liquidate Aboriginal corporations could pay for a good support service and the education of people to understand better the requirements of our laws. No such education or service exists to serve that need.
Appeals to the registrar and the minister of Aboriginal affairs to halt the liquidations have been refused.
In 1997, a review of the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act was headed by Dr Jim Fingleton. His team recommended that the act be re-written to reflect its original intention to give legal recognition to indigenous groups in a culturally appropriate way. The recommendations of the report seem not to have been heeded.
Some support service needs to be established and funded. In the meantime, the waste of taxpayer's money in legal proceedings should cease, unfair actions should be reversed and the cost borne by the body and the minister who mounted this attack.
This is one of the most scandalous and heartless uses of the letter of the law to oppress and dispossess Aboriginal people that I have seen in my 40 years' experience working with Aboriginal people. I hope that you will all publicise this where and how you can, and make your own protest to appropriate ministers of the government.
[Abridged.]
BY REVEREND JIM DOWNING