home | news l

Aborigines fear land law changes

By Aban Contractor, Stephanie Peatling and Lindsay Murdoch

8 April 2005 - A push by the Prime Minister, John Howard, to radically overhaul Aboriginal land rights could run into constitutional difficulties and lead to massive compensation payouts, the Federal Government has been warned.

A leaked options paper, presented to the National Indigenous Council at its January meeting and seen by the Herald, proposes amending state and territory legislation to force community owners of Aboriginal land to grant lease applications.

It also warns that requiring native title holders to assign their rights to other parties "could amount to the compulsory acquisition of private property and thus invoke the 'just terms' compensation provisions of the constitution".

"The Australian Government would then need to provide financial compensation to the native title holders who were required to surrender (for the term of the lease) part of their land to another party," the paper says.

"The compensation obligation would be financially significant if the legislative amendment itself ... were held to constitute compulsory acquisition, ie all existing native title holders would thereby be automatically affected and have a right to compensation."

In the Northern Territory community of Wadeye on Wednesday, Mr Howard suggested that a review of Aboriginal land rights would allow more people to own their houses.

But Labor's spokesman on indigenous affairs, Kim Carr, said that if the Government implemented the proposals canvassed in the eight-page options paper it would amount to compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal land.

"It would be racially discriminatory and open the door to indigenous Australians losing control of their land and never getting it back," Senator Carr said. "This opens the door to mining and resources companies bypassing Aboriginal communities."

The Herald understands that the paper on indigenous land usage was written by a senior public servant in the Office of Indigenous Policy Co-ordination but presented to the council by Warren Mundine, a vice-president of the Labor Party.

Mr Mundine said he would like to see individual leaseholds but with "the underlying title" remaining in Aboriginal hands. "I would be very concerned if the Government tried to forcibly take land from Aboriginal people," he said.

The Northern Land Council has told the Government it wants a system developed under which funds raised through a public and private partnership could be used to ease the housing crisis in remote Aboriginal communities such as Wadeye.

But the council has made it clear in a confidential briefing paper that it believes changes to the Land Rights Act are unnecessary.

This paper, a copy of which has been obtained by the Herald, said the council favoured a system of granting leases which could be used as security for finance to build houses.

The Federal Government first flagged changes to land rights legislation earlier this year when the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, said something had to be done to stop indigenous Australians from being "land rich but dirt poor".

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Further information: native title issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page