Funding slashed as NSW land rights law winds up
By Jennifer Thompson
SYDNEY — Coinciding with the federal government's attempt at de facto extinguishment of native title, the NSW government has almost halved funding to Aboriginal communities. A small news item about the state budget in the June 3 Sydney Morning Herald mentioned that because of the end of the state government's commitments to NSW Aboriginal land councils, funding to the state's 150,000 Aboriginal people will drop by 44.7%.
The payments will stop because the sunset clause in the 1983 NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act will come into effect this year.
The federal attempt to restrict the benefits of the 1992 Mabo decision, and the end of the 15-year NSW act have highlighted the need not to only to defend, but to improve the two systems of returning land to Aboriginal people: state land and funding grants, and the recognition of traditional Aboriginal land ownership — native title.
The 1983 law gave a measure of self-determination to Aboriginal people and the ability to claim some land, although this has been whittled back, particularly through amendments to the act and the introduction of new regulations made by the Greiner Liberal government in 1989 and 1990.
According to Metropolitan Land Council chairperson Jenny Munro, the gains had been limited and showed the difference between the state system and native title: "You won't get any royalties from hunting and fishing on land council land, you won't get any royalties from mining the way the legislation is written. All royalties go to the government."
The NSW land rights law handed over certain Aboriginal reserves and provided a claims process for unused crown land not needed for any public purpose. The act's preamble recognised prior occupation of NSW by Aboriginal people but not prior ownership.
"We have the ridiculous situation where, for 15 years, this government has said there was no such thing as a traditional owner, the only thing we could do was make claim on vacant crown land. We now have a federal act that says the first thing we've got to do is find a traditional owner.
"We all relate that back to the country we come from, and we know who belongs where and to what and that there are traditional owners out there in the bush."
Recognition of native title put NSW Aboriginal people in a contradictory situation, Munro said, because of the history of genocide in NSW. "Sydney is the first place where genocide occurred. It didn't only happen in Tasmania; it happened here. If I could find somebody from the [original Sydney] Eora tribe, I'd be jumping up and down. After a long time, a lot of effort and a lot of sorrow, I still haven't found anybody that can really say for sure that this is their country."
The long history of struggle for land rights was put in its context in 1983 when the chairperson of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Kevin Cook, commented: "Our resistance takes the form of demands for recognition of our traditional rights to land. These have never been ceded by treaty or overturned by conquest or law. We maintain they still exist, but white law continues to ignore them."
In 1983, with the passing of the NSW Land Rights Act, a three-tier system of land councils, elected by Aboriginal people, was set up across the state to administer the land now under Aboriginal ownership.
"When that legislation came about, we got title to all existing reserves in the state, and we also got the ability to make claims on vacant crown land", said Munro. "That was our only avenue of acquiring land under the legislation."
But the vacant crown land that could be claimed was limited, she said.
The act provided for 7.5% of land tax revenue for 15 years to go to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Half of those funds went to the land councils for administration, purchases and development of land. The other half went into an investment fund, totalling around $500 million.
The land councils will no longer be allocated funds from land tax revenue, and instead must use the funds that have been accumulating in the investment account to run the local and state land council structures, Munro told Green Left Weekly.
The act has been amended a number of times since 1983. Munro said the worst attack was in 1990, when the Greiner government "ripped the regional tier out of the land rights structure".
There was a strong campaign against the government's proposed scrapping of the act, the "mainstreaming" of special services for Aboriginal people. There was also a proposal to replace the elected land councils and the Aboriginal Affairs Office with an appointed commission funded from the land tax income.
Some of the government's aims were achieved by changing the regulations under the act, to avoid a vote in parliament. The changes included transferring land councils' funding to the Office of Aboriginal Affairs in the Premier's Department, which replaced the state Department of Aboriginal Affairs.
These changes were later reversed, but the assets of the regional land councils, and their staff, were transferred back to the state land council. "Basically it gutted the regional level of the land council structure, and it has made them powerless", Munro said.
The election process for state land councillors was also changed.
"Prior to 1990, the councillor was chosen from around the regional table. With the 1990 amendments, it became a general election process like state and federal elections."
The result was an increase in power at the state land council level, while the councillors were distanced from local community structures. Their wages increased at the expense of the local councils. Someone on the state land council gets more than a whole local land council, said Munro.
"It was written by white people for Aboriginal people. It doesn't take into account Aboriginal ways of doing things. It's an imposition of another system on us.
"We're not white people; we're Aboriginal people. We have unique systems that have operated for thousands of years, that have been successful, that we've survived by. But we will not go into round holes; we're square pegs."
Further undemocratic changes to the land council structure are planned, Munro told Green Left Weekly. "I don't come from Sydney; I've lived here for 20 years. I come from Wiradjuri country, and with the legislation as it is, I can be a member of two land councils. I can only vote in one land council at the state land council election level, but I can participate at the local level in the two." That would be prevented by the latest amendments.
The proposals deny "how we were moved off land, without any choice. Even in the 1970s, the Department of Housing started a relocation program, moving people from Wilcannia to Newcastle or Wagga. So those people have been moved off their country in ways they had no control over, but they still maintain a connection to the country they came from."