Hands off native title! Land rights now!
While pretending otherwise, Howard and his government are trying to push through with "bucket loads of extinguishment", as deputy PM Tim Fischer rather aptly, if undiplomatically, described the racist 10-point native title amendment bill. The bill enables state governments to extinguish surviving native title on pastoral leases.
If it is passed, those who stand to gain include up to 20 government MPs, the president of the National Party, the sultan of Brunei (the world's richest individual), Kerry Packer (Australia's richest man) and Janet Holmes a'Court (Australia's richest woman).
The losers will be Australia's indigenous people.
The government's amendments to the 1993 Native Title Act will jeopardise the limited common law rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, belatedly recognised in the Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996) cases. Although neither judgment recognised native title rights for most indigenous Australians, it was a step forward that the law — after more than 200 years — finally acknowledged that the country's original inhabitants had any property rights.
The right to negotiate which could exist on pastoral leases after the Wik decision has been the subject of considerable scaremongering from the mining and pastoral lobbies. But the High Court stated that while native title rights could coexist with pastoral leases, where there is a conflict of interest, the pastoralists' rights override those of the native title holders.
Yet, bowing to pressure from the profit-hungry pastoral and mining lobbies, Howard and Fischer want native title extinguished in all but name. This is not a new campaign. Labor was attempting to appease the same interests, and do much the same thing, although in the post-Mabo days it had to be somewhat more surreptitious about it.
Speaking to the National Farmers Federation last month, deputy opposition leader Gareth Evans vowed not to "countenance the legislative extinguishment, direct or de facto, of native title rights now coexisting on pastoral leases".
Fine-sounding sentiment, but it was his party, in government, that did all it could to limit native title rights in the 1993 act. Then, WA Greens Senator Christabel Chamarette drew the ire of Labor, the Democrats and sections of the black bureaucracy by describing the bill as "Mabo containment legislation" and daring to propose crucial amendments, including entrenching the right to negotiate.
Greens Senator Bob Brown believes the 10-point plan is so bad, it's not even worth amending.
Some native title supporters are pinning their hopes on Labor to defeat the bill in the Senate. This is a risky strategy, given Labor's record.
While some Labor leaders may sound more reasonable, others were campaigning to wind back native title rights before the Coalition came on the scene. So while Kim Beazley talks about the need for certainty for all players (an impossible dream), former governor general Bill Hayden and former Queensland premier Wayne Goss are calling for the extinguishment of native title on pastoral leases.
Labor may well come up with a few compromises, but Howard's native title bill will still reduce Aboriginal land rights. Just as Labor broke its promise to introduce national land rights legislation 14 years ago in the wake of a big propaganda campaign by the mining companies, Labor cannot be trusted today.
Even if Howard's 10-point plan is defeated, the majority of indigenous people will be no closer to exercising their native title rights. Under existing law (to be further tightened under Howard's plan), native title claimants must prove a continuous connection to the land in question. Obviously, the virtual wholesale dispossession of Aborigines means that only a tiny minority can ever hope to benefit.
Because the historical basis of the oppression of Aboriginal people is the systematic confiscation of their land, a fair land rights settlement cannot be restricted to groups with continuous occupation. We need a national land rights law which allows indigenous people to claim land on the basis of traditional ownership and need. Without such a law, all talk of reconciliation is empty rhetoric.