E&OE........................................................................................................
Hello. Next month when Parliament meets again, the Parliament will
resubmit its Native Title Amendment Bill. We have to do this because
last year, the Senate put some amendments in it which are quite unacceptable.
I hope that on this occasion we can get the Bill through and we can
do what I think most Australians want and put this difficult issue
behind us.
Amending the Native Title Act is very important to regional and rural
Australia. What we have proposed is a fair balance respecting the
rights of Aboriginal people, farmers, miners and the rest of the community.
The Senate has insisted on some amendments which are quite unreasonable
and the worst of the amendments insisted on by the Senate relates
to the so-called rights to negotiate. You see, what the Senate is
doing is saying that one section of the community, one group of Australians,
namely the Aboriginal native title claimants, should have superior
rights to other Australians, namely the pastoralists.
The right to negotiate is not a common law right. It was a special
right given to native title claimants under Mr Keating's Native
Title Act and all we are doing is saying that procedures should be
established whereby native title claimants are given no greater rights
than other Australians.
What the Senate is saying is that you could have a situation where
in relation to a claim over a pastoral leasehold, the native title
claimant could insist on a right to negotiate but that would not be
available to a pastoral leaseholder who may, through his family, have
occupied that land for 50 or 100 years.
We haven't given in fully to any side of this argument. We have
tried to strike a fair balance and under our changes it will still
be possible for native title claimants in theory to make claims over
79 percent of the land mass of Australia.
You all remember that when the original Act was passed in 1993 the
Keating Government virtually guaranteed that there couldn't be
native title claim under pastoral leases. That was overturned in the
Wik decision and what we have done with our changes is to make sure
that farmers and pastoralists can carry on their normal activities
without interference and that they can make reasonable extensions
to those activities without running into road blocks and running into
difficulties.
We need to put this issue behind us. We need to focus on the future.
We need to focus on constructive gestures of reconciliation between
Aboriginal people and other Australians. We can't afford as a
nation for the debate to go on indefinitely and I therefore hope that
when the Bill is presented again in March of this year the Senate
will understand the fairness and let the Bill go through in the form
that we propose.
Thank you for listening.