14 October 1997
E&OE..........................................................................................................................
JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
JONES:
Racist scum - how do you react to that language?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, that’s very unhelpful, inflammatory language. And I just say to all people who have used that language in this debate, for the sake of Australia and sensible debate, they should curb their tongues and behave sensibly.
JONES:
If you’d use that language you would have been shot to pieces.
PRIME MINISTER:
I would have been criticised from one end of the country to the other. I would never use that language. It’s irresponsible, counterproductive language in every sense of the word. And too often people resort to the smear of calling somebody a racist or sexist or something else when they don’t have a logical argument to pit against that person. Now, I certainly would have been condemned about as comprehensively as anybody could be condemned.
JONES:
But the man using the language was party to all of the negotiations over the Native Title Act in which pastoral leases were to extinguish native title. He was one of the chief negotiators of that agreement.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, he certainly was. And, moreover, after the 1993 Act was passed he made a number of public statements including one in Queensland, I think, when he said that there was no way that native title claimants were going to lodge claims over pastoral leases because the belief under which people operated was, as Graham Richardson said, that the grant of a pastoral lease had extinguished native title. And what happened was that the Wik decision came along and heavily qualified that and talked about co-existence and tried to set out what it thought the common law was. And what we have tried to do is respond to this, which Graham Richardson calls and Kim Beazley acknowledges is a mess, to produce a piece of legislation which is a compromise which does not provide blanket extinguishment of native title on pastoral leases. That’s why I was criticised by some of the pastoralists when I was preparing the legislation, and by some members of the Queensland National Party.
It is, in fact, a compromise. It falls short of what Keating stated repeated - Mr Keating stated repeatedly - to be the law in 1993. And what my legislation does is to give certainty of land usage to pastoralists, allows them, guarantees them the capacity to run their properties and to protect the right to run their properties but, at the same time, respects native title by not providing for blanket extinguishment.
JONES:
Can I just interrupt you there and say perhaps what - and I know your father was a suburban bloke, my old man was a bushie - what he would say to that. And just repeating what you said, it respects their pastoral title but also respects the right of Aboriginal people to access.
Just take Queensland, which I know a bit about. The majority of leases in Queensland are small, one family living area units. Just parents and their kids. And the landholders there have bought the land and they’ve established business enterprises on them and they’ve made a lot of expenditure - half a million to three million. They’ve enjoyed exclusive occupation of that land and no community group has ever been able to interfere with the management of the business enterprise. Aboriginal people have been absent from these lands for a generation or more. What is going to happen there?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, if the land in question is subject to what is called in the law an exclusive tenure, in other words, if it’s a freehold or it’s a kind of tenure that’s short of freehold but nonetheless clearly conferred in the lease itself, exclusive possession, well, nobody can claim any other kind of right. But if it’s not a holding that confers, by its own terms, exclusive possession, then it would be possible for a native title claim to be made.
JONES:
That’s right. So all our land management practices - because much of this land, Prime Minister, you do understand, in it’s pre-European state couldn’t support permanent life because there was no water.
PRIME MINISTER:
I do understand that and the point of all of this is that we are being very, very sensitive to the Aboriginal position on this issue and that is why so many of the attacks that have been made on me and on my Government are just outrageous and completely run in the face of all of the facts. And I have laboured for months to put together a code, which I asked the Senate to put into law, which will enable pastoralists to continue unhindered and with great security in their operations. If there is a native...
JONES:
They’re not doing that now. They’re not doing that now. You see, many of these...
PRIME MINISTER:
Of course they’re not because the present law allows, effectively allows a capacity to make ambit claims...
JONES:
Yes, challenge and access. Challenge and access.
PRIME MINISTER:
Now, we are bringing order to that. We’re not going to allow people to get away with claims without any substance. If people have exercised access, which in many communities in cooperation between pastoralists and Aborigines, this has occurred. And I’ve spoken to many - people all over the country have said: look, we’ve had arrangements with local Aboriginal groups, they’ve come on to our properties, they’ve exercised traditional rights, we are perfectly happy for that to continue. And, in fact, the law will say that if you’ve got an access right at the present time, that access right will be guaranteed. And why shouldn’t it?
JONES:
Yes, quite. But could I just take a simple [inaudible] that doesn’t apply. Now these people are telling me that Aboriginal people have made demands that they be included in the development of property management plans. Now, they don’t want to do any work. They don’t want to contribute funds. They just want to be involved in management. Now, no urban business could cope with that, why should rural business, especially when...
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, the answer is, whether you’re dealing with Aboriginals or not, the answer is no. And under the legislation there will be a proper procedure established to make claims.
If you’ve got a genuine claim in accordance with the Mabo principle, and bear in mind this all started with the Mabo case, where there had been a clear continuity of ownership and occupation of land and nobody in those circumstances can deny people title rights, we are not talking about that and I fully support that. We are talking here about having a sensible procedure whereby, if you believe you have got a title right you have got to pass a test to get registered and then you have got to go on and establish, before the Federal Court, your title right.
Now, in the meantime, pastoralists should be protected from any irresponsible ambit claims, and that essentially - and be allowed and guaranteed the right to carry on their pastoral lease...
JONES:
What that’s saying...
PRIME MINISTER:
That is what my legislation has done. My legislation has sought to preserve the right of Aborigines to make legitimate native title claims, on the one hand, but in the meantime to guarantee uninterrupted conduct of pastoral businesses by farmers. Now that is the balance I have tried to strike and fair minded Australians will not see that as racist, they’ll see it as a genuine attempt to strike a balance, in a horrendously difficult position.
JONES:
In all of that the farmer will say that somehow or other Aboriginal people have a capacity to successfully fund any legal battle and subsequent appeal. A landholder has got no guarantee that his costs could be met and he is facing bankruptcy, fighting for what’s been his for God knows how long.
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, the answer to that is that he will, because part of the arrangements we have promised is legal aid funding for the pastoralists where that is necessary.
JONES:
And just one final thing...
PRIME MINISTER:
So there’s a balance, they’ll get funded as well.
JONES:
You’re obviously on top of the subject, I might add, infinitely more so than you are given credit for, but if I can just add one thing, the Century Zinc mine in Queensland. Now they are the best negotiating - that’s what everyone says, you must negotiate, the farmer must negotiate, the mining company must negotiate - now Century Zinc have the best negotiating talent money can buy. They have got Bill Hayden, the former Governor General. Thousands of dollars in expenditure. Many months of work. No agreement. I mean, if they can’t reach agreement, how does the loan leaseholder, how does the farmer with a wife and three kids?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, the answer is that in most cases the negotiation will in fact take place between the State Government, if there is to be a negotiation, and the native title claimant. And we will be making provision for legal assistance, legal assistance funding.
JONES:
How much is it going to cost the taxpayer?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it depends on how many...after the Bill is passed, which the Bill imposes a much stronger registration test. In other words the hurdle you have got to get over at the beginning is appropriately higher. It was too low before. It encouraged people to put in all sorts of claims and even somebody, like the Vice-President of ATSIC, Ray Robinson, said there were a ridiculous number of claims being made. So, the hurdle will be higher and that’s appropriate and by the same token there will be funding for pastoralists. So the image of a lonely pastoralist, with no money, fighting an army of lawyers, publicly funded, that will not happen.
JONES:
Just one final thing, your job as Prime Minister is to represent Australia around the world. There is a persistent attempt to discredit all Australians by suggesting that our indigenous Australians are landless in their own country. Do you think that Australians understand that prior to the Wik decision Aborigines held title to 109 million hectares of land in this country, that per capita, they hold more land than any other group of Australians?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don’t think there is a proper appreciation of the extent to which, under the Northern Territory Land Rights, that land has been granted. I don’t think there is any idea of that. I think there is still a mistaken notion that nothing has been done at all to help. And this is tragic, because most Australians have good will towards Aboriginal people. Most Australians recognise that they have poor standards of health and education and employment opportunities than the rest of us, and they want to help. But they find it hard to help when what has been done in the past is so arbitrarily dismissed as irrelevant and inadequate and they also find it very hard to help when whatever is done is labelled as racist and inadequate and an attack on the rights of indigenous people. And worse still, some leaders go overseas and attack this country abroad.
JONES:
Absolutely. Thank you for your time.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[Ends]