Central Land Council

CIS needs to check facts before publication

24 May 2005

The Central Land Council says a new issues paper published by the Centre for Independent Studies and written by John Cleary is seriously flawed and full of errors.

CLC director David Ross says Mr Cleary's comments about the Tiwi Land Council should not be taken seriously, and nor should they be applied to other land councils in the Northern Territory .

Mr Ross was specifically commenting on Mr Cleary's comments about the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (ALRA).

"Unfortunately, Mr Cleary shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Act works. He doesn't understand that we are a Commonwealth statutory body, subject to the same rules as other Commonwealth Government organisations," Mr Ross said.

The paper makes an issue about Land Trusts not having financial documents about the status of their trust funds. Under the Land Rights Act, Land Trusts do not hold funds. Section 6 of the ALRA says specifically that Land Trusts are not empowered to accept moneys, and that such moneys are to be paid to the Land Council. The Act specifies how these monies are to be distributed.

The Central Land Council's financial information is available in its annual reports and the Australian National Audit Office gave the CLC a clean bill of health in 2002.

Mr Cleary also calls for amendments to the ALRA  to allow individual Aborigines to lease land for creation of their own businesses and to build their own houses. However, amendments are unnecessary because  Section 19(2) of the Act makes specific provision for exactly that.

Where the purpose is for the individual Aborigine to establish a business, a lease of up to 21 years can be granted without Ministerial consent. If the purpose is for housing the Minister's consent is required if the lease is for more than 10 years. Its difficult to imagine that the Minister would decline to consent to a long lease in those circumstances.

Lastly, Mr Cleary says that elections for Land Trust members need to be more open. However, Land Trust members are not elected but appointed by the Government. Central Land Council executive members are elected at elections conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission.

This is the second recent paper on Aboriginal affairs published by the Centre for Independent Studies which has contained glaring factual errors.

"I do urge the CIS to check their facts in these papers before publication," Mr Ross said. " The Central Land Council would be happy to assist them and avoid any future misunderstandings on their part".