Central Land Council

Aboriginal Land Rights Act Amendments

The Central Land Council says that while it welcomes some of the amendments which enhance the workability of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act ( Northern Territory ) 1976 introduced to the Australian Parliament today, others are of dubious value.

CLC Director David Ross said that many of the amendments were as the CLC had requested, especially the amendments to the mining provisions of the Act.

“These changes make the exploration and mining processes more flexible, remove time consuming regulation, and allow mining companies and the Land Councils to reach agreement about negotiating periods while allowing appropriate intervention by the NT Minister if deadlines are not met,” Mr Ross said.

The CLC maintains that the Act already provides a mechanism for private home ownership but it does support the amendment which clarifies future transfers of a mortgage over a lease on Aboriginal land.

However, it says other amendments may pose significant problems.

“We see whole-of-community leases by the Northern Territory Government on Aboriginal land as unnecessary, expensive and flawed. Rent will come from the ABA (estimated at $15 million over five years) to pay traditional owners and this could cause significant tensions in the communities affected,” Mr Ross said.

“Leasing the entire community could also deprive the traditional owners of the benefits of commercial development in the future and runs the risk that commercial leases will be granted to businesses that the traditional owners do not want in their community.

“There are also no guarantees that this amendment will improve the Northern Territory Government's service delivery record.

“The delegation provisions also have some problems. While we generally support delegating decision making to more local groups, we do have concerns that devolving decision about mining and commercial enterprises could encourage corruption,” he said.

“As we have seen in other parts of Australia , it is easy to coerce poverty stricken people into making decisions when a bit of cash is splashed around and somebody says ‘sign on the dotted line'. It happens and this amendment opens the way for that to happen more often.

“Under the current Act, the CLC does independent consultations with traditional owners and the entire Council signs off on it when it is satisfied that the decision was fully supported at the local level. This ensures that everybody's interests are balanced equitably.

“The Minister will have to exercise a great deal of diligence in his administration of the provisions which provide for delegation to groups and new land councils. These very small entities are often highly susceptible to governance issues - especially in matters involving conflicts of interest,” he said.

“We do not support the new funding arrangements which put's the Land Council's funding at Government whim. It significantly undermines the CLC's independence,” Mr Ross said.

“We have been moving towards performance based funding for some time and that doesn't present a problem for us,” he said.

contact: Jane Hodson 0417877579 0889516217 May 31 2006