Mr LIEBERMAN (10:49 AM) —I welcome this Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill (No. 3) 1999 to amend the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. I commend the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Senator John Herron, the Prime Minister and the government for facilitating the process through this amendment bill to ensure that the land of the traditional owners—the subject of this legislation—is vested fee simple, freehold, with the Warumungu people and also the Frewena people.

This legislation enables the resolution of some 20 years of very intense discussion, and sometimes dispute, between various players in the Northern Territory and fulfils, as I understand, the vision and hope of the traditional people and their community to have a secure title to this land, which is crown land. It is not private land, and that should be understood. In fact, all the land transferred under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act since 1976—vested in Aboriginal people in freehold, in fee simple—is land that was not privately owned land in the first instance. It has been unalienated crown land in the main. That needs to be understood. The area of land now vested in Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory is something like 50 per cent of the total landmass of the Northern Territory. It is a vast area of land.

When the committee which I have the honour of chairing, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, was asked by the min-ister, Senator John Herron, to consult with the Northern Territory community, particularly the Aboriginal people, about recommendations made in the John Reeves report, we knew that our task was an immense one. We arrived with goodwill, a clear mind and with a serious sense of purpose to listen carefully to the people of the NT—from the Aboriginal communities and the non-Aboriginal communities— the NT government and the agencies representing Aboriginal people, such as ATSIC and others, the mining industry and other areas of commerce. We went there with that intent. We did our best. We were a committee made up of members of all po-litical parties. Some of them have spoken today—the member for Banks, the member for the NT and the member for Grey. Madam Deputy Speaker, you would have detected the strongly held, passionate beliefs of some of those speakers. You would have undoubtedly, as a very observant person with insight, also detected the gulf, the feeling of distrust and the feeling that things are not the way they ought to be which was reflected in the comments made, particularly by the member for the NT and by the shadow minister.

As chairman, it was a challenge for me. I had to make sure, on the one hand, that the passions of those people were not in any way restricted but, on the other hand, that they would not dominate. The views of the people being consulted by the committee were the views that we had to listen to. We then had to evaluate them and not allow our own sense of prejudice, if there was a sense of prejudice, or a preconceived notion, to dominate.

The report which we presented to the parliament last August, which was called Unlocking the future, was a result of those endeavours. The people who gave evidence and made submissions to the committee were very good people whom I respect. Whilst there was disagreement amongst many of them on some issues, there was a common sense of purpose coming through from the community which we consulted—both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people—that there had to be a lot of effort put in to make the life of Northern Territorians better, to ensure that the rights of people were respected, that people were treated equally and that the disadvantage suffered by Aboriginal people and their serious health, education and employment issues were addressed as well.

There was a very strong feeling that this was a heaven-sent opportunity, thanks to the minister, Senator Herron, to turn the page on what had been, in the last 25-odd years, a serious division, led by lawyers and anthropologists, with millions and millions of dollars being spent on legal fees, on disputing claims and having to have them proved to the utmost point of law, rather than spending money that became available through royalties and the like on improving the education, health, training, housing and environment of the most seriously disadvantaged people in this country—the Aboriginal people.

I sometimes had to constrain my sense of anger that we have seen these huge amounts of money expended on legal fees that could and should have been better directed towards targeted programs to improve the health, education, training, housing, employment and environment of Aboriginal people. In that sense, the Howard government, and the ministers involved directly in these matters, John Herron and Philip Ruddock, have done a magnificent job, along with Michael Wooldridge, in targeting the contribution by the Australian people to improve the health, education, training, housing and environment of our Aboriginal fellow Australians.

Some $2 billion now being expended by this government on behalf of Australian taxpayers is being targeted to address those serious issues that regretfully previous governments of both political colours, but particularly the Labor government in the previous 13 years, did not address with the energy and vigour that they should have. Might I also say that it was so obvious to me as chairman of this committee that there was also a lack of true partnership. There were many opportunities being lost by the community, by Australia and by Northern Territorians, in tackling, enhancing and improving the economic position and the self-reliance of Aboriginal people particularly, getting them off welfare so they are not drowned and consumed by welfare. There were so many opportunities that we could see were lost because of the distrust and the political argy-bargy that has been going on for so long.

In the recommendations of the committee therefore, whilst they were unanimous, there was division between the government and non-government members on some very core, funda-mental issues. They are in our report. The consensus amongst us was that if you are going to look at the legal rights of people who own land in Australia, the first thing you have got to do is to respect their rights. Coming from the coalition government and as a member of the Lib-eral Party, it is not difficult for me to get passionate about the need for parliaments and politi-cal parties of all persuasions to start off any dialogue about public policy or review of public policy on the basis that you respect the rights of people to their hard-won property which has come from hard work, sacrifice and toil and, in the Aboriginals' case, having had to fight through the courts after having gone through royal commissions to get a legal title to some of the land that they had been dispossessed of. The core value for us was that, if we are being asked to recommend changes to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, we are going to be recommending changes, but we are going to be recommending changes that re-spect the fact that this land under the control of the land councils, land trusts and the Aborigi-nal people is owned by them now. It is not government land any longer. It is owned by them.

If we were talking to a group of freehold landowners in Melbourne, Sydney or the Gold Coast as a government proposing to do some public policy thing about the management of their land, it would be absolutely fundamental that a modern government and a parliament such as ours would approach any review recognising and valuing those principles. That is, if someone owns a freehold title, it does not matter whether they are Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal. If you are a government and you want to change the rules or the game plan, then you should do it recognising that you are talking to someone who owns that land. They have to be treated with respect. You have to have strong public policy justification before you decide that you are going to change the rules about how those people's land should be changed or managed. That was a very basic fundamental foundation for what we did.

What we have done in our report is try to unlock the future. We have said that one of the very important things that needs to be recognised by Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals in the Northern Territory is that their future, because of the nature of the land in question, is very much to do with the future of the mining industry because employment opportunities in outback Australia as we all know are very hard to come by. Employment opportunities through proper mining activities and exploration, sustainable tourism and certain agricultural pursuits, recognising the environment and doing the right thing there, are the way to go to create jobs for young people in the outback, particularly our Aboriginal fellow Australians.

What we have done in our report is try to unlock the future. We have, for example, said that one of the very important things that needs to be recognised by Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals in the Northern Territory is that their future, because of the nature of the land in question, is very much to do with the future of the mining industry. As we all know, employment opportunities in outback Australia are very hard to come by. But employment opportunities through proper mining activities and exploration—recognising the environment and doing the right thing—and through sustainable tourism and certain agricultural pursuits are the way to go in relation to creating job opportunities for young people in the outback, particularly our Aboriginal fellow Australians. So we were united in saying that the mining industry's future is very much bound up with the future of Aboriginal people and that there have to be appropriate provisions in the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act to ensure that mining is encouraged in proper circumstances and that there is a mechanism to bring together people who own the land and the proposers of the mining activity to ensure that a partnership can be forged.

We also strongly held the view that one of the problems with the white man in Australia, well intentioned, and Aboriginal affairs is that we have actually fallen into the trap of saying, `We can prescribe for your benefit the way in which you should live your life and manage your affairs.' If you look at all the legislation, state and federal, on Aboriginal affairs, you will find this very prescriptive approach: there shall be a body set up to manage this, and it will be appointed by ministers, subject to consultation. Of course, ATSIC is now—and I welcome this—able to elect all its members, including its chairman, which is great. They are not ap-pointed by a minister. We found that the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, which was developed by the royal commission of Woodward some 25 years ago, supported by a Liberal government, introduced by a Liberal Prime Minister and supported by the Labor Party, was too prescriptive. Reeves, the man who did the review, in my view—whilst I respect him very much—was also falling into that trap because he was saying that, instead of having the number of land councils we now have, four, we shall have 18. Magic: we shall have 18—that is the best way to manage the freehold lands of the Aboriginals in the Northern Territory.

The committee said, `Hang on. The Aboriginal people should be the ones because they own the land now. Like any other group of landowners in Australia, if they want to club together and manage their land, they should fundamentally have the right to decide how it will be managed.' So our recommendations enable Aboriginal people to have a procedure, with a plebiscite, to create any number of new land councils out of the existing big ones if they want. But it is not a minister who will take the running in these matters, it is the people from the ground up. One of the great hopes I have, one of the strong beliefs I have about the future of Aboriginal people in this country is that the more you can encourage Aboriginal people to make their own decisions, to argue and to negotiate at community level about policy to do with their own affairs, their own life, their own land, the better; the more you will then find that they will come off welfare; the more you will find that they will develop enterprise and initiative and that their health and other things will improve, because there is nothing worse than growing up in a community where you are doomed never to be employed and where your total subsistence will be welfare, from the day you are born to the day you are buried.

That has unhappily been part of the—I know not intended—consequence of former gov-ernments' policies, of managing because you thought it was the best way to do it instead of getting out of the system and letting Aboriginal people make their own mistakes, just like white people can in the community. If you own freehold land and you are a member of the non-Aboriginal community, you should be able to organise your own affairs. In local govern-ment—and I was a minister for local government in Victoria—it is possible to create and to lobby for new structures, new boundaries for local government, and you make your own decisions to manage the group of lands which you, as a community, individually contribute. So we say in the report that there should not be a prescriptive 18 land councils. What we say is that there should be no limit to the number of land councils, that it is the Aboriginal people who should make that decision, so let us facilitate an election process whereby they can argue it out, have an impact statement, a proper feasibility study, done and then vote on it. Why not?

We were bold enough to suggest that there should be another amendment to the act, to say, `And furthermore, if a group of Aboriginal owners and their community do not want a land council to manage their land, they can opt out and have no land council.' What a revolutionary idea—something on which white freehold landowners in Australia would say, `What's different about that? That's fundamental to our rights.' But the Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory have not got that right. If it is land under the Northern Territory land act, they have to have a land council because parliament said 20-odd years ago, `You have to have a land council, brothers and sisters, otherwise you can't have your land.' That is crazy stuff. That has got to be swept aside. That is why our report unlocks the future. It gives the Aboriginal people a range of choices—a range that they should have had years ago. Undoubtedly the parliament, the government and the community will consult very well in respect of the government's response to these reports, and I hope they will pick up the message that we in the committee are trying to give.

We were very unhappy with the way in which royalties and income from the lands of the Aboriginals were being distributed. There are no targets; there are no strategies; there is no accountability; there are no audit measures of performance. We made a number of bold and simple but good recommendations that the act be amended to incorporate those things. We also suggested that the advice of one of the most respected organisations in the free world, the Australian Commonwealth Grants Commission, be enlisted to assist in the way in which you can target and give advice in the distribution of these matters.

I have run out of time. There are many other things that I could talk about but I will conclude by saying that I will be retiring from parliament when this parliament is dissolved—at the next election. I will work right up to the end and afterwards to try and help bring parties together, to reconcile and to work together and to forge partnerships. I have seen in the Northern Territory some of the most exciting potential to achieve that, with goodwill, with wonderful people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. I think this parliament should now, in this first year in our century, do all it can to bring the parties to sit together. I believe if they do that they will succeed in arriving at appropriate amendments that will unlock the future and, hopefully, remove the minister for Aboriginal affairs from 99.9 per cent of the affairs of Aboriginal people. Just as all Australians hope that there will be less government interference in their affairs, so it should be for Aboriginal people.