Mr RUDDOCK (Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Reconciliation) (5:17 PM) —by leave—I thank the honourable member and the chair for the opportunity to comment on this report, although briefly. Let me first say that the government welcomes the 16th report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Native Title and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Land Fund, on this occasion entitled CERD and the Native Title Amendment Act 1998. In accordance with the usual practice relating to parliamentary committee reports, the government will carefully consider the committee's report. Accordingly, while I will not be delivering a formal government response to the committee's report today, I will make some brief points about the issues raised.

Having served on many parliamentary committees, I am familiar with the way in which they operate. It is of interest to me to see the committee report with a substantial dissent, in this case by non-government members, and to see the comments from the committee being largely at this point in relation to the dissent rather than a report on the committee's view as concluded. Therefore, I feel I emboldened to read what the committee had to find. Page 54 of the report says:

I think that is a balanced and sensible conclusion for the committee to reach. It is one which we as a government think reflects the real position. In 1998, the government made amendments to the Native Title Act which were necessary to deal with a number of practical issues arising out of court decisions, such as the High Court's decisions in Wik and Brandy. In particular, the uncertainty that was created by Wik in relation to pastoral leases needed to be addressed. It would not have mattered who was in office—those issues needed to be addressed.

The government engaged in very extensive consultation on the amendments with major stakeholders, including indigenous people. Australia has a very strongly democratic system which enables all of its citizens, regardless of race, to participate in political life. Indigenous people can and do participate fully in the political and cultural life of our nation. This is what the CERD convention requires. Mention has been made of the CERD committee. On behalf of the Australian government, I led a delegation to that committee to put our report in relation to issues arising out of the need to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. I spoke very comprehensively about a range of issues relating to programs that we put in place to create living in harmony and to address racial discrimination where it might be evident in the Australian community. I talked about the native title legislation. I talked about our legislation dealing with racial discrimination and the role of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in relation to those matters.

I also had to explain to them—this is an expert body, but it had very little understanding of the nature of the Australian federation—the way in which our democratic system works. In a sense, if you look at some of the countries that these people, as experts, come from, it would be fair to conclude that they may have had little experience with democratic institutions. When you have experts from Cuba, for instance, telling you about democratic institutions and how they should operate, you start to have some question marks over the process. As one who had to respond to the questions that were asked, I have to say that people who come together a couple of times a year for several weeks to receive reports from a whole range of countries regardless of their expertise need to put a lot of work into getting up to and addressing these sorts of issues. I have to say, quite frankly, the system does not provide for that to occur. Many of the people who are involved in it are admirable people. I met them and had an opportunity to engage and talk to them. But in terms of dealing with these issues in relation to amendments to the Native Title Act, I do not believe the committee was in a position to put and develop an informed—and I use the word `informed' advisedly—view about whether or not Australia was in breach of its obligations under the convention.

Clearly, we take advice in relation to these matters. All the advice that we had as a government from the government's legal advisers in these matters was that the Native Title Act, when looked at as a whole, continues to provide significant benefits to native title holders and that the amended Native Title Act achieves a successful and appropriate balance between competing interests. You cannot look at it in part; you have to look at in whole. What it delivers are positive advantages, overall, to native title claimants. The government has previously addressed the issues concerning the parliamentary joint committee and its inquiry before the CERD committee and we maintain our position in relation to the CERD committee's findings in 1998. That is, we consider that the committee's report is unbalanced and is a wide ranging attack that intrudes unreasonably into Australia's internal affairs. We consider that the CERD committee failed to consider the Native Title Act as a whole and focused on the amendments in isolation. We are well aware of our obligations under the convention. We take our deliberations in relation to these matters—the role of the parliamentary committee as well as the CERD—very seriously. This is demonstrated by the fact that we have made extensive submissions to and appeared before the committee as well as the CERD committee. As I mentioned earlier, the high level delegation to attend the hearings of the committees dealing with Australia's periodic reports was further evidence of the seriousness with which we undertake these measures.

I was interested in the way in which the report of the opposition members of the committee dealt with the issue of where we ought to go in the future, because it raised the very important question that Laurie Oakes raised when he interviewed the honourable member for Banks. That is, if we are dealing with legislation which the opposition in principle believes is racially discriminatory, what is the opposition going to do about it? I have read the conclusions that the honourable member for Northern Territory read to us, and I still do not find it. What we find is that there is a view that there should be `further discussions'. I do not know what those discussions mean, and I guess we will probably raise some of these questions when we look at the report more comprehensively. But when you put whatever amendments you might have in mind in an environment in which one group of people are essentially—it appears to me—going to have a very significant role `through a process of negotiation with Australia's indigenous peoples with an aim of gaining their informed consent to any amendments and to the amended act as a whole', is that a veto? Does that mean that the opposition is saying, `We will only propose amendments that are acceptable to indigenous people'? Is that what you are saying? Or are you saying that if we can't get amendments that are acceptable to indigenous people, then the present act will stay? Is that what you are saying?

I think the opposition still has a long way to go in terms of articulating its position if it is really thinking about these issues in the context of ever being a government. The hard work of policy development means that you have to sit down. You have sat down and drafted a report. It covers a lot of ground, but at end of the day it does not reach any conclusions about how the hard issues are going to be addressed. That is the reality of it. You are not informing the public as to the proposals that you have in mind. What you are wanting to do is to leave it vague, to leave indigenous people believing that they are going to have sway in relation to the way in which these matters might be addressed. But if they do not get their way, then it is quite clear that the only outcome you have got left is the law as it is at the moment. If you have another view, you should tell us. It is the same as it is in relation to the position relating to the Queensland delegated legislation in relation to native title. Are you intending to disallow that measure? If you are serious about being a government, you have to reach some conclusions about these matters. These issues are complex, they are unique and they are difficult—and we recognise that.

We do not want to reopen a divisive debate in relation to these matters, but all Australians are entitled to know whether the opposition is of the view that the uncertainty on native title issues had to be addressed and whether the approaches which the government has taken were reasonable or unreasonable. If you are of the view that they are unreasonable—as you seem to be in this minority, or opposition, report—we need to know what you propose as an alternative. We do not have that before us in the document that you have outlined. That is really the beginning and the end of the substantial issue. This government remains committed to fostering healthy and productive relationships between all Australians, of all racial backgrounds. The government is committed to achieving a lasting reconciliation with indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, but we believe that these issues can be most effectively addressed by having a constructive discussion, by putting forward practical amendments which involve reaching conclusions after extensive consultations. We do not think it is appropriate to reopen the divisive debate on native title that we had before. We are, I would suggest, disappointed that this is not a unanimous report in favour of the conclusion that is outlined as the majority view on page 54.