Senator MINCHIN (Special Minister of State;Minister Assisting the Prime Minister) (12:18 AM) —We oppose this amendment. I am absolutely amazed that, given what the Greens have been saying about our position on the right to negotiate throughout this debate, they could support that last amendment, which specifically provides that a major private infrastructure project shall not have the right to negotiate apply to it. I will not say what I think of that.

We do have sympathy with the objective of this amendment but not with the mechanism for giving effect to it. We do think there are legal obstacles to the proposal stemming from the consequences of the Brandy decision. The advice to the government is that the validity of the existing process which allows for native title determinations by the NNTT is doubtful in the light of Brandy. So the essence of this proposal is a finding by representative bodies, which are obviously not judicial bodies, of who holds native title in particular areas. That has all the problems that we have all agreed there now are with the Native Title Tribunal acting in any judicial capacity and it is why the whole process must be dealt with in the Federal Court and not the tribunal. The tribunal's function is mediation and arbitration on the RTN. So we think there are real legal problems with this and we cannot support it.

Amendment not agreed to.

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN —We now move to replacement amendment RN4, which has been reintroduced by Senator Harradine.