Senator ALLISON (7:49 PM) —There are two main issues that I want to address this evening in this debate on the Native Title Amendment Bill 1997 [No. 2] and they are, firstly, local government and the role which it can play in bringing communities together and providing leadership and education and, secondly, conservation and the way in which the Native Title Amendment Bill has the potential to remove a very vital level of protection for our natural environment.

I have been enormously encouraged by the work of local government in this country since the Wik decision. A publication entitled Working with native title was put out by the Australian Local Government Association last year and was followed up by a number of seminars and workshops in local governments right across Australia.

After I attended the ALGA's national conference late last year I reported to the Senate the groundbreaking resolutions that were passed at that conference, almost all of them unanimous, which reflected the desire by local government to lead their communities into reconciliation through understanding. In my view, local government much more than other levels of government understands the importance of united communities. They know, because they are in touch with those communities, that issues of the significance of native title must be handled with care and sensitivity and in the local context.

The ALGA was here in Canberra yesterday and it asked for a role in the all-important task of raising awareness and providing a vehicle for education. It is most unfortunate that local government is very rarely brought to the table or asked for its collective view. In this I would urge the federal government to take up the offer of the ALGA to run a national community based public education campaign with opportunities for constructive mediation and negotiated outcomes.

I bet you that if we surveyed a slice of Australian society right now to find out how much people understood about native title and the 10-point plan, you would find that there is a very high level of confusion. I say confusion advisedly because this government has, in my view, done its utmost to mislead people about what native title is actually about.

Sir Rupert Hamer, respected former Liberal premier of Victoria, this week drew attention to this state of confusion in his letter to the Age. He pointed out that Senator Minchin had been saying that his bill respected native title in line with the Wik decision and provided for claims to be made on about 79 per cent of Australia's land area, including over pastoral leases. On the other hand, Dr Patrick Wolfe says, and I think correctly, that the effect of the bill will be to convert pastoral leases into freehold property.

It is clear that the government cannot deny that its legislation allows the compulsory acquisition of native title rights and allows state governments to reissue leases as a different form of tenure. Aboriginal property rights are removed without their permission by removing their right to negotiate. It is, in fact, privatisation of public land. And if there was still any doubt in anyone's mind, we should refer to the statement of the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) last year that `primary production', referred to in the legislation:

. . . goes far beyond pastoral activities that are currently sanctioned under pastoral leases.

He said:

. . . those activities will be able to be carried on without any let or hindrance from either native title claimants or indeed any other section of the Australian community.

Senator Minchin confirmed this in a letter that he sent to one of his constituents recently. He said:

It is true that the amendments will permit the Commonwealth, a State or Territory to acquire native title to allow a leaseholder to undertake activities for which a form of exclusive tenure is necessary (for example, to undertake horticulture or other high intensity agriculture). This may include an upgrade of a lease to freehold.

Of course, once horticulture or other high intensity agriculture is permitted, native title can no longer coexist. The rights of the farmer then prevail.

Sir Rupert Hamer concluded his letter by saying that, unless the Senate reaches agreement about the objectives of the bill and the extent to which they are achieved:

. . . any election called on this issue will not relate to the merits of the bill, it will rest upon uncertainty and prejudice.

Primary production has a wide definition and it includes just about any commercial land or water use. We must remember that much pastoral lease country has already been damaged by overgrazing, erosion, species extinctions and land clearing. The rate of mammal extinctions in Australian rangelands is already the highest in the world. Primary production has indeed a very wide definition and will allow uses that have not previously been allowed on pastoral leases.

It is this threat which prompted the National Biodiversity Council to speak out last week and to say that the 10-point plan posed a significant threat to Australia's biodiversity. These 17 eminent scientists, advisers to government, are concerned about the changes to land use in the upgrade of pastoral leases. They said:

Australia's record of land management since European occupation has been appalling, with many extinctions and removal of a large percentage of many different pre-1750 habitat types. Less than 8% of the natural habitat remaining is protected in reserves. In many places, loss of species and simplification of ecosystems has resulted in decreased opportunities for future generations of Australians.

Biodiversity conservation must consist of careful management of unreserved land; that is, land used for grazing, agriculture, mining and human settlement. The Council believes that it is imperative that controls like those imposed on the use of leasehold land remain and, indeed, they should be strengthened in accordance with our improving understanding of how best to manage land sustainably.

The NBC calls on the Government to honour its commitments to the International Convention on the Conservation of Biological Diversity by not pursuing proposed changes which may permit the opening up of new and potentially inappropriate land uses across much of Australia. It is our opinion that opening up leasehold land to full primary production and facilitating land uses which are equivalent to those on freehold land will seriously diminish our ability to protect the biodiversity Australians are so fortunate to have inherited.

Dr Tim Flannery, author of The Future Eaters , joined these scientists and urged the government to carefully consider the implications for Australia's biodiversity.

This upgrading, as we know, also opens the way for irrigation and will greatly limit the ability of governments to manage river courses and water resources. A case in point that I would like to mention here is the Fitzroy Dam and the associated irrigation project in the Kimberleys. A feasibility study, as I understand it, is now under way for the construction of dams on the Fitzroy River—this is the largest river in the Kimberleys—to allow the conversion of pastoral leasehold land to a quarter of a million hectares of irrigated agriculture, mostly presumably cotton. This could use 2,500 gigalitres of water annually.

With this legislation there would be nothing to prevent this scheme going ahead, despite the environmental damage which it would cause, which would include salinity, pesticide pollution, threats to species of fish and birds, and loss of environmental flows. Such a scheme would also wipe out native title and, with it, the culture of Aboriginal communities in the region. The traditional owners would have no say over such a scheme.

Our national parks and state forests are also under threat. Approximately 23 per cent of Australia is reserve. The amendments allow reserve land to be used for non-reserve purposes where it would cause `no greater impact' than a use consistent with reserve purposes, and that will be done again without reference to native title holders. The states can develop management plans or put in, for instance, camping facilities without any requirement to negotiate with native title holders. Negotiation, under those circumstances, is not discussion about money; it is simply an agreement about how these places are managed.

Uluru and Kakadu are two of Australia's best known reserves. I recall the great resistance and the enormous fuss that was created some years ago by the Northern Territory government when Uluru was handed over to Aboriginal people and then managed under negotiated leases by the Territory. Uluru has been conserved for its natural beauty, for its biodiversity and, above all, for its deep spiritual and cultural importance to Aboriginal people. I know that non-indigenous people who go to Uluru often come away with a much greater understanding of the importance of that place and of Aboriginal culture. They recognise the deep spiritual meaning that is attributed to that place.

With the involvement of indigenous people, there ought to be more opportunities for reserves of this kind. Cape York and the Kimberleys are two which come to mind. The 10-point plan, however, even refers to mining in national parks, which is currently illegal in most states, and allows mining to proceed on reserves without negotiation with native title holders. The states are even able to convert vacant crown land to a reserve just to facilitate mining projects.

The government says that its 10-point plan will remove the racial discrimination inherent in indigenous people having the right to negotiate with miners and not pastoralists. I think this really is the essence of what is driving this legislation. The Howard 10-point plan is not about giving pastoralists certainty; it is about giving miners certainty, certainty that they can ride roughshod over native title and over the environment. My colleague Senator Woodley said yesterday that thousands of hectares of Aboriginal land have already been taken by mining companies since the 1950s, and he referred to the lengths to which mining companies have gone to stop native title.

The right to negotiate is fundamentally important to indigenous Australians. It is not the right of veto, as the government well knows, but it is the right to negotiate. Senator Chris Evans pointed out a moment ago the importance of this right to negotiate and the difficulties being encountered in Western Australia but, as he says, this bill will go no way to solving that problem and I do not need to expand on the sort of damage which is done to the environment by mining companies in this country. Overall, I believe that the threat to the environment from mining or from agriculture is not well understood out there in the community. The debate, quite rightly, has centred on what this will do to indigenous Australians and it comes back, I think, to that question of accurate information and awareness.

I want to return to the question of the ALGA, too. The ALGA says that the overwhelming feedback from local communities is that they are seeking accurate and dispassionate information to assist in developing their understanding of native title: what the bill does, what range of options are available for responding to native title claims and how they can respond within a broader reconciliation context. They say that local communities are trying to find non-adversarial ways of handling indigenous issues, including native title.

Local area agreements, of course, have been very successfully handled and have kept the matter well and truly out of the courts. I would have thought that this would be the way forward and something that the government should be encouraging. I must say that it is my experience, too, that communities are very willing and very keen to do what they can to further reconciliation. I am now receiving invitations to join local communities in reconciliation ceremonies, and just this weekend my local council, the City of Port Phillip, has its annual community day and the theme is reconciliation and unity.

If this legislation has done nothing else, it has generated a groundswell of support for indigenous Australians which will not easily be quashed. If the government's 10-point plan gets through pretty much intact, millions of Australians will be deeply hurt and angry that we have taken such a huge step backwards in our very slow progress towards land rights and cultural recognition of and reconciliation with our indigenous people.

The Democrats have argued before that any watering down of native title is also a watering down of environment protection. Conservation of culturally significant places for Aboriginal people is almost always critically important to the environment as well. But just as indigenous people believe they belong to the land—a notion which is at odds with our own concepts of ownership—we must recognise that we will never be reconciled collectively with this country until we embrace the rights of Aboriginal people to relate to the land in the way which is appropriate for them. After 210 years, the best we have been able to come up with is native title. Let us not destroy that small effort, that small sharing of the wealth that this country represents for all Australians.