Senator BROWN (8:05 PM) —I begin my comments on the Native Title Amendment Bill 1997 [No. 2] by honouring the Ngunnawal people, on whose land this great parliament is built and on whose land this capital city of Australia has been placed. I want to honour also the indigenous people throughout this country, who enrich our lives and to whom we owe so much, particularly in identifying as Australians whether we are in this country or whether we are elsewhere, and to whom we have returned no such great honour, identification or pleasure in life.

At the outset, I wish to foreshadow an amendment that I will move on behalf of Senator Margetts that we:

Omit all words after "That", substitute:

"in view of:

(a) the insufficient consultation and negotiation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people regarding changes to the Native Title Act 1993 and the entire issue of indigenous land justice; and

(b) concern that passage of the Native Title Amendment Bill in any form will further diminish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander native title rights and will greatly impede the process of reconciliation and healing between indigenous and non-indigenous people; and

(c) the fact that there are many unresolved issues with regard to indigenous sovereignty and unfulfilled promises with regard to the implementation of a treaty process with the indigenous people of this continent;

the bill be withdrawn until a comprehensive process of negotiation and agreement with the many indigenous communities of this continent has taken place".

What is the plight of the indigenous people of this continent, this country of Australia? It is one of dispossession, and it is an ongoing history. Although it was left out of the history books for nearly two centuries, in the late 1990s every mature Australian has to accommodate to the fact of an invasion which was followed by many thousands of killings, great disruption, torture, pain, and destruction of the oldest continuing culture—and the peoples of that culture—that is known on the face of the planet.

In more recent decades, which have encompassed certainly the early part of my lifetime, that dispossession has continued with the saga of the stolen children, for whom the leader of this country has yet to find a place in his heart to apologise, as a starting point for trying to make amends where no true amends can be made. I am afraid that, if we take an historic view of it, the process which is unfolding in this parliament right now is a continuing process of dispossession. It is a process of taking rights, taking land, taking association with the land from the indigenous people of this country. Instead of this process now being stealth in stealing, it is legalised stealing that this legislation is about—the stealing of rights, the taking of rights, where ethics would forbid such action.

One of the problems with the process is the immediacy of the political situation. Time and again we hear in this place and outside that, above all, we must find a resolution here—and I read that as `we must cave in to the iniquitous 10-point plan even further so that we avoid a race based election, so that we avoid a double dissolution at all costs. But how can we be asked to erode more of the rights of the indigenous people of this country, none of whom are allowed a voice in this place, so that we avoid an uncomfortable election, if needs be, but institute a race based country—a country where the indigenous people are second-class citizens by the law that we pass through this place; a country where their rights to the land and their rights to their culture are further eroded by our action?

So do we avoid the public debate, do we avoid an election based on this issue—as is threatened by the government, and as worries Senator Harradine and so many other people so much—by a process of instituting, against the rights and wishes of the indigenous people, the very thing that election is supposed to threaten? Instead of it being through an election process, it becomes a process that disadvantages the indigenous people and embarrasses those of us who believe in a fair go in this country for decades, if not centuries, to come. Avoid the immediate problem: take it off the ledger, and let the indigenous people bear the penalty of that forever more.

I for one do not think that way. I for one as a Green believe that, in everything we do in this place, we have to look future generations in the eye and say, `We thought of you; you were as important as we were. The only difference between you and us is that you can't vote now, whereas we can.' I do not think we will ever mature as a nation, unless we take on board not just some of the culture of the indigenous people but their philosophy as well, and take into account those future generations in everything we do. If we cannot say, `We thought of you and, after deliberation, we were sure we were acting in your interests,' then we should not be going down that path.

Yet this parliament is going down that path of taking away from future generations of indigenous people in this country their rights to the land, their rights to their culture therefore; and taking away from all Australians the right to know that at last we came to terms with our history and, through a process no less than a treaty, gave what we could of what was left rightfully back to the indigenous people of this country.

Senator Harradine said last night that this is an occasion which will not come again—`If we don't get it right, I cannot foresee a future time when we will get it right.' How wrong he is—because we are not getting it right here, and it is going to continue to trouble us, and we are going to have to get it right further down the line. History is going to judge this moment in this parliament very strongly and very negatively indeed.

When you look at the movement towards a world declaration on the rights of indigenous people, which has now been in train through the United Nations for more than a decade, let us see how we measure up—and I will mention just some of the draft articles of this draft declaration on the rights of the 300 million indigenous people around this world. Article No. 7 is on cultural integrity. It says:

Indigenous peoples shall be free from cultural genocide.

Governments shall prevent:

(a) actions which take away their distinct cultures and identities;

(b) the taking of their land and resources;

(c) their removal from their land;

(d) measures of assimilation;

(e) propaganda against them.

This is the world's move towards an accommodation with indigenous people, one which Australia should be leading—but how far short of this are we? Article 26 on ownership states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to own and control the use of their land, waters and other resources.

Indigenous laws and customs shall be recognised.

Item 27 on restitution states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to return of land and resources taken without their consent.

Where this is not possible, they shall receive just compensation in the form of land and resources.

Item 28 on the environment states:

Indigenous peoples shall receive assistance in order to restore and protect the environment of their land and resources.

Army activities shall not take place on the land of indigenous people without their consent.

Hazardous material shall not be stored or disposed of on the land of indigenous people.

Tell that to the indigenous people of South Australia or the Northern Territory. It further states:

Governments shall take measures to assist indigenous peoples whose health has been affected by such material.

Article 30 on resource development states:

Indigenous peoples have the right to determine strategies for the development of their land and resources.

Governments must obtain the consent of indigenous peoples before giving approval to activities affecting their land and resources, particularly the development of mineral, water and other resources.

Just compensation must be paid for such activities.

To put a bush term on it, we do not come within a country mile of the way the rest of the world is thinking. We certainly do not come within a bull's roar of those stipulations on the proper treatment of indigenous people around the world, including those here in Australia.

In February I had the great privilege to visit the Kimberley for the first time. That was at the invitation of the Bunuba people. For a week I took part in a canoe expedition of 15 people, half of whom were the local Bunuba people, down the Fitzroy River for some 300 kilometres. I will not take a great deal of time to describe the magnificence of that country, its gorges, waterfalls, woodlands, eagles, salt water crocodiles, fish, insects, kingfishers and brolgas—the magnificent interrelationship which we were privileged to have between the Bunuba people and their land; the coming to three galleries of indigenous art, some of it thousands of years old along the gorge country of this great river, some of it not described in contemporary descriptions of such storehouses of indigenous treasure in Australia.

Towards the end of that trip it was pointed out where it is proposed to build a dam up to 100 metres high in the final gorge which will flood back many kilometres an area bigger than that of the Ord River scheme. Then I was told how a 300 kilometre canal is proposed from that dam or at least from the so-called Geikie Gorge below that dam to the plains near Broome. Then I was told how up to 250,000 hectares of those plains will be converted for cotton crops, with the whole panoply of environmental threats that that presents.

Sadly, I had to tell the Bunuba people that they will not determine such things under this legislation, though it be leasehold land which affects them in many parts of that scheme, because those rights have already been given away. Their rights to negotiate on dams are not entertained in this debate by either the government or the opposition because they have been given away. Their rights to negotiate on that 300 kilometre canal are not entertained in this debate because they have already been given away by the government, the opposition and Senator Harradine. Their rights to negotiate on cotton crops spreading across leasehold lands are no longer there because they are not being entertained in this debate. They have been given away by the government, the opposition and Senator Harradine.

The same applies to quarries, and the same applies to woodchip operations and farm stay tourism and fences, roads, offshore fisheries, oil derricks and wharves, and on and on it goes. The deceit of this debate is such that in shorthand now when the press refers to the right to negotiate it is not said at the end `on mining' because that is all that is left—holes in the ground. Everything else has been conceded already by the power entities in this parliament. Yet Senator Harradine says that on this occasion the signs are that we might end up with a piece of legislation from this chamber with which all stakeholders can live. What on earth does he mean? How can the indigenous people live with an outcome which deprives them of the right to have a say in their land forevermore?

How can those of us who do not want to see a divided country in the future say that we are close to an agreement, that the signs are there for an agreement? No, they are not. The signs are there for a get together by the major players in this parliament to sell out the Aboriginal interests in this country. It is written on the wall. It is going to be written down in history as another one of the episodes of stealing the rights and interests of the original Australians. But this time it is the parliament that is doing the stealing.

How can we feel anything but shame at being part of that process? How can we say that the important thing is that we get an agreement? Didn't they once say that the important thing was that the children get a white style upbringing? Didn't they once say that the important thing was that farmers be protected or that squatters be protected from raids by indigenous people? Isn't this just another set of excuses for justifying the unjustifiable?

We are so far from coming up with a fair, just, honourable, reasonable and certain outcome, as Senator Harradine put it, that there is no way that such an outcome will come of this process in the next few days in this place—no way at all. Even at this eleventh hour I would appeal to the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the National Party, Senator Harradine and Senator Colston to examine again the conscience of this nation if it takes again from the indigenous people and, worst of all, if parliament gives the stamp of approval.

We can excuse ourselves by saying, `Well, we avoided this as a topic in the next election,' but we have to live with the fact that it is something that will not go away. There will be turmoil for this country in the future—as we have seen elsewhere in the world—if we do not get this right. We are charged with getting it right, and we Greens will fight to the last to try to get a right outcome, which means also a just outcome. But, as I said, we are a bull's roar from that at the moment.

At the front of the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there is a quote from Mathew Coone Come, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees, whom I have been very privileged to meet on a couple of occasions in the United States. He has written that:

The Draft Declaration . . . began as a cry from the indigenous peoples for justice, and it is drafted to confirm that the international standards which apply to all peoples of the world apply to indigenous peoples.

I hope that something of that cry from the heart, which the indigenous people of this country must have towards this historic occasion, will turn around some of the hard hearts that have turned their backs on indigenous rights during the passage of this legislation so far in this parliament. (Time expired)