Mission & Justice

Paige Taylor; 16/8/08

Aboriginal entrepreneur Barry Taylor, whose company last year won the largest contract ever awarded to an indigenous business in Australia, claims the resources sector is still getting it wrong when it comes to indigenous employment. Mr Taylor, a Nyamal Aborigine from the Pilbara and executive chairman of indigenous contractor Ngarda Civil and Mining, yesterday labelled as farcical Fortescue boss Andrew Forrest’s plan to create 50,000 jobs for indigenous people within two years. Mr Taylor said Australia’s richest man had failed to understand the importance of doing business with more indigenous companies such as Ngarda. He is also critical of Rio Tinto, which employs more than 1500 indigenous workers. Ngarda cemented its position in the Pilbara last year when it won a $300 million, five-year deal to run BHP Billiton’s Yarrie mine.

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John Wiseman; 3/6/08

The supervisor of a federally funded employment program has been ordered to leave indigenous lands in northwest South Australia, widening the rift between the local governing council and service providers. Ken Larkins, who supervises the Community Development Employment Project operation in the Indulkana community on the eastern edge of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands has been told he must leave by next Monday. Mr Larkins yesterday received notice that his permit to live on the lands had been cancelled by the APY executive board. The cancellation follows a complaint to police last week about the presence on the lands without a permit of South Australia’s most senior Aboriginal affairs bureaucrat, Joslene Mazel.

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Sarah Smiles; 28/5/08

A broader range of Aboriginal people could establish rights over land in Victoria under an alternative native title settlement framework being negotiated with the State Government. Indigenous academic Mick Dodson told a Minerals Council conference in Canberra yesterday that the “connection requirements” to land that must be proved in the Federal Court under native title legislation could be “considerably less onerous” under the new system. The connection requirements establish an Aboriginal community’s connection to country under native title law. Groups previously disqualified as traditional owners could be recognised as such under the new framework, he said.

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Tony Koch; 24/5/08

Native title laws have only divided indigenous families and sparked bitter rivalries while delivering nothing in return, Australian Aboriginal elder of the year Jim Hagan said yesterday. Mr Hagan, who in 1980 became the first Aborigine to address the UN, threw his support behind Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s pledge this week to overhaul the 15-year-old Native Title Act. “I agreed with the sentiments expressed by Jenny Macklin regarding the need to overhaul the Native Title Act, because it plainly is not working for the benefit of Aboriginal people generally,” he said. Speaking in Toowoomba, Mr Hagan said that years of representing the Kullilli people in negotiations with the gas and petroleum giant Santos had yielded nothing for his people.

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Tom Calma; 23/5/08; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner.

There  is an urgent need to reform the native title system. The federal Government’s long overdue call to review the native title system and ensure it provides real benefits for indigenous Australians is welcome. The system is in gridlock. It isn’t delivering what was initially intended. It is too complex and takes too long. Our elders are dying before claims are finalised. There are too many parties involved and it is too adversarial. It costs us all too much financially and emotionally. Jenny Macklin’s proposal to pursue a more holistic approach to native title is encouraging: where native title is incorporated into the broader policy framework, in particular, ensuring that the economic development potential of native title is unlocked. Land is critical to economic development.

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Patricia Karvelas; 23/5/08

Indigenous leaders are calling for a radical rewrite of the Native Title Act to make it easier for traditional land owners to prove their cases. But they warned the Government against pressuring Aborigines to use royalty incomes negotiated through successful claims to build basic infrastructure. Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin this week said the Rudd Government wanted to simplify native title law to make it more effective in providing economic opportunities for Aborigines.

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Patricia Karvelas & Padraic Murphy; 22/5/08

Fifteen years after the passage of the historic Mabo legislation, the Rudd Government has flagged sweeping changes to native title to ensure the benefits of the mining boom flow to Aboriginal communities and are not locked up in trusts or frittered away. Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, delivering the third annual Eddie Mabo Lecture in Townsville, said yesterday that native title legislation was too complex and had failed to deliver money to remote Aboriginal communities, despite lucrative agreements with mining companies. She said changes to native title should be used “as part of our armoury to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians”.

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Padraic Murphy; 21/5/08

From any garden, great things can grow. But who would have thought a chance conversation between two academics and a groundsman at a Townsville university would one day change the course of Australian history? Eddie Mabo taught himself English by reading dictionaries while working on pearl luggers in the Torres Strait, and had little formal education. But the man who forced the recognition of native title will today have the university library from which he launched the land rights movement named in his honour. The Eddie Koiki Mabo Library at James Cook University in Townsville, to be opened today by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, will celebrate Mabo’s place as one of the most significant figures in Australian history.

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20/5/08

The first agreement for 40-year leases over Aboriginal townships has been signed in the Northern Territory. Three remote communities on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria will hand over their land in exchange for more than $25 million in health, housing and education initiatives. It is a watered down version of the Howard government’s controversial 99-year lease proposal to stimulate economic development in indigenous communities. Nguiu, in the Tiwi Islands, is the only community to sign up to the scheme.

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Paul Toohey; 6/5/08

Darwin - born Aboriginal man Kim Hill is expected to be confirmed today as the chief executive of the Northern Land Council with a mandate to bring to an end a long and unsettled period for Australia’s major Aboriginal land organisation. Mr Hill, 40, beat Melbourne-based Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton to the job. He was appointed by the NLC’s nine-member executive council to fill the role that has been held by caretakers since Norman Fry resigned immediately after the federal election last November. Since then, the land council has attracted unwanted attention for its infighting and a federal government-ordered review of its affairs.

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