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CONTENTS
Passage History
Purpose
Background
Main Provisions
Endnotes
Contact Officer and Copyright Details
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment
Bill (No.3) 1999
Date Introduced: 8 December 1999
House: House of Representatives
Portfolio: Prime Minister and Cabinet
Commencement: Royal Assent
The purpose of
the Bill is to give effect to an agreement which settles part of
two land claims under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern
Territory) Act 1976 ('the Land Rights Act'). It does so by
adding three parcels of land to Schedule 1 of the Land Rights Act.
Scheduling will lead to the land being granted to an Aboriginal
Land Trust in the Northern Territory for the benefit of those with
a traditional entitlement to its use or occupation.
Alternative paths to the grant of
land
The Land Rights Act provides two main paths by
which land can be granted in fee simple to traditional Aboriginal
owners. The 'land claim' path involves an application to the
Aboriginal Land Commissioner seeking recognition of a group's
traditional attachment to land which is available for claim under
the Act. The Land Commissioner conducts a hearing and produces a
report based on the evidence presented. In almost every case, the
Land Commissioner has recommended to the Commonwealth Minister that
a grant of fee simple be made over part or all of the area claimed.
The Minister then considers the report of the Land Commissioner,
and where a recommendation to grant is accepted, the Minister
recommends to the Governor-General that a grant of fee simple be
made to the relevant Aboriginal Land Trust.
Alternatively, where land is described in
Schedule 1 of the Land Rights Act, the Commonwealth Minister must
establish an Aboriginal Land Trust to hold it for the benefit of
Aboriginal people with a traditional entitlement. The Minister must
then recommend that the Governor-General grant the land in fee
simple to the Aboriginal Land Trust. A number of areas (mostly
ex-reserves) were transferred to Aboriginal ownership by this
method soon after the passage of the Land Rights Act. Subsequently
it has provided a means by which agreements designed to settle
outstanding land claims can be given legal effect. The Minister's
Second Reading Speech to the Bill reports that, if passed, it will
bring the total number of land parcels scheduled since 1977 to
64.(1)
Both the above processes have been involved in
the land claims to which this current Bill relates.
The Warumungu and Frewena Land
Claims
The Warumungu Land Claim, to an area east of the
town of Tennant Creek, was originally lodged with the Land
Commissioner over twenty years ago in November 1978. Because of a
variety of circumstances including the unsuccessful attempt of the
Northern Territory Government to put part of the area beyond claim
by alienating it to a statutory corporation, amendments to the
claim area by the applicants and a High Court case, the Land
Commissioner's inquiry, after a false start, did not formally
commence until March 1985. The Land Claim was punctuated by
collateral litigation which entailed repeated visits by the parties
to the Federal and High Courts and the Land Councils' newspaper
Land Rights News described it as 'one of the longest and
most bitterly fought land claims in the history of the Land Rights
Act'.(2)
In July 1988 the then Aboriginal Land
Commissioner, Mr Justice Maurice, delivered his report to the
Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. It began:
One has only to read the accounts and view the
photographs and drawings of Spencer and Gillen to realise that in
1901 the Warumungu were a flourishing nation in the ordinary sense:
a large number of people of mainly common descent, language and
history, inhabiting a territory bounded by defined limits and
forming a society under one government. They were once reputed to
be the most numerous, most intelligent and physically the best
tribe in Central Australia.
Within a matter of years, the Warumungu had been
almost completely dispossessed. They had fought vigorously to
defend their inland state from the white invasion, but their spears
and boomerangs were no match for men on horseback carrying
firearms. In 1962 the Commonwealth of Australia revoked the second,
and last, of their token reserves: a worthless piece of land upon
which no person could survive. When they made this claim in 1978,
the Warumungu were landless.
Astonishingly, perhaps, much of the Warumungu
identity remains, and even today the sense of belonging to land is
a powerful influence in the lives of these people of the Barkly
Region.(3)
His Honour noted that the areas the Warumungu
were 'relegated to claiming are not the areas of their choice; on
the contrary'.(4) It also appears that portions of the
claim affected a stock route of value to adjoining pastoral
stations.(5) The present Bill embodies a small attempt
to remedy by negotiated agreement the mismatch between land
aspirations and legal reality which the accidents of tenure history
and the inflexible operation of law can produce.
Mr Justice Maurice recommended the grant of fee
simple to Aboriginal people over most of the 16 areas which
constituted the claim. Included in the recommendation was part of a
stock route and a travelling stock reserve with bores and other
improvements used by adjoining pastoral operations including
Rockhampton Downs. His Honour noted that grant of these areas could
cause financial detriment to the pastoral operations.
Following the Aboriginal Land Commissioner's
recommendation, some portions of the claimed land were handed back
but negotiations between various parties dragged on for eight years
before agreement over most outstanding issues was reached in May
1996. Under two agreements between similar sets of parties, grants
of title to land were made along with commitments on future
management of the Mary Ann Dam and arrangements for ownership,
management and access to the Devil's Pebbles.(6)
According to the Central Land Council,
negotiations continued over the portion of the claim relating to
the Barkly stock route which bisected the southern extremity of
Rockhampton Downs and an adjoining cattle station. The following
passage from the Land Council's 1996-97 Annual Report appears to
provide the specific background to the current Bill, though over
two years have elapsed since it was written:
In the case of Rockhampton Downs protracted
negotiations eventually culminated in an agreement on a 'land swap'
deal which takes into consideration the land needs of traditional
owners and pastoral management considerations of the lessee. The
basis of the agreement is that claimants forgo their claim to the
greater part of the land recommended for grant in return for a
parcel of land adjacent and to the south of land already returned
to them. In giving up their claim to a portion of the stock route
claimants have sought the scheduling under the Land Rights Act, of
the alternative area. The "swap" of land will provide the
traditional owners with a configuration of land better suited to
their needs and make available to the lessees a portion of the
stock route and associated bores so that it may be incorporated
into their station lease.
In association with this arrangement, agreement
has been reached to schedule the Frewena Land Claim which lies
adjacent to and immediately to the south of the alternative
area.(7)
Item 1 in Schedule
1 to the Bill provides for 3 parcels of land totalling
just over 8000 hectares to be added to Schedule 1 of the Land
Rights Act. This will lead to the land being granted in fee simple
to an Aboriginal Land Trust to hold for the benefit of Aboriginals
entitled by Aboriginal tradition to the use or occupation of the
land concerned.
-
- The Hon. Philip Ruddock MP, Debates, House of
Representatives, 8 December 1999, p. 13015, Second Reading Speech.
- Central and Northern Land Councils, Land Rights News,
Vol. 2, No. 41, March 1997, p. 11.
- Mr Justice Maurice, Warumungu Land Claim, Report No.
31, Report by the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Mr Justice Maurice,
to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and to the Administrator of
the Northern Territory, Canberra, 1988, p. vii.
- ibid., p. viii.
- Central Land Council, Annual Report 1996-1997, Alice
Springs, 1997, p. 20.
- ibid.
- ibid.
Sean Brennan
2 February 2000
Bills Digest Service
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