Indigenous Property Rights

Introduction

Thank you Donna Ingram for that wonderful welcome to country.

I want to pay respect to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay respect to the elders past and present.

Thank you to KPMG for hosting us today, and particularly to their head of Corporate Citizenship, Catherine Hunter, for organising the rooms to host today’s meeting.

Thank you to everyone who has come today.

Before we begin I’d like to hand over to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, to pay acknowledgment to our good friend and former colleague, Brian Wyatt.

Thank you, Mick.

The road from Broome

The genesis of today’s meeting follows a meeting in Broome in May of this year.

Prior to that meeting Mick and I had meetings with Indigenous Australians all across the country.

These meetings regularly raised the frustrations of communities using their land post-determination to deliver economic development and housing. The issues raised are multi-faceted: laws and regulations, and how they underpin the capacity to capitalise your land, raise finance and advance economic development.

Mick and I are working together to see what we can do to address these issues cooperatively. We obviously come from different perspectives.

As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick brings with him the knowledge and shared experience of the fight for different forms of title, and ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue their fight for justice.

As Human Rights Commissioner my role is to ensure that the law treats everyone equally and that there's proper respect for you to freely exercise your property rights over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands to economically develop and improve the living standards and health and welfare outcomes for your people.

The Broome meeting was designed to bring together Indigenous Australians to have a conversation about improving the legal, regulatory and business climate for communities to freely exercise their property rights on the Indigenous Estate.

After a highly successful two day meeting a communique was produced that identified five priority areas of work:

1. Fungibility and native title – enabling communities to build on their underlying communal title to create opportunities for economic development.

2. Business development support and succession planning – ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the governance and risk management skills and capacity to successfully engage in business and manage their estates.

3. Financing economic development within the Indigenous estate – developing financial products, such as bonds, to underwrite economic development through engaging the financial services sector and organisations including the ILC and IBA.

4. Compensation – rectifying the existing unfair processes for compensation for extinguishment of native title and considering how addressing unfinished business could leverage economic development opportunities.

5. Promoting Indigenous peoples right to development – promoting opportunities for development on Indigenous land including identifying options to provide greater access to resources on the Indigenous estate.

Parallel processes

Since May, Mick and I have continued this discussion and engaged with the Federal government on how we can advance discussion on these issues as part of the broader context of three other processes:

1. The Australian Law Reform Commission’s completed review of the Native Title Act 1993.

2. The Council of Australian Government investigation into Indigenous land administration and use; and

3. The Federal government’s White Paper on Developing Northern Australia.

The four concurrent processes highlight the interest from all levels of government and Indigenous Australians to address challenges faced through the use of the Indigenous Estate. They also provide us with opportunities. Strategic policy work and advocacy provides us with the opportunity to seek positive reforms after the next Federal election. There is a clear appetite. But we must ensure that the best proposals are put on the table to advance the interests of traditional owners.

The work that has been done was outlined in Mick’s recently released 2015 Social Justice and Native Title report to Parliament.

Our meetings with Members of Parliament since Broome have been extremely encouraging and supportive. Members of Parliament from all States have expressed a keen interest in this process and made offers of assistance, ranging from Ministers to backbenchers.

The Attorney-General, the Hon George Brandis QC, attended the Broome meeting and expressed his support there, and we are delighted that he will again attend today’s meeting and provide concrete support from the Federal government.

Taking discussion forward

Once again, we have planned a meeting on this subject and the response has overwhelmed us. Today we have nearly 65 people in attendance. Everyone here has something important to add to the discussion.

Today’s meeting is designed to continue that process to ensure that any reforms, whether legal, regulatory or commercial, are focused squarely on what is essential and necessary to preserve Indigenous ownership and control of their land, and to enjoy the benefits of any economic development.

I want to make it clear that from my perspective, there are two non-negotiable requirements of any proposals put forward to government. First, is the consent of title holders and second, that if implemented, the proposals will not compromise the protection of the inherent legal rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Today’s meeting is focused on advancing that agenda and resolving a formal processes to drive discussion and recommendations for reform.

You should all have a copy of the agenda. Before morning tea we are keen to have a conversation about the process for taking this forward and what is necessary to develop a Reference Group. After morning tea we are proposing to discuss how to set up appropriate expert working groups to focus on three key, interrelating areas of reform. The Attorney-General will arrive at morning tea and provide a short address before lunch and departing at 12.30. After lunch it is our intention to have a discussion about the terms of reference for the Reference group and Expert Working groups and then finish with a discussion about future activities and meetings.

As you will be aware, after this meeting there will be the launch of the Indigenous Investment Principles. We encourage everyone to stay for this important launch.

I will now hand over to Mick to lead the introductions and also a short discussion on guiding principles for engagement and mutual respect.

Like Broome, I hope this is another highly successful and focused day.

Thank you for your attendance and support.