Hypocrisy of Australian Liberal Party over Aboriginal Land Rights
Aboriginal people from Muckaty north of Tennant Creek were told by the Liberal Party they would only receive funding for roads, housing and education if they accept a nuclear waste dump on their land. Abbott and Scullion are continuing to support laws which would force this waste dump on Muckaty by over-riding the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT), the Aboriginal Heritage Act and the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Tony Abbott and Nigel Scullion don’t care about Aboriginal Land Rights Statement on Tony Abbott’s Wild Rivers bill from the Intervention Rollback Action Group Alice Springs, October 6 2010 www.rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com/statements/
We have been sickened by the hypocrisy of Liberal leader Tony Abbott and Liberal NT Senator Nigel Scullion on their recent crusade to overturn Queensland ‘Wild Rivers’ legislation. Tony Abbott has argued he is “defending Indigenous Land Rights”. Nigel Scullion has talked about “the fundamental principles of self-determination and informed prior consent”…
Land Rights? These politicians suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to compulsorily acquire Aboriginal township land across the Northern Territory, a policy which has seen millions of dollars worth of land, property and assets transfered from Aboriginal to state ownership….
The only “economic development” Abbott and his supporters want Aboriginal people to have is the kind that supports the interests of big corporations like the mining company Cape Alumina who are lobbying to overturn Wild Rivers. In the NT too, communities are being told they are ‘unviable’ unless they can attract major corporate investment.
The toxic trade-off Abbott would further enforce on Cape York is already in play here. Aboriginal people from Muckaty north of Tennant Creek were told by the Liberal Party they would only receive funding for roads, housing and education if they accept a nuclear waste dump on their land. Abbott and Scullion are continuing to support laws which would force this waste dump on Muckaty by over-riding the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT), the Aboriginal Heritage Act and the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
We support the Greens in opposing Tony Abbott’s bill. They are rightly demanding that the principle of Indigenous ‘informed consent’ for developments on Native Title land should take place through amendments to the Native Title Act that apply nationally…..
Aboriginal communities across Australia badly need the resources and full Land Rights to both develop their communities and protect the environment. Rejecting the disgusting hypocrisy currently on display by the Liberal Party is an important part of this struggle.
Intervention Rollback Action Group Alice Springs
IRAG is a campaign group based in Alice Springs that has been organising against the NT Intervention since 2007. See rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com for more information about our activities or contact rollbacktheintervention@gmail.com
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of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the proposal for a waste facility at Muckaty (where no Aboriginal families have lived for decades), there is little sense in the proposition that all Aboriginal groups should be fully funded by government for services such as roads, housing and education on their traditional lands, without regard for whether they are living there permanently. I don’t know whether the Greens support this idea, or whether they or IRAG have thought about how many billions (trillions?) of dollars would be required to implement such a plan, let alone maintain it over any significant period of time. Even if the whole of the Australian government expenditure on housing, education and roads were ploughed into realising such a dream, it would probably take deacdes to achieve what is being advocated, and in the process would bankrupt the Australian state. However, these kind of silly proposals well illustrate why many in the ALP and elsewhere in the wider community think that the Greens and IRAG are sometimes a little out of touch with reality in their failure to think about the real world implications of their idealistic statements.
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