Antinuclear

PM missed native title chance: Keating, BY:BRIDGET CORMACK The Australian  February 25, 2013 

PAUL Keating says the Gillard government has lost an opportunity to make a vital amendment to Native Title laws that would shift the onus of proof away from indigenous claimants.

The former prime minister, who ushered in Australia’s first Native Title laws two decades ago, said the government should have seized the chance to change the laws to make it easier for Aborigines to win rights to their traditional lands. Mr Keating gave a rousing speech yesterday on North Stradbroke Island, 30km south east from Brisbane, where he urged the Quandamooka people to make the most of their hard won land rights, recognised after 16 years of negotiations in an agreement endorsed by the Federal Court in 2011.

While theirs was a victory, he said, the Native Title process was still “far too slow” and the law desperately needed to be given the long-mooted amendment so Aboriginal claimants no longer have to prove a continuous association with their land. “I think the current government has lost the opportunity now to make the amendment,” Mr Keating said. “It would pass the Senate with the Greens and the Independents.”

Mr Keating said the test for proving continuity relied on “written traditions” and was at odds with the “oral traditions” of Aboriginal people.

On the 20th anniversary of the Mabo decision last year the government proposed landmark changes to Native Title laws, including a definition for “good faith” negotiations and allowing historical extinguishment of native title in national parks to be disregarded.

The bill did not reverse the onus of proof.

Mr Keating was invited by associates of the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation to speak at the inaugural general meeting on North Stradbroke Island yesterday.

The Quandamooka people have native title rights over most of the camp grounds and beaches on the island. Yesterday’s meeting was to set out a strategic plan for the management of the land.

Mr Keating told a crowded hall in Dunwich that “what happens to Native Title will be up to Aboriginal and Islander people”.

“(Aboriginal communities) have been fighting for years for these determinations,” he said. “Finally they get the determination and they don’t know what to do with it. People like me had faith in Aboriginal communities that they’d find their own way under a process of self-determination on land owned by themselves.”…..

Standing ovations bookended Mr Keating’s speech, in which he also gave a nod to his famous Redfern address of 1992.

“I took the opportunity at Redfern Park in December 1992 of laying out fully, openly and honestly, providing a context for history of our humanity and thoughtlessness, our disregard of Australia’s indigenous people.

“At Redfern I made clear that we did do the dispossessing, that we did smash the traditional ways of life, that we took the children from their mothers and we should imagine those things being done to us.”

Progress since then he said, was always going to be slow.

“Native Title has become too cumbersome, too legal and too expensive,” he said. Standing ovations bookended Mr Keating’s speech, in which he also gave a nod to his famous Redfern address of 1992.

“I took the opportunity at Redfern Park in December 1992 of laying out fully, openly and honestly, providing a context for history of our humanity and thoughtlessness, our disregard of Australia’s indigenous people.

“At Redfern I made clear that we did do the dispossessing, that we did smash the traditional ways of life, that we took the children from their mothers and we should imagine those things being done to us.”

Progress since then he said, was always going to be slow.

“Native Title has become too cumbersome, too legal and too expensive,” he said.