Antinuclear

 Earlier this month mining executives mingled with politicians in federal Parliament’s Mural Hall as Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion launched a new publication from the Minerals Council of Australia.

From Conflict to Cooperation, by Melbourne University’s Professor Marcia Langton, sets out to examine the “transformations and challenges in the engagement between the Australian minerals industry and Australian Indigenous peoples”.

Professor Langton’s main contention is that there has been an enormous improvement in relations and outcomes between miners and Aboriginal peoples over the past two to four decades. Aboriginal communities have experienced significant economic benefit and these now need to be consolidated through regulatory reform and a new economically driven Aboriginal financial trust and organisational structure.

Professor Langton has fulsome praise for the collaborative, indeed transformative, nature of the new era of Industry-Indigenous relationships and lauds mining companies and executives.

Two aspects of this paper are surprising.

One, Professor Langton sharply identifies the institutional bias and capacity constraints that work against Aboriginal communities and organisations in complex negotiations processes, yet she still claims the system delivers.

Two, her enthusiasm about the benefits of mining agreements is based on surprisingly scant information.

Late last decade the Native Title Working Group identified obstacles that frequently get in the way of successful agreements between Indigenous communities and mining companies. The working group noted that “there are only a limited number of good agreements to provide models… The reasons for the absence of more agreements containing substantial financial and other benefits for traditional owners after almost 15 years of the operation of the Native Title Act 1993 (NTA) is, in itself, deserving of inquiry”.

Indeed, it still is. This fact is highlighted by the confusing data on Aboriginal employment in the resources sector and the lack of detail on economic benefits.

The plentiful talk of jobs and dollars is not backed up with many hard facts.

Mining Agreements are rarely agreed and seldom seen. In the everyday world an agreement is a deal based on shared understanding, but in the world of the Native Title Amendment Act (1998)  and the mining sector it means the right to negotiate, but not to say no……..https://www.acfonline.org.au/news-media/acf-opinion/marcia-langton-should-go-back-drawing-board-mining-agreement-praise