Labor to 'trade off' native title rights
By Bill Mason
BRISBANE — Within a few days of taking their seats in parliament, the new Queensland Labor government introduced legislation to extinguish native title on 2900 pastoral leases.
Premier Peter Beattie told parliament the legislation, to extinguish native title on grazing homestead perpetual leases and some mining leases approved between 1994 and 1996, confirmed that rights arising from past acts of government were secure and absolute.
Beattie foreshadowed his bill on July 27 when he said the government would provide Aborigines with housing, water and education infrastructure as a trade-off for the loss of native title rights over pastoral leases. He said the pastoral and mining industries support his legislation, but he was "mindful" that Aborigines would take some "pain" under the bill.
Beattie is heading a working party of Aboriginal and industry representatives to consider a state-based plan to implement the federal government's amendments to the Native Title Act.
"The new Queensland Labor government's move to extinguish native title on pastoral leases is sheer hypocrisy", Graham Matthews, Democratic Socialist candidate for the federal seat of Brisbane, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly.
"Aboriginal people should be receiving services as a right, not as a trade-off for abolishing their entitlement to land. The move is not an alternative to Howard's racist 10-point plan, as Labor pretends, but a further attack on Aboriginal rights."