Liberal South Australian Kerrynne Liddle’s calls for ‘urgent’ Native Title inquiry knocked back by Senate
An opposition campaign to grill Aboriginal Corporations and land councils has been called ‘wasteful’ and ‘destructive’, due to an ongoing investigation into the Native Title Act.
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UPDATE Tuesday, August 10: A campaign to grill Aboriginal corporations and land councils has been decried as “wasteful” and “destructive” by federal senators.
Arrernte woman and South Australian Senator Kerrynne Liddle tabled a Senate motion on Tuesday demanding an inquiry into the Native Title system.
Ms Liddle said the inquiry would specifically focus on the governance and accountability of land councils and Aboriginal corporations, including their consultations with communities, declarations of conflicts of interest and transparency in their decision making.
However the inquiry proposal was shut down in the Senate on Tuesday, with Labor, the Greens and independents Fatima Payman, David Pocock and Tammy Tyrrell voting against it.
Queensland Labor Senator Anthony Chisholm told the parliament the proposed inquiry was “at best duplicative and wasteful, and at worse it would be destructive and harmful”.
“The motion isn’t about good governance, it’s about politics,” Mr Chisholm said.
Mr Chisholm said the Australian Law Reform Commission was expected to provide its review of Native Title in December, just five months after the opposition’s proposed inquiry report would be due.
Mr Chisholm said the two investigations would call many of the same witnesses, put additional strain on small, often under-resourced Aboriginal Corporations, and further add to the “consultation fatigue” suffered by First Nations communities.
“The wasteful duplication would be confusing and distressing for First Nations communities,” he said.
The Native Title stoush comes amid increased scrutiny of Northern Territory land councils, with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price repeatedly clashing with the Central Land Council and the Commonwealth freezing funding to Anindilyakwa Land Council following a scathing review of its internal governance and use of millions in mining royalties.
On Monday, Ms Price told the Parliament CLC was an example of the “dysfunction that presently exists” within the Native Title system.
“For too long, they (the Arrernte community) have lived the reality of a system that was set up with good intentions but, in reality, is not transparent, lacks accountability and lacks meaningful appeal processes,” she said.
However, fellow Territorian and Indigenous Australians minister Malarndirri McCarthy said there had been four audits of NT land councils last year by the Australian National Audit Office, which had provided oversight and recommendations to improve internal governance of these bodies.
INITIAL Monday, August 9: Opposition senators are expected to renew their campaign for a sweeping inquiry into Aboriginal corporations and Land Councils this week.
Arrernte woman and Liberal South Australian Senator Kerrynne Liddle will table a Senate motion on Monday demanding an inquiry into the Native Title system.
Ms Liddle said while the 1993 Native Title Act was intended to secure the rights and benefits for Indigenous people, three decades of inequality and inaction on the closing the gap targets proved a comprehensive review was needed.
The latest Closing the Gap report found only five of the 19 socio-economic targets were on track, while targets for Indigenous imprisonment rates, children in out-of-home care, suicide rates and school outcomes were going backwards.
The evidence is overwhelming,” Ms Liddle said.
“The urgency is great.”
The Liberal senator, alongside with independents Lidia Thorpe and Jacqui Lambie, are expected to call for the establishment of a Select Committee on First Nations Representative Bodies, which will then conduct an inquiry into the Native Title Act.
Ms Liddle said the inquiry would specifically focus on the governance and accountability of these bodies, including their consultations with communities, declarations of conflicts of interest and transparency in their decision making.
This is not the first time the federal opposition has attempted to call for an inquiry into Native Title bodies, with NT senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price repeatedly calling for an audit of all land councils.
Ms Liddle and Ms Price made an unsuccessful push to refer land councils and other Indigenous organisations to the finance and public administration references committee last year.
At the time the Central Land Council called the proposed inquiry “wasteful” as it would only duplicate existing independent oversight processes, such as the Australian National Audit Office.
“An additional review would force us to direct our limited resources away from serving some of the poorest Australians,” CLC chief executive Les Turner said in August.
The proposal also comes a few months after the government announced its own inquiry into the Native Title Act.
In June, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus announced the Australian Law Reform Commission would review the system to investigate “any inequality, unfairness or weaknesses in the regime”.
This ALRC review was sparked by Rio Tinto’s destruction of 46,000-year-old Indigenous sites at Juukan Gorge, Western Australia.
A 2021 parliamentary committee investigation into the caves’ destruction recommended a review of Native Title, including action to address the unequal negotiating position of First Nations people, that an independent fund is established to administer funding to prescribed body corporates, and called for greater transparency and accountability requirements on these agencies.
The ALRC review is due by December 2025, but if accepted, Ms Liddle’s proposed Select Committee report would hand down its findings by August 2025.
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