Scullion will not grant land claims

THE Territory’s amateur fishermen and cattlemen have been given peace of mind by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion that he will not grant land claims before access questions are resolved.

THE Territory’s amateur fishermen and cattlemen have been given peace of mind by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion that he will not grant land claims before access questions are resolved. Picture: KERI MEGELUS

THE Territory’s amateur fishermen and cattlemen have been given peace of mind by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion that he will not grant land claims before access questions are resolved.

The claims are over the beds, banks and pastoral land that take in large areas of the Northern Territory’s most popular fishing waters.

Mr Scullion spent last week meeting with members of both peak bodies at their Annual General Meetings in Darwin.

He told the Amateur Fishermen’s Association NT (AFANT) AGM he disagreed with the Federal Aboriginal Land commissioner Justice Mansfield on the way forward in granting the claims.

The following day the head of the NT Cattlemen’s Association expressed industry concerns.

“We are facing uncertainty with the Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Senator Nigel Scullion yet to make a decision on Beds and Banks and the intertidal and the possibility of the Minister granting land,” NTCA chairman Chris Nott told the association AGM.

Senator Scullion promised he would not be granting Aboriginal land unless detriment issues were resolved.

Acknowledging the concerns of the Cattlemen’s Association he stressed he would not grant any claim until he was certain they could continue to operate cattle stations unhindered.

Traditional owners regained rights to more than 6,000 kilometres of the intertidal zone, between the low and high water marks, in the July 2008 Blue Mud Bay High Court decision.