Pearson right on advisory body, says Yanner

Activist Murandoo Yanner has given conditional ­support to Noel Pearson’s proposal for an indigenous advisory body.

Ex Cairns to The Australian 18.06.2015 - National Native Title Conference Port Douglas - pic by Brian Cassey - story Michael McKenna Murandoo Yanner at a break in the conference proceedings.

Aboriginal leader Murandoo Yanner has given conditional ­support to Noel Pearson’s proposal for the creation of a constitutionally enshrined indigenous advisory body to government.

The popular activist and trad­itional owner, who has locked horns with Mr Pearson over a range of issues in the past decade, said this week that the Cape York ­leader was also right in rejecting “symbolic’’ changes to the Constit­ution for recognition of indigenous Australians.

Mr Yanner told The Weekend Australian that the debate should not be rushed and any referendum question needed to have widespread indigenous support before it was put to a vote.

“We need to be very, very careful because we probably only have one shot at it for decades to come, if ever,’’ he said. “It should have the nationwide agreement of the mob, and it needs to be more than symbolic.

“It needs to have essence and bite ... rather than flowery words, like the walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge that resulted in f..k all, pardon my French.’’

Mr Yanner, who criticised some past indigenous leaders this week for forgetting “the grassroots’’ when advising governments on ­indigenous issues, said the model championed by Mr Pearson had merit.

Mr Pearson has rejected “symbolic’’ changes to the Constitution in favour of an “Australian declaration of recognition” akin to the US Declaration of Independence.

The document would sit outside the Constitution and be formed alongside a new indig­enous advisory and consultative body to give Aborigines a voice in the parliamentary process.

Mr Yanner said he supported the idea for the advisory body, as long it had “some teeth’’ and was empowered to demand outcomes from government, and possibly oversee negotiations with indig­enous ­organisations.

“I’d back it, but I’d prefer something with teeth, maybe a black ombudsman with powers to do things, to take action against governmen­t if it was doing the wrong thing,’’ he said.

Mr Yanner and Mr Pearson agreed this week that members of the advisory body should be elect­ed by the ­existing native title groups — the Prescribed Bodies Corporate.

The board of each of the PBCs are drawn from, and elected by, the traditional owners. Mr Yanner said the PBCs ­offered the only hope of ensuring the proposed body represented “the tribe’’.

“PBCs are the closest thing that are based on traditional society in white contemporary sense,’’ he said. “They’re organisations with a committee and bank account. But they are based around a tribe, the nation, the people, and that’s (as) grassroots as you can get.’’

Mr Pearson told the National Native Title Conference in Port Douglas this week that the High Court’s determination of native title in the Mabo case 23 years ago in recognising the “First Nations’’ had set the foundations for the form­ation of the proposed body. “The legs or the footprint of the national body are the First ­Nations of the country,’’ he said. “We have got to have a system where the First ­Nations have a voice to parliament and voice to government.’’

Mr Pearson said the body “must’’ be drawn from the PBCs.