$1.3bn deal ends Noongar title dispute

THE Noongar people of WA have received a formal, final offer worth $1.3 billion to resolve a native title dispute over Perth and the state's southwest.

THE Noongar people of Western Australia have received a formal, final offer of almost $1 billion, 320,000ha of land and an indigenous housing project, to resolve a long-running native title dispute over Perth and the state's southwest.

Premier Colin Barnett's offer to the South West Land and Sea Council yesterday is valued at an estimated $1.3bn across 12 years and requires the six claim groups representing more than 30,000 Noongars to drop their claim for native title rights, which had been the first to cover an entire capital city. The Barnett government plans, as part of the agreement, to make an act of parliament recognising the Noongar people as the traditional owners of the lands.

The Past, Present and Future Recognition Bill would be the first of its kind in Australia.

The offer has been negotiated at more than 300 community meetings since March last year and includes the establishment of a perpetual trust, to be managed by an independent trustee and overseen by the state government for the first 12 years, into which the West Australian government will make 12 annual payments of $50 million, indexed to inflation. A further $10m a year, also indexed, will be provided for administration of six regional corporations that will eventually receive earnings from the trust for approved social, cultural and economic programs.

Yesterday Mr Barnett described the offer as significant, historic and "a real investment in the Noongar community and in the shared future of the Western Australian community as a whole".

"Nothing happens overnight, but we expect this arrangement will help lift outcomes in Aboriginal health, education and over time," Mr Barnett told The Weekend Australian.

"It should also help produce a new generation of Noongar leaders to drive further change within the community."

The Barnett government spends about $100m a year negotiating native title across Western Australia.

Mr Barnett said yesterday the deal was important because native title had been controversial and had caused disharmony both within Aboriginal groups and with the wider society.

There was a strong incentive to reach agreement partly because it would resolve issues for business, farmers local councils and state government agencies. Unresolved native title claims were affecting roads, powerlines, town expansions and housing developments, the Premier said.

"(It's) been a hassle for government so I guess there's that frustration element . . . but that is matched by a desire to see a genuine step towards reconciliation that Aboriginal people are respected, have dignity and have control over some assets and can have a future," Mr Barnett said.

Yesterday South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council chief executive Glen Kelly, a Noongar man who has led talks for the deal, described the offer from the Barnett government as a watershed moment for his people and for Australia.

"In terms of Australian native title agreements, there's nothing bigger," Mr Kelly said. "It's not just about the money, it's about the cultural and societal elements - it's world-class.

"It is very, very genuinely far greater than some of the treaty settlements that have happened in NZ and the same sorts of deals that have happened in the US and in the Pacific."

Mr Kelly said that while the offer was an opportunity to significantly improve the economic standing of Aborigines, the importance of the act of parliament acknowledging Noongars as traditional owners was more than symbolic because "it overcomes the denial of two centuries".

Noongar elder Dennis Jetta, who took part in the negotiations, said: "Our children, their children, can walk proud they've been recognised now."

The Barnett government has been in negotiations with the Noongar people since 2009 but the vexed issue of native title in the southwest of the state goes back to the first of the six claims being lodged in 1998.

In September 2006, the Federal Court made a judgment in favour of the Noongar people recognising that native title existed in metropolitan Perth.

It was the first time such a finding had been made in an Australian capital.

An appeal by the Carpenter Labor government was upheld in September 2008. Both sides then agreed that claims should be resolved by negotiation and in December the following year, 14 months after the Barnett government came to power, the state entered a heads of agreement with the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council to try to settle native title in one sweeping deal.

Yesterday's detailed offer is worth more than an in-principle offer made 20 months ago at the beginning of negotiations; significantly, proposed payments to the perpetual trust fund will now be indexed which could boost it to about $900m at the end of 12 years of contributions. The new offer also includes 120 houses in and near Perth to kick-start an indigenous accommodation program that leaders hope can ease the accommodation crisis facing many indigenous families.

Noongar leaders who took part in the talks with the Barnett government said they were determined that some earnings from the perpetual trust should be used to help reconnect young people with their culture and language because the loss of those things had caused huge problems.

Lead negotiator Cherry Hayward said the agreement did not excuse governments from their commitments to Aboriginal health, education and housing, but there were good opportunities in the agreement to make inroads into serious social problems.