Noongar deal lays path to indigenous future

A $1.3bn land-and-cash deal secured by the Noongar people of Western Australia has been hailed as a watershed.

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A $1.3 billion land-and-cash deal secured by the Noongar people of Western Australia has been hailed as a watershed that ­addresses the inability of native title to deliver real change for traditional owners in long-colonised towns and cities.

Noongar leaders representing six claimant groups yesterday watched Premier Colin Barnett and four ministers sign the massive deal first raised as a prospect 20 years ago by elder Glen Colbung, a longtime advocate for urban Aborigines who believed by 1995 that native title was not going to deliver land or money back to his people.

Mr Barnett’s original 2012 offer fuelled outrage in some quarters because it compelled the Noongar people of the state’s southwest, including Perth, to relinquish their native title claims. In exchange the new Noongar Boodja Trust and six regional corporations will receive up to 320,000ha of crown land and more than $720 million, indexed and staggered over 12 years.

“The critics say we are selling our land but the land is bloody gone, it’s been gone for 200 years,” Mr Colbung said.

“Native title is not worth the paper it’s written on for Noongar people because it only works where there is no freehold and ­almost all of the lower third of this state is freehold. What is the point of native title legislation over our country?”

The path to the agreement has not all been smooth. The public first heard about the government’s offer in 2012 when it held talks with Noongar leaders to break the impasse in a long-running native title court battle over the southwest, an area of some 200,000sq km.

Furious protesters lined the entrance to the meeting and Mr Barnett was called “a filthy white dog” as he arrived.

The Noongar leaders, including elders, endured similarly ­vicious slurs for listening to the offer. Yesterday, as the Premier and his ministers signed the last paperwork for the deal at Parliament House in Perth, Mr Colbung said the deal was worth it and was a huge achievement.

“We are moving away from the land council model and towards councils that are about cultural heritage and economic development,” he said.

Mr Barnett described the deal as the largest and most comprehensive agreement to settle Aboriginal interests over land since colonisation.

“You have shown great courage,” Mr Barnett told the lead negotiators yesterday.

The Labor opposition supports the deal. Aboriginal affairs spokesman Ben Wyatt, an indigenous man, yesterday congratulated Mr Barnett and the Noongar leaders for reaching the agreement. “It is brilliant — I know you have had a lot of pressure, not everybody is agreeing with what you are doing, but ultimately that is always the way with anything in life,” Mr Wyatt said.

The deal effectively extinguishes native title throughout the southwest of the state and will be lodged with the National ­Native Title Tribunal. It will be up to the tribunal to register the deal, which could take six months. Between January and March this year, Noongars voted on the deal at six meetings held across the southwest. All six were endorsed by majority vote, some much more closely than others.

The Noongar Boodja Trust will receive $50m yearly, indexed to inflation, for 12 years.

A professional trustee will manage the trust for the benefit of the Noongar people, represented by six Noongar Regional Corporations and a Central Services Corporation. The regional corporations and the central services corporation will be established with funding support of $10m yearly, also indexed, for 12 years. The trust will receive a maximum of 320,000ha of crown land over five years.