The Cape York Institute was never allowed proper input into the Queensland Government’s Wild Rivers decision, something that is symptomatic of a wider problem with this Queensland Government.
One of the reasons why all of Cape York is now entirely green with wild rivers — a virtual National Park with a massive chunk around Weipa for a new Chinese mine taken out — is as a consequence of the power of lobbyists.
The Chinese mining company Chalco (and others) have preferential access to influence government decision making. No matter how many submissions we make through the democratic process, our submissions are not listened to. Our problem with Wild Rivers is just a symptom of the power of lobby groups in Brisbane.
There’s also a further problem — that outside lobby groups are now also installed in the bureaucratic apparatus.
I first met the person in charge of Wild Rivers in the Queensland Government 15 years ago when he was the president of the Queensland Wildlife Preservation Society.
I said to him, “Adrian, the last time I saw you you were lobbying from outside of Government, but now here you are in Anna Bligh’s department — the chief decision maker that I now have to influence against putting 100% green blanket over the Cape. How can I convince you that what you’re doing will stifle Aboriginal development and prevent us from getting out of the welfare hole we’re in?”
Approval for the proposed Chalco mine is looming, but special legislation exempts the entire mining area from the Wild Rivers area, which contradicts the claim the Premier has made that she’s concerned about the protection of the rivers.
There is nothing that has ever occurred on Aboriginal reserve lands in northern Australia that has threatened the pristine nature of these rivers. The reason the rivers in northern Australia are pristine is because they’ve been part of Aboriginal reserves for nigh on a hundred years. The real threat faced by rivers in Cape York is this mine.
I want to be clear that we’re not suggesting impropriety or illegality. What we’re suggesting is a complete disequilibrium in power.
The indigenous community must have equal access to government — just because we can’t afford a former minister to be a lobbyist on behalf of our cause, should not put us at a disadvantage.
The current discussion about the putrid situation in Queensland somewhat misses the point. I don’t think paid donations are the problem, as long as they’re publicly declared. The key issue here is whether paid lobbyists ought to be slinking around corridors, opening doors like pimps at a Fortitude Valley brothel.
It’s paid lobbyists that’s the problem here. If you’re an Aboriginal or a non-Aboriginal member of the Queensland public, you have to go through the normal bureaucratic processes in order to get approval for something.
Why should certain large companies have access to better knowledge of the way Government operates, because of the relationship between the paid lobbyist and those who have decision making power?
Noel Pearson is director of the Cape York Institute. This is an edited version of comments he made on the ABC Insiders program yesterday.
As The Wilderness Society’s ground breaking national 1993 Land & Rights Policy (which this writer voted for as rep of Sydney TWS office) green campaigns should be in context of Mabo recognition of traditional owners of land. This conceivably allows for campaigning against Black developers but never against their ownership.
This was to prevent the Bjelke and other major party penchant for losing a political developer take over (say big agri, or white shoe) agenda against the Blacks and then indulging in a racist ‘consolation’ prize of offsetting their white supremacist disappointment with a green/national park still keeping control of the land out of Black control. Hence the whole ill will setting Black against Green to the delight of rednecks – the old divide and rule tactic.
Then on Starcke in Hopevale area and Jabiluka in NT Green and Black won famous campaigns in alliance. Howard matched the ALP on Cape York Land Use Agreement (another alliance triumph presented to a National Wilderness Conference around 1997 – attended by one Peter Garrett too, I know because I sate nearby – of $40M implementation funding. This was the fraught 1996 federal election.
But Noel doesn’t talk now years later about Howard deliberately breaking that $40M election promise in a time of boom by PM Howard. Perhaps his silence on that, or pragmatism, was the price of getting his CY Foundation off the ground, building a leadership programme and tapping into the business community close to the Howard Coalition in Sydney etc. Not sure. Only Noel will know.
But all this history affects where we are today. Take responsibility would be my counsel and best of luck with it all too. Not too late to resolve this Mr Rudd, just as Stimulus 1 and 2 seemed like a real good version of GST rollback to me, by another name of course. Aint that grand, to see a regressive tax be regressed.
I assume that when Noel Person says:
“outside lobby groups are now also installed in the bureaucratic apparatus” he refers to the fact that a public servant who once worked for the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland is now (and has been for several years) a public servant.
Pearson says later:
“we’re not suggesting impropriety or illegality…”
But what else is he suggesting? I can’t see any other way of interpreting his words other than this public servant (and presumably many others) is be unable to discharge his duties with impartiality because of his past employment or personal views.
Put another way Pearson seems to allege that this public servant has failed in his obligations to behave ethically as prescribed in the Public Service Ethics Act 1994 (Qld) and has acted contrary to his obligations to act impartially and with integrity under the Public Service Act 2008 (Qld). It would seem that such behaviour is by definition, improper and illegal. This is a grossly unfair attack on all public servants professionalism and integrity and indicates a shocking wrong headedness or plain lack of knowledge about the way public servants do their job.
And who is the ‘we’ in Pearson’s statement? Is it Cape York traditional owners or is it his own private think tank/lobby group, the Cape York Institute which according to its website ” … champions reform in Indigenous economic and social polices ”? The difference between champion and lobby is subtle enough to evade me. If it is the Institute his complaint is not about lobbyists its just a foot stamp because his own lobbying was unsuccessful.
I read this, and then burst a poofer valve laughing. Pearson, the consumate lobbyist with a hotline direct to the previous federal government complaining about other lobbyist being more successful than he… I need to go and have a lie down… I’m feeling light-headed.
why do the abc and crikey repeat this man’s self-interested tripe?
don’t they check his “facts”.
he’s a paid lobbyist of the first water himself. a pimp and a prostitute of the howard government if ever there was one.
how much government money has been pumped into balkanu and the cape york institute over the years.
has anyone seen the books? has there ever been any public accounting for all the taxpayer funds they receive?
what has happened to the money?
did balkanu or cape york institute for example receive any money to assist in the public consultations over the wild rivers legislation that mr pearson says never occurred?
I can remember Adrian Jeffries working for Qld Dept of Environment back in 1996,
and Pearson has been a lobbyist since then. I also remember Pearson saying he was in favour of Chalco because “Aurukun people want jobs so they can get a mortgage and buy a house, just like other people”. Now all of a sudden he is against Chalco and against conservationists. Conservationists were weak on the exemption of the Aurukun bauxite strip-mining in the Wild Rivers Act, which Peter Beattie forgot to mention in his 2004 election campaign launch of WR . (http://www.teambeattie.com/db_download/Wild_Rivers_04_01_28.pdf) , but I bet if you were to ask them, they would not want strip-mining in the headwaters of the Watson and Archer catchments.
Pearson says he doesn’t want to harm the rivers with development. If that’s true then the WRAct won’t stop him. It is only to stop harm to the rivers, nothing more.