Tony Abbott’s planned private member’s Bill to override Queensland’s Wild Rivers legislation may be, as his opponents claim, a political stunt.
But they can hardly deny that it’s a bloody good one. Not only does it wedge the Labor Party from two different directions, but like all the best stunts, it combines skill and daring with a core of plausibility.
Premier Anna Bligh’s declaration that the Archer, Lockhart and Stewart river systems of Cape York should join six others already gazetted as wild rivers was itself seen as something of a stunt by many political cynics. According to this view, it was a straightforward deal with the Greens, trading the rivers for Green preferences at the last election.
Certainly it outraged the Aboriginal residents, in particular their charismatic leader Noel Pearson and his brother Gerhardt, who had been putting together plans for the development of the area to provide employment and eventual self-sufficiency. Pearson denounced the decision as “foreclosing on a future for our people … the state cannot rip the future out from under indigenous children’s feet”.
Bligh has denied that this would be the effect of the law; development of a sensitive and sustainable kind will still be welcome, she insists. But there is no doubt that the gazettal has placed severe limits on the Pearsons’ options, nor that it has interposed another layer of bureaucracy between them and land, which was found by the High Court’s 1996 Wik decision to be in traditional indigenous ownership.
There is a certain irony in the fact that the Wik decision was largely gutted by Abbott’s mentor John Howard, and that Abbott is now proposing to effectively reinstate it. But unlike Howard, Abbott has credibility on indigenous issues. Indeed, it could be argued that no politician in the current federal parliament is better qualified to argue the Aboriginal case for Cape York.
Not only is Abbott a personal friend of the Pearsons, but he is a regular visitor to the peninsula and has done volunteer work at the troubled community of Aurukun at the mouth of the Archer River and inland at Coen. His private member’s Bill may have a tinge of political opportunism about it, but at least he knows what he is talking about.
Furthermore, although such a Bill would almost certainly trigger a constitutional challenge, it is one the Commonwealth would probably win. The Opposition’s legal affairs spokesman, lawyer George Brandis, made a convincing case for it last week. He notes the similarities to the 1983 case involving Tasmania’s Franklin River Dam, which the Commonwealth won, and suggests that much the same arguments would apply, but in the Queensland case they would be even more clear cut.
The Commonwealth could invoke not only its constitutional power to make laws for people of the Aboriginal race, but also its External Affairs Power; only last year Australia signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which, among other things, provides that “indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources they possess by reason of traditional ownership or traditional occupation”. At the time, of course, Abbott and Brandis vigorously opposed the government’s move. Now it looks rather handy.
Abbott’s Bill will, of course, not be passed; Kevin Rudd is not about to overrule the embattled Labor premier of his home state, especially if it involves setting what could be a far-reaching and potentially embarrassing precedent. But opposing the Bill will bring its own problems.
One of Rudd’s first commitments as Prime Minister was to “close the gap” between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. By refusing Abbott’s challenge to do something concrete and practical that has the support of some of Australia’s most active and respected Aboriginal leaders, he risks being seen as putting political considerations ahead of good policy, and worse, of joining Bligh in sacrificing legitimate Aboriginal interests for more electorally valuable Green support.
Not that Rudd owes the Greens anything after their contemptuous dismissal of his Emissions Trading Scheme, but their preferences could be useful at this year’s election, and in any case he will almost certainly have to deal with them after it. Very much a Catch 22, made worse by the fact that the issue will also divide two groups that both traditionally support Labor. A cunning stunt indeed.
In keeping with his carefully cultivated image as Action Man, Abbott has also thrown himself vigorously, if somewhat confusingly, into the whaling controversy; last week he seemed to be suggesting sending a gun boat (or at least the hapless Oceanic Viking) back to the Antarctic to interpose its body between the forces of Japan and Sea Shepherd. And he wants to set up some kind of workforce to look after the environment in general. He is, as promised, going in with all guns blazing.
But hang on a moment: just what are they blazing at? Surely Abbott was elected leader as a sop to concerns that the party under Turnbull was moving too far to the left, getting too close to Labor. Abbott was to take them back to their conservative grass roots. But last week all he seemed to worry about were Aborigines and whales, the darlings of the elitist bleeding-heart chardonnay-sipping lovey-doveys. Come on man, get back to basics. Smash the unions! Tax cuts for the rich! What do we want? More profit! When do we want it? All the time!
That’s the trouble with political stunts. No matter how clever they are, in the end they’re just distractions. Good fun, sure, but not like the real thing.
Mungo… How did you get away with using a Spoonerism like that, in the title no less?
Mungo,
The problem with this identification with the Pearsons and their causes, and let’s throw in Tania Major for good measure, as I hear she is being groomed for politics by the LNP in Queensland, and who is another vocal opponent of the Wild Rivers legislation, is that beyond the inverse rascism which they and TA are exploiting, wherein we MUST believe that whatever they say is right, as they are indigenous, and the government is the big, bad bogeyman in all of this is, I can smell a rat.
Do you know exactly what sort of enterprise the Pearsons were proposing? Do you know what else would be possible for indigenous corporations to do if Abbott’s Bill became law? I have heard that Mining companies are just itching to exploit the area, and, if it has to involve a joint venture with an aggressively pro business indigenous corporation, then so be it, and let the voiceless environment be the loser.
I also don’t get why it is that commentators, such as yourself, nominally from the ‘Left’ can’t get their heads around accepting the Greens as a partner in political practice. There is an overriding suspicion that permeates the writings of not only those from the ‘Right’, which you would expect, but also from folk such as yourself, whom one would have thought would have been more sympathetic to the Greens and their issues.
Nevertheless, though Wik may have invested ownership of the land in the Cape to the indigenous inhabitants, that doesn’t mean that it has stopped being part of Australia, or the world, and deserving of preserving, for once, to let the environment triumph over humans and their business interests.
Anyway, as the Qld. Environment Minister wrote in The Oz last week, the Wild Rivers legislation doesn’t preclude the Indigenous owners of the land from their traditional use of the rivers or the land, nor from engaging in ecologically-sustainable businesses that do not scar the environment forevermore and compromise the pristine rivers.
Like C@tM, I’m constantly puzzled why Mungo, of all people, seems to think the Greens beneath contempt, let alone consideration as sound political partners – viz their contemptuous dismissal of his… ETS, it was dismissed coz it was crap.
He really does seem to kowtow to the multiculti delusion, if ‘they’ want it, it is good, ipso facto.
The point, surely, is that the best ‘development’ is that with the smallest impact. How many tourists want to see sqkms of monoculture irrigation, bauxite open cut or whatever else MIGHT be in the minds of those behind the oppostion to Wild Rivers?
As was demonstrated with the Franklin, whaling or the Barrier Reef, there is far more money & employment in low impact, tourist development than the dig’n’export mindset of yesteryear – which is where Tourcemade, the MM wants to take us. The only question is how many centuries.
The Left remind me of the Turks in the film ‘The Australian Lighthorse’, as they set their guns at a certain range and then realise the cavalry are already under the fire line and are continuing the charge.
They begin reloading, but the anxiety is palpable, as is the perspiration.
Abbott is coming and the Rudd government, in particular, and Labor, in general, are beginning to sweat. The public comments of the Queensland Enviroment Minister, the repeated press releases from Minister Garrett, the shrill denunciations of Minister Wong, are sounding more and more desperate.
Chris Bowen stated late last year that he thought Abbott was having a dialogue with his base. I agree, but he is also having a dialogue with a substantial section of Labor’s base, beginning with the Indigenous communities in Cape York, and also the miners in the Hunter and WA.
So, reload boys, reload, and quickly. Then wipe the sweat from your hands.
Perspiration isn’t good for the cameras.
Does anybody know what Pearson & Co have in mind for the Cape?