Page 1758 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 June 1993
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QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Native Land Titles
MRS CARNELL: My question is to the Chief Minister, Ms Follett. What is the potential for land held by the ACT Government and yet to be released for residential development to be subject to Mabo-style land claims? To what extent will such claims lock up such land when the ACT is already experiencing a land shortage? What will be the impact on Canberra's building and construction industry and what will be the employment outcomes?
MS FOLLETT: I thank Mrs Carnell for the question, Madam Speaker. I think it is fair to say that the position in the ACT is extremely complex because of our leasehold system. Perhaps I could give a little of the background of the Mabo matter. I would like to say, first of all, how disappointed I was that the Council of Australian Governments was not able to settle a national approach at their recent meeting in Melbourne. I do believe that a national approach is what is needed. I make no bones about the fact, Madam Speaker, that I regard the Mabo decision as being much more than only a land administration matter. It is a matter that also ought to be used to address the dispossession and the disadvantage that have been suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia over a couple of hundred years. As far as the ACT goes, my legal advice is that it is most unlikely that a Mabo-style claim could affect the existing residential, commercial or rural leases in the ACT. In the unlikely event that such a claim were to be successful, it is up to the Government to address the implications of compensation, not the lessees. I would like to put that one to rest.
Madam Speaker, as I said, the position in the ACT is very complex, and the issue that Mrs Carnell has raised, of land yet to be released, is also very complex. The main reason for that is that it was the Commonwealth Government who was directly responsible for land management in the ACT for 14 of the 18 years since the Racial Discrimination Act came into force. Therefore, whatever we do in the ACT we have to do in cooperation and consultation with the Commonwealth Government. They still, of course, have a major interest in the ACT. They are basically the owners of ACT land. So, Madam Speaker, I think that it was very disappointing that when the Commonwealth offered, at the COAG meeting, both to validate existing leases and to take up fully the question of compensation we were not able to reach agreement on that matter.
In relation, generally, to the ACT position, I have taken up the matter with the Commonwealth. I have written to the Prime Minister because of the Commonwealth's close involvement in ACT land and also, of course, because they were responsible for it for a considerable period. I have reiterated or supported the position taken by Mr Fahey, that we ought to continue negotiations at officer level with the objective of achieving a national approach, and that that approach ought to be finalised, if at all possible, before the financial Premiers Conference in July. I do support the Commonwealth approach - the approach that was tabled at the COAG meeting - and I still hope that, perhaps in bilateral negotiations, that approach might yet be achieved. After the COAG meeting the Prime Minister issued a press report that indicated that the Commonwealth would be legislating on this matter. At this point I have not seen the terms of
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