Page 3478 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 11 October 1994
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MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (11.10): Madam Speaker, from the very beginning of this debate, when the issue of native title first arose in the public domain, my position was exactly as it is put here - that it was very unlikely that a native title claim over residential or commercial or rural lands in the Territory would succeed. My position was based on the advice that I had of the long history of the granting of land in this region. Members might be aware that land grants in the ACT region go back well into the last century; that many of those grants were freehold grants - some of them were leasehold, but the majority were freehold; and the pattern of white settlement that has occurred has largely been over those areas which had previously been subject to grants of land. That was always my position - that it was most unlikely. Quite obviously, I was not more certain than that because this entire machinery is being set up, as Mr Kaine quite rightly put, to test whether native title may apply.
Mr Humphries is being very simplistic in his approach to this. The reason he is doing that is that it is quite clear to every member of this Assembly, possibly with the exception of Mr Humphries, that at the commencement of the debate on the existence of native title Mr Humphries was saying that people's backyards in Canberra were under threat.
Mr Humphries: I said that it was a possibility and it should be excluded with validation legislation, which is what you have now done.
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, it is out of his own mouth right now that he said that it was a possibility. I think that giving public utterance to those sorts of words at that time could only be regarded as somewhat inflammatory. Indeed, that was the way it was received in the public arena. Madam Speaker, I welcome Mr Humphries's support for this legislation, as I do all members' support for the legislation; but I think there can be no doubt that he made, at the start of this debate, whether knowingly or unknowingly, some fairly unwise statements.
Bill, as a whole, agreed to.
Bill agreed to.
ADJOURNMENT
Motion (by Mr Berry) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Suicides
MR HUMPHRIES (11.14): Madam Speaker, today the Australian Bureau of Statistics launched a publication called "Suicides in Australia, 1982 to 1992". It is one of those issues to which I think many in the community do not pay the attention they deserve. I realise, as I look through these figures, that over the 10 years from 1982 to 1992, which is the period of this study, some 338 suicides were recorded in the ACT.
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