Wild Rivers deal bypassed Aborigines
11.04.2009
THE Queensland Government ignored requests to inform Cape York traditional owners about Wild Rivers legislation that will stop the development of Aboriginal land, despite commitments that it would do so before enacting the law.
The traditional owners asked the Government late last year for an extension of the deadline to lodge submissions and were told that would require the agreement of the Wilderness Society.
On November 11 Wilderness Society national manager Anthony Esposito wrote to the group refusing to agree to an extension.
But Mr Esposito said the society would write to the Government seeking commitments for dialogue ``to ensure you have further opportunities to communicate your issues to them''.
However, the Government approved the declaration of the Archer, Stewart and Lockhart Rivers as Wild Rivers without listening to or addressing concerns of local indigenous people.
Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson earlier this week blasted the Bligh Government for making the declaration and accused it of doing so as a pay-off to green groups for their support at the March 21 state election.
Mr Pearson resigned as director of the indigenous policy think-tank the Cape York Institute, saying he would concentrate on campaigning to overturn the legislation and to clarify the rights of indigenous people to control their own land.
Cape York Institute chairwoman Marcia Langton, in an article published in The Weekend Australian today, says the gazettal of the three rivers was a ``last-minute, back-room deal'' with the Wilderness Society.
``The Queensland public has also been misled about this matter,'' she writes. ``For Premier Anna Bligh and the Queensland ALP these gazettals are the pay-off to the Greens who delivered them preferences and seats.
``For the Wilderness Society urban-based ideologues, the gazettals are prized acquisitions that they have lobbied for over many years.
``But the gazettals will not deliver what the public expects -- good management of the river basins and protection of biodiversity. On the contrary, these measures will leave these rivers unmanaged and at further risk of degradation.''
When the gazettals were announced last week, Mr Pearson said the Queensland Government had gone back on every commitment given to protect the interests of indigenous people on Cape York.
Mr Pearson's resignation from the Cape York Institute halts his key involvement in welfare reform for indigenous people living in remote communities -- an issue to which he has devoted the past decade.
He explained that he could not support programs to get Aboriginal people off welfare and encourage them to join the workforce or get children properly educated and sent to universities if, after doing that, any economic opportunities for progress on their own land had been stripped away by government.
Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson last week said the Government had been through ``an extensive consultation process'' before gazetting the three Cape York rivers.
The Government pointed to the fact that more than 2200 ``submissions'' regarding the three rivers had been received. But it failed to acknowledge that more than 2100 were from computer-generated forms from the Wilderness Society's website.
``It is a joke to give credibility to pro-forma documents sent
by hitting a computer key
from people in West End in Brisbane, or Nicaragua, or Buenos Aires -- people who have never been to the Cape and never intend to go there,'' Mr Pearson said.
``And what is the point of the Government consulting with people like our traditional owners if it takes not one scintilla of notice of what they say?''
