Thursday, 29 August 2024

Aboriginal Land Legislation Amendment Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Harriet Shing:

That the bill be now read a second time.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (11:20): I am pleased to rise and make a contribution to the Aboriginal Land Legislation Amendment Bill 2024. It is a very modest bill, and the opposition – the Liberals and the Nationals – will not oppose this bill. It is a bill that does a number of technical amendments and some simple tidy-ups. It has, we are informed through the shadow Peter Walsh and the information provided through the briefings, had consultation involved. The main purpose of the bill is to amend the Aboriginal Lands Act 1970 and the Aboriginal Lands Act 1991. It updates the management and ownership structure for the Indigenous community funds, and it removes restrictions on the use and transfer of Ebenezer and Ramahyuck mission cemeteries while retaining restrictions that have been requested by other traditional owners. It aims to improve landholders’ control over their property and usage.

The bill proposes changes to the governance and shareholding structures of Aboriginal trusts created under the Aboriginal Lands Act 1970 and 1991, specifically for Framlingham and Lake Tyers Aboriginal trusts. The bill proposes updates for the management and ownership structures for community funds. It removes a number of restrictions on the use and transfer of historic cemeteries whilst, it is argued, maintaining safeguards. It changes the landlords’ control over their properties. Key amendments include appointing deputy and acting chairpersons for governance continuity, amendments to terminology and ongoing evaluation to represent stakeholders’ interests. The aim is to ensure fair distribution and responsible management.

New sections 7A and 7B deal with a number of locations, including the maintenance of restrictions at Coranderrk mission cemetery as per the wishes of the Wurundjeri people. 7B ensures that amendments do not affect native title rights. The bill is very technical about filling vacancies and so forth, quorum requirements, reporting requirements, the disqualification of committee members, the declaration of personal interests, stricter reviews and penalties for consistent accountability, exemption from or extension of requirements to hold general meetings and independent auditor powers. I am pleased to see that those audit powers are there. It would be simpler under this arrangement to appoint administrators. As I said, the shadow Peter Walsh, Deputy Leader of the Coalition and Leader of the National Party, has consulted widely with various authorities, including the First Peoples’ Assembly and a number of trusts as well.

This bill, as I said at the start, is not opposed by the coalition. It is a bill that is essentially technical in nature. I do want to make some broader comments of context. I think there is increasing concern about a number of points of engagement where construction and new homes are involved with a range of Indigenous groups where we have seen – in common with some other parts of the planning and construction process, most notably water authorities and others – there have been significant delays. I also note the significant delays reported to me and to many others where cultural heritage management plans are required for projects to proceed. This is potentially very significant. There have been cases where cultural heritage management plans have held up projects for very long periods of time. I do think it is important to put on record that the opposition has sought to indicate that in common with some of the other points of restriction in the process for construction and for bringing houses to market, notably Melbourne Water and other water authorities, there would be a need to put in key timelines and arrangements to ensure that there is action across certain time periods.

I would also be, I might add, in favour of seeing tighter timelines for the Minister for Planning. At the moment we have got the planning minister out pointing at councils and saying that they are actually the problem. Well, actually in my experience in my electorate and more broadly as shadow planning minister on a number of occasions, it is often not councils that are the problem in making slower progress than should occur. It has often been the department and the minister who have been the slow points – the slowcoaches if you will – in the process. Often planning scheme amendments sit on the planning minister’s desk for years – eons – after councils and communities have proposed them. It is often the case that one of the major problems getting housing and new lots of development to market and available for young people and young families to purchase is that these administrative and regulatory controls of government have become an actual brake on proper development. If the minister and the department could actually get their processes in order and set a lead, that would be helpful. That is not what we have seen in recent times, and I could go through some legendary examples, but I am not going to take up the house’s time. As I say, there are issues around referral authorities and their snail-like processes that often hold up projects for very, very long periods of time, Melbourne Water being the most spectacular of them but by no means the only one.

I think there are a number of points that I have dealt with here, but ensuring smoother progress of projects with all the necessary checks and balances and with all the necessary examinations does not mean that it should take years and years and years to deal with projects. There are specific problems with cultural heritage management plans. I do think the points made by the Leader of the Opposition and our planning spokesperson on these matters James Newbury are correct; we do need KPIs and we do need proper arrangements in place to see that matters are dealt with in an expeditious way.

I also note the challenge that is increasingly occurring across the country. I spoke in the chamber last night about the processes that have come to play from the Commonwealth level. We have seen the interaction where the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the EPBC act, has come into play, and the Indigenous cultural heritage requirements at a Commonwealth level have also come increasingly into play to frustrate and make projects more difficult. We have seen, for example, the recent decisions of Tanya Plibersek on the Port of Hastings, which have thrown the state government’s renewable wind projects into chaos, and that is –

Sheena Watt: That doesn’t have anything to do with First Nations.

David DAVIS: No, it hasn’t. That is right. That is the point I am making. There are a whole series of these issues that cause considerable trouble, and I am talking about federal matters now and saying the EPBC act itself is becoming a significant brake and is being used by the federal environment minister to block projects around Australia. To pick up the interjection, we have seen the recent goldmine near Orange where the federal environment minister has stymied, blocked and stopped dead, stone dead, in its tracks a $1 billion goldmine and has done so on the basis of claimed cultural heritage. That is not available for scrutiny, and I think that there is a huge problem with secret information being used to block projects. No-one can assess the validity or the veracity of that because it is secret, but it is clear that the firm involved has been quite direct with government and said that if it knocks off this tailings dam, the project will not be viable. Currently the project is dead, as dead as the proverbial parrot. I note the position of the New South Wales Premier. He has gone to town on this because he sees that the state – in this case New South Wales, and it is the federal intervention there that I am talking about – has suffered through this decision to block what is a major project. I think there are a lot of issues that can be pointed to that slow and prevent progress on a lot of our construction, both housing and resource development.

I am in favour of proper processes that ensure that heritage of all types is protected. I notice in Victoria the planning minister has just decided that for once she will act and override everything and is going to give planning layers of control or planning layers of approval on a wide front in 10 zones in metropolitan Melbourne. In my own electorate, in Camberwell, which is Boroondara, and in the Moorabbin case study, which has elicited the ire of the Bayside council, it is clear that the government are intervening in a thoughtless, ill-informed way and that they have not understood what they are actually doing. In the case of Boroondara a very large swathe, perhaps as much as half of the area, is heritage-listed in some way, is heritage-denominated, and that denomination does not appear to have been considered by the minister in her stroke of the pen. Where you want projects and development to proceed, you have to have tight timelines and tight processes for proper assessment. There has to be proper assessment, otherwise you get perverse and unintended and destructive outcomes. So you do need proper assessment, but that proper assessment cannot drift on and linger forever, as we have seen with so many projects in this state. As I said, the minister could start herself and deal with a lot of the planning scheme amendments that have been requested from her and through the department’s examination.

Speaking very directly about those two case studies in Moorabbin and in Boroondara in Camberwell, this is an arrogant government. It is a government that has now decided it will steamroll local communities. This is becoming a pattern. They will block things when they do not like them, but otherwise they are quite prepared to steamroll through local communities, riding roughshod over those local communities. In the case of Boroondara – I live in Boroondara, but obviously I represent all the way to the southern end of the Sandringham electorate and east to Clayton and so forth – the government has decided it is going to impose these high-density developments. It has done this without consultation. The council found out about this through the announcement in the press. The consultation process is absurdly lax in the way the government has gone around it.

If you want good planning outcomes, if you want good outcomes in terms of the broader community and if you want places people want to live and want to have their families grow in, you have got to plan this properly. Where are the services for these? Where is the plan to ensure that there are more education services in these suburbs where they are doing the huge density? Where is the plan for the increased health services that are required? None of this is evident in what the government is saying. Where is the plan for the sewerage? I am seriously looking at this, scratching my head and saying, ‘If you’re going to put tens of thousands – maybe 70,000 more people – in some of these zones and there’s no sewerage plan attached, well, I’ll give you a tip: 70,000 people in tall towers in a dense development need open space. They need a sewerage plan. They need a proper plan to deal with the matters around health services and education services.’ We have seen this in inner-city suburbs where density has gone nuts, where local schools have not been able to cope – they have had to put catchment zones around them. Those are not the community outcomes that we want. Looking at the open space requirements, there is a really significant need for open space in many of our municipalities, but the state government do not seem to have got to grips with this and actually coordinated the development that they are proposing or that they would seek to push forward with the open space that is required.

I pay tribute to Bayside for standing up to the government juggernaut, and I pay tribute to Boroondara for their strength in being prepared to stand up to the Allan Labor government juggernaut that seeks to strip powers, strip democracy from local communities and strip democracy from local people who would want to have a say in the future of their suburbs. This will be seen as one of those turning points. It is an arrogant government. It has been there a very long time; it has been there for 10 years. But more than that, many in this government felt that they were denied something between 2010 and 2014 – their natural right to be in government. But actually if you look at it from 1999 through to 2024, that is 25 years. The coalition has been in power for four years in that period. The problems of the state – the energy problems, the planning problems, the debt problems – are all the fault of Labor, this long-term arrogant government, a government that is determined to ride roughshod over local communities because it thinks it knows best.

They have been in power for so long that they do not understand that there are community views. They do not understand that communities want to have a say. They do not understand that there is knowledge, wisdom and capacity in other parts of the community beyond the ministerial office. That is the truth of the matter. It is a government that thinks it can run and control everything – well, we have seen how badly they have done on some of these things: the growth in debt, the massive cost overruns on that and the Commonwealth Games. The current Premier was the Minister for Commonwealth Games Delivery, and we have seen the absurd lack of process that was involved there – the overriding of bureaucracies, the overriding of proper Westminster accountability and procedures and the decision of government to just decide on the Commonwealth Games but not properly cost it – and then the issues that came forward. This is my point about process. These long-term arrogant governments lose the ability to both come up with sensible, practical new ideas on the one hand but also then, wherever the ideas come from, process them in a way that actually delivers for the community. I have made those broader comments about the context of these matters. As I said, we will not oppose the bill.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (11:41): Today I rise to speak on a bill that is one of the many steps that this government is taking on the road to reconciliation. It is actions like this that are guided by this state’s First Peoples that will lead this state in having a productive and genuine relationship with its First Peoples. As was stated by Mr Davis at the beginning of his contribution, the main function of this bill is to amend the Aboriginal Lands Act 1970 and to update the shareholding systems and governance requirements of the Framlingham Aboriginal Trust and the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust. Just whilst I was reading that about Framlingham, it brought me to Aunty Frances Gallagher, and I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and celebrate her birthday this week. She is 98 years old and, as I understand it, one of the oldest Gunditjmara elders we have got in our state. So a big happy birthday to you, Aunty Frances. I know that your family will be wrapping you in love this week, because 98 is an extraordinary achievement and one that I am sure we are all looking to with envy.

I was thinking then about the experience of Framlingham and the communities that come from there as well as Lake Tyers. I actually had the good fortune to be out in Lake Tyers, a few years ago now, to celebrate and meet with the community there and understand their governance arrangements. They are on country at Lake Tyers. It is a site that used to be an Aboriginal mission. It is a place with an enormously proud community, a community that have lived there for a really long time and that have some really strong ideas about what they want their community to look like in the future. I want to thank the health workers and the nurses from the health service out there. The work that you do is just extraordinary. Can I take a moment to acknowledge the ambulance folks out there as well, who I know are building a really strong relationship with the community. As we know, it is a very challenging thing to live out in some the more regional areas of our state, so to the emergency services personnel and the folks out there that find Lake Tyers to be home, thank you for all that you do to keep that community thriving and strong, and thank you of course to the health service as well as the folks at the Lakes Entrance Aboriginal health service. I understand that they will be here in October to discuss what is going on out that way, and I know that members have been invited and will have the opportunity to meet with health service providers from out in these communities as well as from right across the state.

I will in fact just come back to the bill for a moment and say that having met some of the shareholders, as they are known, out in these communities, I know that they have some big dreams and ambitions, so it is no surprise to me that they have been working with government to make this bill before us come to life. It helps to give effect to phase 1 of the Victorian government’s response to the independent review of the Aboriginal Land Act 1970 and implements 22 legislative recommendations, which have been supported in full. This bill also amends the Aboriginal Lands Act 1991 to remove use and transfer restrictions for the Ebenezer and Ramahyuck mission cemeteries, sites that are incredibly important culturally for Aboriginal communities. This bill essentially modernises both acts and will bring Aboriginal land legislation up to a contemporary standard.

The Aboriginal Lands Act 1970 is one of the most important pieces of legislation for First Nations Victorians. It was the first time the Victorian Parliament recognised Aboriginal land rights and the government’s first attempt to recognise self-determination. It was created in direct response to the Framlingham and Lake Tyers Aboriginal community and their advocacy to advance land rights. As former mission sites, it is worth noting that Framlingham and Lake Tyers represent the state’s racist past. It was segregationist and assimilationist law that was in place on these mission sites, and it actively sought to deny First Peoples any form of self-determination.

The 1970 act saw members of the Framlingham and Lake Tyers Aboriginal trusts allocated shares in the trusts, granting them freehold title of the land. Each member holds part of the trust, and the trust owns the land. This is how the members of that community indirectly own the land. At the time it was landmark legislation, but the scheme right now is outdated and it remains inadequate to achieve the act’s goals in promoting full self-determination and economic independence for the trust’s shareholders and the non-shareholder residents – it is important to note that some folks that are not shareholders do find a home there.

There have been over the last five decades periodic minor legislative amendments, but they have really failed to ensure that the act remains consistent with its purpose of giving back to the people of Framlingham and Lake Tyers the dignity which was theirs in their original ownership of the land. Currently there are some really unfair administrative requirements on the trust impacting their ability to comply with legislation, and these include duplicating financial reporting systems and issues that have plagued the community for a long time around the shareholding system and legislated processes for share transfers. There are also some ineffective accountability and transparency provisions, which I know that review picked up. There are also some governance and composition arrangements that are not effective, so I thank the members of that review, some of whom I am familiar with, for the work that they have done. We need to provide the trusts with the power to carry out business on trust land in a way that works for them, in a way that enables true self-determination.

This state – Victoria – is already leading the nation on truth, treaty and reconciliation, and we have heard in previous hearings of the Yoorrook Justice Commission about the historical injustices facing First Peoples. In that commission we have heard the history and stories of Victoria, how First Peoples were historically affected by colonisation, how those events continue in today’s community and how that plays out. There have been institutions, organisations and ministers that have all taken part in the commission, including members of the faith community, particularly the Christian community, who have been very much a part of these missions in our state in the past. I thank those members; I believe it was the Catholic and Anglican churches that have faced Yoorrook in past hearings. I really do applaud all of those that have approached Yoorrook in such a collaborative and productive way, and I have of course talked about the many ministers of the Parliament that have fronted up to Yoorrook, which has never been an easy thing.

Further to self-determination, if you were around on Tuesday morning this week you may have had the opportunity to pop into the south library, where the First Peoples’ Assembly were doing a briefing on some of the transformative and influential work that this state is doing as we advance on the path to treaty, led by the co-chairs of the assembly of First Peoples Ngarra Murray and Rueben Berg. Thank you for coming in and updating us on the work. I congratulate you and I thank you for your enormous dedication to fighting for First Peoples and updating us as we are on the path to treaty.

I have spoken recently, as members may recall, about the launch of the treaty commission in Victoria, which saw the appointment of umpires for the process. I attended that launch, and I have got to tell you it was a pretty significant moment for me. Treaty is something that I have been fighting for for a really long time, and I know that many others there at that launch have been doing it longer and harder, so to them: thank you very much. Seeing treaty in our state come together piece by piece since this announcement is like watching history unfold right before my eyes, and to all of those who are supporting our efforts, our First Peoples and all that are there: I am just so happy to be with you on this. We are the first state in the country to begin this process because we know the importance of engaging with and listening to First Peoples. Involving First Peoples in caring for country and land is crucial, and the environmental stewardship and cultural preservation that occurs with mob on country is completely unparalleled. For many, many years First Nations communities have lived on country and developed sophisticated systems of knowledge and practices that are deeply rooted in our connection to the environment.

I just want to take a moment to say that some time ago, when I began my professional career down here in Victoria, I had the good fortune of working with the Lake Tyers community, so I have some strong connections with them and their entirely fierce commitment to caring for country, including those areas that are fire prone, and there are some really good folks there that are committed to further education and integration of cultural knowledge in the management of country. I worked it out – it was 16 years ago that the first round of rangers were trained up to support the community there in Lake Tyers. I went along to some training sessions on all sorts of things – how to identify invasive species, how to look for sites of cultural significance. I enjoyed every moment of it except the chainsaw; that is a frightening, frightening device, and I will not go anywhere near one ever again. I do now have the good fortune of being connected to the communities with training for rangers. I have met now I think about four or five different cohorts of First Nations rangers that are committed to working on country, and every time I recount the story about my absolutely terrifying experience with the chainsaw. But I have got to tell you, these folks are getting out there. They are recovering after storms, and they are looking to rebuild wildlife habitat and replant native species. They are doing all sorts of really exciting things on country there in Lake Tyers, and I know out in Framlingham they are keen as well. So opportunities like this bill that further enable self-determination for the folks out there, whether that is Gunnai/Kurnai mob or out in the western districts in Gunditjmara, I have got to say are an exciting thing, and I cannot be more supportive.

I know that Victoria and the world are facing really increasingly complex environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion, and integrating First Nations knowledge with some modern scientific approaches can lead to more effective solutions. These are the sorts of dreams and ambitions that those communities have, and bills like this before us today help to further enable these ambitions to come to life.

They are led by some extraordinary leaders, the traditional owner community, and as I said earlier it was Aunty Frances Gallagher’s 98th birthday earlier this week. I have got to tell you her daughter is a very powerful First Nations leader, and that is Jill Gallagher, the CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, but you may know her in fact as a member of the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Council, which has done some extraordinary work in making sure that we look for and care for country here in our state. So thank you for your work on that, Aunty Jill. Aunty Frances, you have brought up a leader, and that is something that is an extraordinary achievement.

I have of course shared room with folks that have a big dream for a brighter future for First Nations communities, whether that is folks in health care or indeed folks working on country and working for the protection and defence of country. I also know that there are a whole lot of folks looking to work on law reform and resetting legal relations between First Peoples and the state of Victoria, and this is an example of that work here today. So thank you to the shareholders of the Framlingham and Lake Tyers trusts. Thank you to the communities that make it home. Thank you for continuing to dream big. It was 17 years ago that you thought that maybe you should have some skilled-up, trained-up folks to run that first round of a ranger traineeship on country, and now it goes from strength to strength all over the country. It was in fact the first one run anywhere in the nation, as I understand it, and so now what we see are rangers up in the territory, we see rangers up in the gorge and we see rangers all over the state. It is worth knowing that all of the international expertise started with a few folks with a big dream on Lake Tyers to integrate some cultural knowledge, particularly around fire. This work was done in a very timely way, I have got to say, because just before Black Saturday came through Victoria these folks had graduated from their ranger training and were able to use those skills to defend country right across the state. I support this bill in its entirety.

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (11:56): I rise to speak on the Aboriginal Land Legislation Amendment Bill 2024. As Mr Davis has said, the coalition will not be opposing this bill. The various sections of this bill are about good governance and fairness, and I entirely agree with them. They are necessary, firstly, to bring the ownership and administration of the areas in question up to date. While in 1970 the act may have appeared enlightened, the approach is not one we would take today, and I have no objection to it being modified appropriately.

But significantly, I think we should recognise that a lot of the mechanics of this bill are not about Indigenous affairs but about the management of membership organisations with significant assets and potentially lucrative sources of income. In any organisation with a smaller core of individuals running a body with wider membership there is an inherent tendency for that executive core to take over and to do things their own way and in their own interest. That is not an Indigenous or Aboriginal thing, it happens the world over in voluntary and community organisations.

This bill is about governance and accountability, and that is to be welcomed. Clause 8 on quorum requirements, for instance, attempts to ensure the organisation is run in accordance with the views of members, not the board or the executive. The share transfer provisions in part 2, division 1, are likewise designed to enhance transparency and prevent hidden concentrations of power and conflicts of interest. New section 13B, which requires that the responsible body must ensure that the register is available for inspection within 14 days after receiving a written request, is put in place for the same reasons. I also welcome the provisions in part 2 which disqualify from committee membership individuals found guilty of serious offences or dishonesty. It is quite right that the standards which apply in other public bodies and companies should also apply here.

Unfortunately, it has not always been the case that bodies dedicated to the management of Indigenous assets or the advancement of Indigenous causes have avoided corruption, and measures to stamp out abuses and increase the trust we can have in them are to be welcomed. In the same vein are the declaration of interest requirements. Finally, on this point, I welcome the stricter rules on accountability, on oversight and on independent audit, as well as the insistence on holding regular meetings, which should reduce the ability for cliques to control organisations and avoid scrutiny.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.