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7 Landsborough Street The
Hon. Martyn Evans MP Dear
Mr Evans On
behalf of the Australian Geoscience Council, we thank you for the opportunity to
meet with you during Science Meets Parliament earlier this month. We
particularly appreciated your support for Science Research and Development and
for providing improved assistance for Australian teachers seeking to gain better
educational standards. One
issue, which we raised at the meeting, was the impact of Native Title
legislation on investment in the mining and petroleum industries. The AGC has
found that the problems and uncertainties in the implementation of the Native
Title Act 1993 (the NTA) have deterred individuals and enterprises from
investing in new exploration in Australia, and indeed, led to increased
investment in countries such as Chile, Peru, Ghana, and India. You
expressed confidence that the existence of Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs)
provide a workable solution to the perceived difficulties of the NTA. We suggest
that this is an optimistic view of the situation. Our
understanding of the situation is that an ILUA is defined as “a voluntary
agreement about the use and management of land and waters, made between persons
claiming to hold native title and other people or organizations”. ILUAs
include body corporate agreements, area agreements and alternative procedure
agreements. ILUAs allow people to negotiate flexible and pragmatic agreements
and may be economical in comparison to going to court. They allow people to
formally agree about how things will work on the ground. Once registered with
the Native Title Registrar, ILUAs bind all the parties and all the persons
claiming to hold native title to the terms of the agreement. The benefit of an
ILUA is very apparent if agreement can be reached with the local indigenous
people without extensive legal negotiations. There
are specific legal requirements, which determine the validity of an ILUA.
The
last point can lead to the critical failure of an ILUA in several situations. If only some of the relevant Native Title claimants are
included in the ILUA then the ILUA has no value or force. In
the case of a development occurring in close proximity to a missionary base or
an agricultural property owned by Aboriginal people, then the proper parties to
an ILUA can be identified with confidence and unknown parties are unlikely to
emerge. The
more common situation concerns land areas where there is minimal or no current
or recent Aboriginal occupation, e.g. pastoral leases or sections of Crown land
within Freehold land or other land on which Native Title is deemed to have been
extinguished. In the latter case there are an unknown number of potential
claimants, and it is physically impossible to be sure all possible claimants are
identified, even after years of advertising. Thus
it is apparent that ILUAs are only of assistance when every claimant can be
identified, and unknown claimants cannot emerge at a later date. In fact state
government officers advise persons considering entering into an ILUA to be
extremely cautious about the likelihood that the ILUA will turn out to be
invalid. We
believe that until these issues are resolved it will continue to be difficult to
attract investment into onshore mineral and petroleum exploration. Consequently,
we would welcome any thoughts you may have on how the situation can be improved. We
would be happy to discuss this issue further with you, and thank you for
considering this submission. Yours
sincerely David
Denham Dr David Denham AM, Tel: 02 6295 3014, Email denham@atrax.net.au |
The Australian Geoscience Council Inc. © 1999 - 2003 |
