Crispin Hull

Some of the most destructive periods in the history of many places in the world occur over disputes between different ethnic groups over occupation of land and the right to self-determination on it. Usually, the disputes take the form of a prior occupancy against a newer occupant who has effective rule of the territory. Examples abound: the Kurdish disputes; Northern Ireland; Israel/Palestine; the Basque territory; Bosnia; Tibet, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and a dozen disputes in the former Soviet Union. The list goes on. Some of the disputes involve extreme violence and war. Others are festering sores of historic discontent without overt violence. Either, however way they engender great human suffering. Invariably, the violent solution does not work and peace, reconciliation and an end to suffering come only through political leadership, which, alas, is so often lacking in these circumstances. Might is right is too often applied.

When one looks at the world’s trouble spots a pattern emerges of one ethnic or religious group feeling dispossessed and alienated from the social and governmental structure of the state in which they happen to live. Leaving aside general cries for democracy in totalitarian states, there is hardly a trouble spot on earth, now or in the past, that does not at least loosely fit this pattern.
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The ACT Government was creating a climate where people were questioning whether to invest in ACT housing, the president of the Landlords Association, Peter Jansen, said yesterday.

His comments came after the Opposition Housing spokesman, Greg Cornwell, accused the Government of breaking a promise on land tax. The Government denied it.

Mr Cornwell said the Government had promised last year to stagger land tax and rates payments, but they were still both due on August 15.
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The ACT Leader of the Opposition, Kate Carnell, called yesterday for a review of rates in the ACT after receiving hundreds of protests from residents who have been bit with huge increases.

Ms Carnell said rates had increased dramatically over the past four years in most areas of Canberra.

However, the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, said the Liberals were being hypocritical. When in power they raised rates by 16.6 per cent in one year. Labor had increased them on 14.6 per cent in three years.
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A coalition of 13 North Canberra groups called yesterday for a stop to redevelopment or in-fill in North Canberra until the ACT Government provides clear details of its plan for the area.

They are concerned that once redevelopment starts a North Watson there would be no turning back and the area could be another Kingston. They say that once the Government spends the money on an improved sewer it will be committed financially to other in-fill.

The groups also received support from southside and Belconnen groups. The groups include various groups from individual suburbs and the Canberra Conservation Council.
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Every shop sign was in Greek. It was Abbotsford or Carlton in inner Melbourne in the mid-1960s. Perhaps it was Hoddle Street, but the signs were all Greek.

Then in the mid-1980s, I was back in that street. The buildings and traffic lights were exactly as I recalled them two decades earlier, but the signs were all Vietnamese. And thus it is in Cabramatta, in Sydney.

“”When my husband went to Cabramatta, he cried. It was just like Saigon.”
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The ACT Liberal Party called on the ACT Government to break its promise on putting a hospice on Acton peninsula.

The leader of the party, Kate Carnell, said the hospice would become a white elephant unless Government diverted millions of dollars from other urgent health priorities into the complex.

Work on the 17-bed hospice is due to begin next month.
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The application of the Mabo was much less certain on the mainland than on Torres Strait islands, the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson, said yesterday.

He was speaking on Murray Island, the subject of the Mabo decision, after discussions with the Community Council and the Council of Elders.

He implied that unlike in the islands, the necessary proof of continuous association with the land to establish native title would be very difficult on the mainland, but he did not want to prejudge it.
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Its Trigger speaking. Trigger, more formally Jimmy Daddie Tapau, is a 60-year-old Torres Strait Islander. He has been fishing off Murray Island for most of his life. He knows every reef and every channel. Where and when to find crayfish, giant clams and fish in these abundant waters.

Murray Islanders got formal legal recognition of their ownership of the land in the High Court judgment in the Mabo case, but without security over the sea, from whence comes their traditional livelihood, the land rights will not be complete.

When the Leader of the Opposition, Dr John Hewson, arrives on the island tomorrow, he will be told this by the chairman of the Murray Island Community Council, Ron Day.

The Mabo case has sent waves of expectation over Aboriginal and Islander communities around Australia. It has caused obvious concern among mining and pastoral interests and tourist operators who want to continue to have access to national parks.

On Murray Island, or Mer as the indigenous people prefer to call it, however, the issue has moved from the land to the sea.

The Mabo case declared and secured what they saw was their land anyway. The sea is another vital question. The islanders are concerned that large commercial fleets will take their sea produce.

The other linked issue is economic development.

“”The professionalism and self-esteem of islanders has been destroyed by the dole cheque,” Day said. “”People here are born fishermen. We have to re-create that professionalism and responsibility. Those responsible for destroying it had a responsibility to help re-create it.”
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The president of the council of elders of Murray Island, Doug Bon, expressed disquiet yesterday about the visit to the island next week by the Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson.

Murray Island, about 150km north-east of Cape York, was declared by the High Court in the Mabo case last year to be owned by the indigenous people.

Mr Bon said yesterday that when elders had first heard on Wednesday about an approach by Senator Ian McDonald (check) on behalf of Dr Hewson, had been against his visit.
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His helicopter landed on the beach. He brought two other white men with him. Another two aircraft landed at the strip a kilometre away, bringing more white men and some white women with large television cameras, still cameras and notebooks.

They rode along a pot-holed, dusty track and walked inside on the of few brick buildings on the island _ a low building painted inside and out in Third World colours: yellow, turquoise, bright blue and red, but dirty.

The colour choice is to brighten economically deprived lives. You see them in many Pacific islands, El Salavador and any number of African countries. But this is Australia. It is Murray island, head of the Great Barrier Reef and subject of the Mabo decision.
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