Crispin Hull

Hugh Morgan hurried out of the ANU Arts Centre last week, into a white limousine and off. He had time to say with his disarming smile that he did not think his comments about Aboriginal land rights would be well received.

Morgan, who is managing director of Western Mining, had just delivered the Joe and Enid Lyons lecture. His theme was that the High Court’s üMabo@ decision earlier this year recognising native title to land was wrong. Aborigines in 1770 were too primitive to negotiate a treaty, therefore as the law stood in the 18th century Australia was terra nullius (vacant land there for the taking by proclamation and settlement).

He said that because of the decision the High Court had thrown the whole of Australian land law into disarray. Expensive lawyers were giving various opinions and the mining industry, among others, was in a state of uncertainty.

He admitted in the speech it was not popular stuff. In the short time afterwards for questions, he attracted angry comments from two Aboriginal questioners. In the next parliamentary sitting he attracted further anger from the Prime Minister.

Now let’s go to Darwin. The director of the Northern Land Council, Mick Dodson, said his council had received instructions from the traditional owners of the Nabalco bauxite mine on Gove peninsula to press a claim in the High Court.

Earlier at a conference in Darwin Charlie Perkins called for sovereignty and national land rights now. And then we have Michael Mansell calling for a separate Aboriginal state.These are the extreme views, but they are valuable because they define the ground.

Mabo was decided in June. It is still drawing vigorous debate four months later. That says something about its force, and its complexity.

Essentially, the case said that the common law recognised indigenous title to land. That title was not extinguished by Captain Cook claiming the land for the Crown. But it was extinguished if the Crown (or state or Federal Parliament) granted title to someone else or if the indigenous people had died out or ceased to observe customs that connected them with the land.
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Canada’s political leaders got a severe rebuff this/last week when six out of 10 provinces and an overall majority rejected the referendum on constitutional reform. It was the second rebuff in 2 years. The Meech Lake Accord was rejected in 1990. It required the 10 provincial parliaments to agree. The Charlottetown agreement required the people of each province to agree and later to be ratified by all parliaments. The heart of the issue was the position of Quebec in the Canadian federation.

Quebeckers have felt for more than a century that they have had a raw deal: under-represented in the Federal Parliament, francophone culture at threat, discriminated on grounds of language, economically disadvantaged. In the 1970s it flared in violence with kidnappings and other terrorist acts, spearheaded by the Front for the Liberation of Quebec. Fortunately, violence has been put aside as a means for Quebeckers to attain their aspirations. Further, many of those aspirations have been met. No-one can seriously say that francophone culture is under systemic threat from Canadian authorities. True, it is under the general threat from the onslaught of American “”culture” in the form of television and economic domination. However, to the extent it is true it is also true of Australia or anywhere else.

French has received official recognition. If anything, the pendulum has swung to far the other way. Inappropriate official bilingualism is the imposed policy in the western provinces where virtually no-one speaks French. Further, Quebec’s economic fortunes in relation to the rest of Canada no longer have the disparity of past decades.
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The Real Estate Institute of the ACT has objected to parts of the ACT Government’s reform of land tax.

It welcomes the change to elective quarterly payments, but objects to the way extra interest will be charged on those who so elect and the way penalty interest will be charged for late payments. The legislation does not set the rate, rather it allows the Minister to set the rate.

The general manager of the institute, Bruno Yvanovich, said yesterday (fri16oct) that tax regimes should be unambiguous and in the legislation. They should not be subject to ministerial determination.
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An educational aid project run by the Northern Territory in Indonesia wants to expand into East Timor.

At present the project, financed by the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau, helps 21 schools and four vocational development centres in nine eastern provinces in Indonesia. AIDAB is providing $18.4 million and Indonesia an equivalent amount.

Nine long-term Australian advisers are with the project in Indonesia.
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John Howard’s brave new industrial-relations world will create a brave new constitutional world if he’s successful.

But to be successful, it will require an enormous extension of Commonwealth power. This is ironic, if not hypocritical, coming from the Coalition which has championed states’ rights for so long.

Much of the Howard plan is clearly within Commonwealth power; but much of it breaks new ground which could easily be challenged in the High Court.
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Almost two-thirds of freedom-of-information requests are not decided upon within the time required by law.

It has caused the office of the Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, to tell the unit looking after FOI “”to lift its game”.

According to the draft FOI annual report, there has been a general decline in the ACT’s FOI performance over the past three years for response times and granting of access to documents.
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Going it alone in the employment world can be very tough. It can also be very rewarding. People in film and television have learnt this over the years.

Lyndon Sayer-Jones, who writes a column for Encore, the Australian film industry’s trade magazine has just published a book on the law on film and television: Law Brief. The Australian Film and Television Industry in the Nineties.

The industry is laced with traps and pitfalls, not only legal ones, but practical ones.

In a normal week, the book would have limited interest. This week, it has wider appeal. The Opposition spokesman on industrial relations, John Howard, has just released IR II the sequel to IR which did not do so well at the ballot-box office in 1990.
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Saving the trees is important. However, the computers that were to save paper (remember the paperless office) have combined with the fax machine and photocopying machine to cause an outpouring of paper enough to wreck our balance of payments.

So every attempt to save paper must be welcomed. One has arrived this week: The Electronic Law Book Series.

The trouble with the law, of course, is that Parliament is forever changing it or adding to it. In the five years to 1990 it enacted 17,907 pages of legislation. Moreover, we poor electors are deemed to know the law.
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The processes of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation would just give a warm feeling from holding hands and singing songs, a former head of the Federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Charles Perkins, said yesterday.

He said the real question was “”who owns this land in the first place”.

He was speaking at a conference on Constitutional Change in the 1990s in Darwin.

He called for immediate talk of sovereignty, national land rights and a treaty. These issues had to come first, he said.
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The director of the Northern Land Council, Mick Dodson, called yesterday for a separate Aboriginal government with direct relations with the Federal Government.

The idea was rejected as preposterous by the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Marshall Perron.

Mr Dodson said the education, health, housing, municipal services, roads, power and water services provided by the Northern Territory were not the sort of services Aboriginal people wanted.
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