No Longer Headline News
Somehow, the story about NT legislation, which can only be described as a completely ineffective (unless you’re trying to grab land), has already made it off the front page of the Age.
Nice work, guys.
The actual story is here - there’s a lot to read between the lines, but I’m a big fan of this sentence:
The laws - which are discriminatory, by the government’s own admission - were passed on an unusual Friday sitting of the Senate after a marathon 27 hours of debate.
Other notable items:
The laws only provide for indigenous people to be offered “a reasonable amount” of compensation.
…
The government says the temporary seizure of indigenous land is needed to ensure open access to previously closed settlements so that houses and community facilities can be built and repaired.
As I understand it (and I’d be happy to be corrected on this), as soon as the Government begins to build things with government money, the land automatically becomes theirs and does not revert to indigenous control after this temporary ‘process’.
Election in 3…2…1…
Sphere: Related Content
August 18th, 2007 at 10:56 am
As I understand it when Native Title was introduced all Commonwealth owned buildings, and the blocks they stood on, which were already on Aboriginal land, remained the property of the Government to do with what they would forever and ever amen. Infrastructure built under this new legislation will now be treated the same way. I don’t think that includes temporary housing for all the public servants or not. Of all the $ going into the project most of it will be spent on administration and bureaucrats salaries.
Here’s hoping that maybe something good will come out of the whole debacle. Like, maybe funding schools in communities based on how many kids LIVE in the communities, not how many attend the school. Kids don’t enrol because there are no places for them, so funding is cut, so there are even less places, so even less kids enrol, so there is even less funding etc etc etc. Liberal or Labour, both parties seem to be hoping the problem will just go away if they fuck it up enough…