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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4603 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mr Speaker, as we speak, our parliamentary colleagues on the hill are debating the controversial Wik legislation - a piece of legislation which, if passed, will extinguish native title, do severe damage to the process of reconciliation and subject Australia to international condemnation. My Green colleagues have called for this legislation to be withdrawn because of insufficient consultation and negotiation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people regarding changes to the Native Title Act 1993 and the entire issue of indigenous land justice and also because of concern that the passage of this Bill in any form will further diminish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander native title rights and greatly impede the process of reconciliation and healing between indigenous and non-indigenous people.

It is of great shame to present and future Australians that the Federal Government is hell-bent on further dispossessing Aboriginal people. I do not understand at all how Mr Howard can possibly say that he supports the process of reconciliation when land is so central to indigenous life and culture. As the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody said:

... it was the dispossession and removal of Aboriginal people from their land which has had the most profound impact on Aboriginal society and continues to determine the economic and cultural well-being of Aboriginal people to such a significant degree as to directly relate to the rate of arrest and detention of Aboriginal people.

The Federal Government fails to understand that there is a unique and very important spiritual relationship between Aboriginal people and the land. Rather than see this as inconvenient, I believe that this is a rich and important part of Australia's culture which we should embrace. We could learn a lot from the unique relationship indigenous people have with the land.

"Our Common Future", commissioned by the World Commission on Environment and Development, acknowledged the inability of scientists to provide direction in managing natural resources and said that we should seek to learn from more traditional societies. It said:

These communities are the repositories of vast accumulations of traditional knowledge and experience that links humanity with its ancient origins. Their disappearance is a loss for the larger society, which could learn a great deal from their traditional skills in sustainably managing very complex ecological systems. It is a terrible irony that as formal development reaches more deeply into rainforests, deserts, and other isolated environments, it tends to destroy the only cultures that have proved able to thrive in these environments.

Science and economics alone cannot fulfil humankind's needs. I know there are some who believe that the process of reconciliation can be achieved only through practical measures such as improved health, housing and education. While I agree that it is essential to improve the physical situation of indigenous people, we cannot ignore the spiritual and symbolic commitments to the process of reconciliation.

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