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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3547 ..

Aboriginal community concerns have been addressed and that all outstanding issues have been resolved.

That is what I was told at 3.55 yesterday afternoon. However, Mrs Shea told me at 11.15 am on the previous day that she had not had a meeting in the last week and that she still had concerns. She told me that, quite frankly, she does not understand the bill; that she has not spoken to anyone about it since she wrote to Brendan Smyth on 18 June and that what she really wanted was some time to absorb what was in the legislation. That got me concerned because I had been assured that Mrs Shea had been consulted. I asked particularly which people had been consulted.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MRS DUNNE: (Extension of time granted.) I thank members for their indulgence, because I think what I have to say is important and goes to the heart of whether this is a good bill or not. I was given a list of organisations that were consulted. I was told that Mrs Shea had been consulted; I was told that the signatories to the Namadgi co-management agreement had been consulted—and I have not had anyone disabuse me of that—I was told that the Ngunnawal Aboriginal Land Council, from Queanbeyan, was consulted; but Mrs Shea tells me that she has not been consulted. One of the things I realised was that the Burru Ngunnawal Aboriginal Corporation had not been consulted.

It was claimed that other people had been consulted—the united Ngunnawal elders group. I have not been disabused of that but I have concerns about it. The Ngunnawal Aboriginal Land Council, from Queanbeyan, has no jurisdiction in the ACT because it is a New South Wales based organisation and the united Ngunnawal elders group, while doing sterling work and being a consultative body of some stature, does not have a charter in relation to culture and heritage. They may have been consulted on this, but they are not a recognised Aboriginal organisation for the purposes of heritage.

It was my understanding that one of the relevant Aboriginal organisations, for the purposes of heritage, is the Burru Ngunnawal Aboriginal Corporation, which is headed up by members of the Bell family, so I thought I would find out. No-one mentioned this group and no-one said that they had consulted with the Bell family, who are significant and important people in this debate in relation to indigenous heritage. So I asked, and yesterday received a copy of a letter that had been sent to Mr Brendan Smyth entitled, “Aboriginal cultural heritage consultation”. The letter is signed by Mr Don Bell, a Ngunnawal elder. It says:

In your position as the Leader of the Opposition, I wish to inform you that at no time during the drafting of this Bill, did anyone from the ACT Government contact me.

We are getting into a bit of a “he said, she said” situation. Today at two minutes past 4.00, my office received an email that I was able to discuss with Mr Bell, because he was in the gallery. Other members will have received this email. It says: “After some discussion and inspection of relevant files, they acknowledged”—they being Mr and Mrs Bell—“that they have participated in and been invited to consultation meetings during the (long) process of developing the bill, and that the underlined

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