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Mr Speaker,
Today this house will debate whether we are to be one people belonging to one nation, or many peoples belonging to many nations.
For many years Australia has been divided through policies of multiculturalism and an unfair view of history that has led to the impractical, discriminatory and stupid notion of land rights, and special treatment for so called minorities at the expense of everyone else.
Today, you may very well collude to enshrine that division despite even the previous Prime Minister's view of past validated freehold grants, residential, commercial, pastoral, agricultural, and validated crown actions, extinguishing native title.
This extinguishment should be extended to cover vacant crown land as well.
Mr speaker,
There is a need to put the High Court back in its rightful place of interpreting the law, not creating the law.
We must question who is running the country when seven judges, not elected by the people, presume to make such monumental decisions.
Mr Speaker
It is imperative the people of Australia understand that native title is, as they say, "the thin edge of the wedge".
In conjunction with the Canadian Government, the Indigenous people of Canada have recently created Nunavut, a separate indigenous state within the nation of Canada.
Originally, Nunavut was to be a tract of semi - autonomous land of some two million square kilometres.
However, a further deal was done, and the two million square kilometres of semi- autonomous land of this state within a state, became three hundred and fifty thousand square kilometres of free hold land.
This will be formalised in 1999, and in effect leave Canada with another country bigger than the state of Victoria, within its borders.
Mr Speaker,
It is imperative that the Australian people know and understand the international forces driving the Aboriginal industry and the flawed and divisive concept of native title.
It is crucial to realise the underlying blue print and inspiration behind the creation of a separate indigenous nation within Canada, and the impending creation of an Aboriginal nation within our own country, is the United Nations draft declaration of the rights of Indigenous peoples.
The Australian people, and through them, the Parliament, must be given the widest possible opportunity to understand the massive and irrevocable changes to Australia that will occur, when this United Nations treaty, like so many before it, is ratified and implemented - as always to the detriment of ordinary Australians.
The report, 'Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Management: A review of Canadian Regional Agreements and their potential application to Australia, part 1 by Richardson and others states,
"the Canadian experience is one strategy that Aboriginals might use to resolve the issues raised by the creation of native title in Australia".
In the words of Mick Dodson, ATSIC Social Justice Commissioner, on the 25th of October 1996.
"We believe that in the process of adopting the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, time is on the side of Indigenous peoples.
We continue to believe that through perseverance with this process, it will be possible to achieve consensus on the provisions of the declaration, as it presently stands."
Or let me quote Peter Jull, a former adviser to the Canadian Prime minister, and now a Research Fellow of the Northern Australia Research Unit, and consultant to the Central Land Council,
"Nunavut has prophetic meaning when viewed in an international context.
It heralds a new world order.
A hunter-gatherer people, with a stubborn sustainable development philosophy and no visible modern industrial economy are taking over one-fifth of the world's second largest nation state".
"Such a breakthrough provides practical inspiration for other indigenous peoples. This does not mean it should be copied precisely elsewhere, but it can be usefully studied as a precedent". end of quote.
Mr Speaker,
There is an undeniable link between the events in Australia and Canada.
The man who was the architect of Nunavut in Canada is now living in Brisbane, and planning a Nunavut for Australia.
There is no doubt the long term goal of the Aboriginal industry is to create a separate indigenous nation within Australia - A separate country the alleged guilty non-Aboriginal Australians will pay for.
This is a clear and indisputable fact that will disturb all Australians who believe we are working for the future as one people.
The concept and general understanding of indigenous has been created with dubious purpose and dangerous intent. The true and much broader meaning of indigenous is not generally understood, and as it stands, meant to confuse and deceive.
It is most important for us all to be Australians.
How long you or your ancestors may have been here is irrelevant.
It is a flawed argument to essentially suggest some people are more Australian than others, when some of us were born here and others have chosen to become Australians - either we are equal in all things, or equal in none.
When what is indigenous, what is Australian and levels of Aboriginality, is mixed with the fact that the greater majority of so called Indigenous people are of mixed ancestry, often with only small percentages of Aboriginal blood, confusion of identity and entitlement reigns supreme.
What is certain however, is that to progress together as one people we must all be treated equally and not separated for special treatment.
In Australia, Aborigines comprise less than 2% of our population, yet under native title, they will claim perhaps as much as 75% of land that is supposed to belong to us all.
Mr Speaker,
It is beyond belief to even consider giving less than 2% of the population a strangle hold over 75% of Australia, yet that is the issue before us.
It is true many Aboriginal people are not working, and living in appalling conditions. The current situation and the corrupt and inefficient activities of ATSIC do not allow much opportunity for improving their lifestyle.
However, they do not have a monopoly on being disadvantaged as it also true a million other Australians are not working, and although they feel little hope for the future no one is giving them land, rather you are taking the land that belongs to us all and making it the sole property of the few.
Mr Speaker,
I am accused of trying to turn back the clock to the 1950s, but the Government, by refusing to extinguish so called native title, is turning the clock back to the 1780s.
Mr Speaker,
Those who fear fairness and decency applying for everyone, call me a racist, but this Government, and its predecessors, by embracing so called native title, are advocating the ownership of land purely on the basis of race.
Mr Speaker,
Let me remind members of this house of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. Section 9 of that act makes it unlawful for a person to do any act involving a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise on an equal footing of any human right or fundamental freedom.
Section 10 provides that if by reason of a law of the commonwealth, state or territory, persons of a particular race (the first group) do not enjoy a right that is enjoyed by persons of another race (the second group) or enjoy a right to a more limited extent, then notwithstanding that law, the first group are to enjoy the right to the same extent as the second group.
The noble intent of the act however, has been nobbled by section 8, which allows "special measures" for ethnic and racial groups, and hence discrimination against white Australians.
We must be one nation, we must not have an Aboriginal or any other nation within our nation.
The path of native title will eventually divide Australia into many nations of varying ethnicities - An Aboriginal nation will be just the beginning.
We must extinguish native title, without penalty to the Australian tax payer, through an amendment to the Australian constitution.
This should be put to the Australian people in the form of a referendum, to be held concurrently with the next federal election.
Mr Speaker,
If I had the opportunity to move an amendment to the Native Title Bill, I would move consideration of the bill be deferred until the electors of Australia are given the opportunity to express their opinion by way of referendum.
Mr Speaker,
If our country must face division, let the people have their rightful chance to stop it.
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