ABC Debate over Wik 10-Point Plan re-ignites The World Today - Monday, August30, 199912:48 COMPERE: Just when you might have thought the great race debate in Australia is receding, with a preamble in the wings and at least an effort by the Prime Minister to if not say sorry, express his Government's regret over past misdeeds, but in the next few days it appears the debate over the Wik 10-point plan will be back on the agenda again with a vengeance. According to our chief political correspondent Matt Peacock, when Senator Brian Harradine signed off on the Prime Minister's offer earlier this year before he retired from the Senate it was a actually a sting in the tail which has now come back to haunt the Government. Matt Peacock joins us in Canberra. Matt, tell is about the 10-point plan and it being back on the table. What is going on? MATT PEACOCK: Well, John, I should - just a quick correction. Brian Harradine didn't actually retire from the Senate, but he's ceased to be - he's now the feather duster, as he would call it. He's no longer holding the balance of power because that of course transferred to the Democrats. But the sting in the tail that he included in his deal with the Prime Minister over the 10-point plan which if you recall became around about an eight-and-a-half-point plan by the time the Prime Minister had sort of watered it down to Senator Harradine's satisfaction, there was also a little clause in it over that very vexed subject of pastoral leases and the right to negotiate as you'll recall between the traditional owners in an area where say a cattle operator or whatever who held a pastoral lease would have to deal with those traditional owners if they wanted to develop the land or do other things to it. And that sting in the tail was that Mr Howard had conceived that this would all be organised and arranged and dealt with by state legislation and state tribunals - some would say putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. Certainly that was what the Labor Party used to say. And now of course one of those rather more notorious Draculas has turned up on the doorstep - none other than the Northern Territory Government - with its legislation all ready to go. Now, the Northern Territory itself has gone to great lengths to persuade everybody that it's not interested in its performance of the past that the Labor Party and others - indigenous leaders and others have been so critical of, that it's actually made quite a number of concessions. But the trick that Senator Harradine left in this legislation was that the state legislation has to be approved by the Senate. It's what's known as a disallowable instrument. If the Senate doesn't like it, then bad luck, it doesn't happen, and what you're left with the is the original Commonwealth legislation a la Paul Keating. The Northern Territory Government is the first cab off the rank, and we now have a different Senate - the Senate that is dominated by the Democrats. The Democrats held their first big discussion in the party room today - held their first meeting, and whilst they've yet to reach a decision, I'm pretty certain that the Democrats won't be accepting the Northern Territory's legislation unless they can get some changes, because what they're concerned about is that if they do accept what they think is not a bad piece of legislation now, they're concerned that later the NT could change the legislation; it wouldn't have to come back to the Senate. So they've asked the Federal Government either to amend its Native Title Act so that any other changes to what they might approve now if the NT Government later decided to change that legislation, it too would then have to come back and be approved by the Commonwealth Senate. And either they do that or bad luck - the NT amendments are not going to get up. There are a couple of other alternatives proposals being touted by indigenous groups - for example the idea of those sort of regional agreements that were the thing that indigenous working groups and others were pushing back during the Wik debate where they can somehow stitch up an agreement between the governments and the indigenous bodies. So there are a few other models being talked about. But my money is that the Democrats certainly aren't going to budge on this. The interesting thing is that after the NT legislation of course the next cab off the rank is Mr Beattie's Queensland Government, which is a Labor controlled government, and it'll be fascinating to see what position the Labor Party will take on this as well. COMPERE: Matt Peacock bringing us up to date on that extraordinary development in the Wik 10-point plan legislation coming back from the Northern Territory. © 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/
