Chaney drops native title tribunal

Costello, not one for being modest on his government’s achievements provides further evidence of their strength in the fiscal management of the country: “ABS data indicate that household net nominal wealth is now over $5 trillion, almost three times the level when our government first took office 10 years ago.”

It’s a pity he didn’t reveal the latest ABS statistics on Indigenous disadvantage in his paper. Now that would surely have made his well-heeled guests choke on their main course during his keynote address.

However, with the exception of a few successful ILUAs negotiated between traditional owners and mining company executives that produced some meaningful employment opportunities and financial outcomes for their respective communities, the vast majority of traditional land owners remain impoverished.

All these once proud custodians can do is sit helplessly by and watch as multi-national corporation bosses and their share holders grow fatter by the day from resources being mined around the clock from their land - often at great personal fear of potential desecration to their secret or sacred country.

Quenten Aguius, traditional owner, Adjahdura Land Traditional Owners Group - in an open letter on February 1, 2006 - made some pertinent points when he said:

The ILUA (Indigenous Land Use Agreement) process has failed the traditional owners of Adjahdura Land and is pulling the wool over the public's eyes.

Aboriginal people living on this country (Adjahdura Land: Yorke Peninsula, South Australia) are made up of:

• traditional owners - with cultural knowledge;
• traditional owners - with little cultural knowledge; and
• and non-traditional owners - with little or no cultural knowledge.

White fellas don't understand the difference between non-traditional and traditional owners. The direct descendants of the traditional owners are the true traditional owners of this country.

If you were to ask the majority of Aboriginal people on Adjahdura Land, traditional and non-traditional owners, what they thought of the Narungga Local Government ILUA, they would say they don't like it.

As traditional owners, we have been forced into a process we have little control over. Government want these ILUAs - they are pulling the strings, and the ILUA negotiating committees are like puppets - most are non-traditional owners of this country and they are doing the government's bidding.

This Narungga ILUA offers very little: