Media Release

KAP Federal Leader and Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has commended First Australians for their challenge to the Prime Minister in the Northern Territory today to finally facilitate economic rights over lands that they supposedly own.

“It is a national shame that 50 years after the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, the Parliament’s first acknowledgement of indigenous land rights, that today blackfellas still have less say than whitefellas on developing their own land or making money out of it,” said Mr Katter.

Mr Katter said the Yirrkala signatories were among First Australians across the nation who had fought historical battles to achieve major milestones – “such as the Mabo fighters and those who fought with us to deliver, in 1985, absolute fee-simple title, forever, to Queensland’s elected Aboriginal Shire Councils, providing for inalienable freehold title for families to privately own their homes and term leases for enterprise development”.

“But since the overturning of our legislation in Qld to give First Australians the right to own their own homes, there hasn’t been a single move for title deeds in states like Queensland,” he said.

“The right to own your own home is a right enjoyed by every other Australian and most people on Earth so why not them?

“It is a damning indictment on successive governments who have failed to give First Australians the critical economic building block of title deeds.

“Even worse is the complete failure to honour one of Kevin Rudd’s promises to build all government housing in communities with exclusively local First Australian labour.

“Well, today the Prime Minister said at the Yirrkala anniversary ceremony that ‘it should not be for whitefellas to tell you how to use your land, it should be for you indigenous people to determine how your land is used’; and that ‘words without deeds were a dead letter’.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t take another half a century for governments to give First Australians the economic keys to unlock a future of real self-determination instead of the paternalistic government policies that have so badly failed them – such as the intervention laws that clearly breached the International Human Rights Convention.”

The provision of freehold (inalienable) title deeds providing for First Australians’ private ownership of homes, businesses and farms (essential for the foundation of an economy or any economic activity); as well as the building of all First Australian housing by exclusively local indigenous labour (as facilitated during Mr Katter’s time as Minister in Qld in the 1980s), were among the key 20 policy points put by Mr Katter to the major parties during the 2010 minority government negotiations.