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Received by the House of Representatives Standing Committee for long Term Strategies on 15 April 1994
(Addressed to The Hon Barry Jones)
Paul Coe wrote in 1986 that "Australia is still a State based on dispossession, a State based upon mass murder, a State based upon the principle of might is right".
This view is still extremely relevant today. The Mabo decision merely highlights the facts stated above. We hope to coherently relate to your Committee the views of the Watch Committee. We stress that we do not speak for or on behalf of any other Aboriginal group, community or individual persons. We believe that this submission fits comfortably within the second of your Terms of Reference.
We are the traditional owners of this land. The land is our total being. We have lost enough.
We believe that before your Committee considers any other recommendations for higher population growths and carrying capacity for Australia, the Governments of this country, at all levels, must settle the major social problem of the rightful ownership of this land. We believe that before your committee considers any other recommendations that you first take the time to read and consider Chapter 19 Land Needs pp467-500 in Vol.2 of the National Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (printed May 9,1991). And further, Chapter 37 Addressing Land Needs, pp47-55, Recommendations 334-337 of Vol.5 of the same Report.
Only when this recognition is belatedly made can relevant consultation take place on future population studies. Since 1788 the non-Aboriginal powers within our lands have taken it upon themselves to increase the population by many millions, meanwhile our population became near to extinction. Historically irrefutable is the fact that many, many tribes were exterminated and hundreds of thousands of our people suffered the near-final solution of the invaders.
To the absolute shock of many - we survived. What did not survive was our recognised sovereignty over our lands. This must be given to us. Our land needs must be settled before future millions disinherit us from our human rights as the original inhabitants. The morality of our claim is unquestionable.
The obligations of the Governments of Australia and its peoples is to our right to land holdings - including tribal use - the right to run cattle stations, farms for produce and the production of native foods, or bush tucker, in all its forms. This would be both for export and home use. A necessary adjunct to the land being returned is the need for proper housing, of appropriate educational facilities, for totally adequate health services, work schemes to be relevant to our needs, rehabilitation centres, among other requirements.
Constitutional recognition is also a vital factor. It will be mandatory that our land needs be inviolable from future encroachment by any non-Aboriginal population, so also our cultural needs, especially hunting and fishing rights.
Time is needed, not only for our land, but for ourselves to establish an economical base, producing traditional foods and proper land management. Land management that caressed this country for more than 60,000 years. Our communities need the provision of land to not only redress past crimes but to restore self esteem.
Dr Brown, Head of the United Nations Environmental Programme stated: "At 5 billion people we have now become a full occupancy planet!"
It is to the individual to gauge the veracity of this statement but what we do know is that as was pointed out in a recent Australian Population Study, our population will increase to about 300,000 -350,000 by the year 2001. Non-Aboriginals are expected to increase to about 30 million by the year 2055. This is totally unsustainable for this country. The population carrying capacity of this country must factor into its calculations the amount of land needed to be set aside for the Aboriginal Peoples.
To continue to ignore our rightful claims will only further denigrate the Governments of Australia in international forums, but to overload our land until it is no longer viable is to participate in a most heinous crime against all humanity.
We end our submission with two quotes.
Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the laws of England, Vol.2. 1766, London, states:
"There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property ... and yet there are very few that will give themselves the trouble to consider the origin and foundation of that right. Pleased as we are with the possession, we seem to be afraid to look back to the means by which it was acquired, as if fearful of some defect in our title; or at best we rest satisfied with the decision of the laws in our favour, without examining the reasons or authority upon which those laws have been built ..."
Paul Keating, Prime Minister, on December 19, 1992 at Redfern Park stated, inter alia:
"It begins with recognition.
Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.
We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.
We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders.
We took the children from their mothers.
We practices discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice.
And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.
With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds.
We failed to ask - How would I feel if this were done to me?
As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.
THE WATCH COMMITTEE
RAY JACKSON