The Guardian 25 July, 2007
Grabbing Aboriginal land
for corporations
Dr Hannah Middleton
The Howard Government intends to destroy the land rights of Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. On the pretext of dealing with child abuse, crime and health problems, the government plans to seize control of communal land through five-year leases and to privatise housing and apply normal tenancy arrangements.
If the government gets away with it in the NT the land grab will be extended to the whole of Australia.
This is not the first time the government has tried to replace Aboriginal land title with forms of private ownership.
The Howard Government’s amendments to the 1992 Native Title Act opened the way for a massive land grab by miners and pastoralists.
However, the latest move is the most blatant and most serious threat to Aboriginal land.
The Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the Northern Territory (CAONT) condemned the proposals as an attempt to privatise and steal Aboriginal land.
The plan to replace Native Title by private ownership is essential for Howard’s right-wing government which is committed to the interests of big business.
This is the second big land grab. The first took place at the time of white settlement when the whole continent was seized without compensation or recognition from the original occupiers and owns — the Aboriginal people.
The importance of land
For Howard there are sound economic and ideological reasons for the land grab.
To sustain life people have to produce food, clothing, houses and other necessities.
The process of production consists in the interaction between human society and nature and involves three elements — human labour; the tools human beings create in order to produce; and the land and other resources in nature that people use to produce their needs.
Land is the main means of production, the main source of life and, for capitalists, the primary source of profits.
Land is a major source of wealth — its use for sheep, cattle and farming; the natural resources in and on it (gold, oil, bauxite, copper, diamonds, timber and so on); as real estate and for tourism. All this and more makes land one of the country’s most valuable assets.
For Aboriginal communities to own and control even some small part of the land infuriates big business which is committed to owning or leasing all the valuable assets of this country in order to make the maximum private profit.
For Aborigines land means something different. It provides sustenance and it is also mother, hearth, home, the source of identity, the basis of culture and spirituality. It cannot be bought and sold for it is not a possession but an enduring source of life as well as a responsibility for a particular community.
The threat from land rights
Aboriginal control of their land makes it harder for corporations to rip out Australia’s’ wealth for private profit. Aboriginal land rights can help reduce foreign ownership of Australia’s natural wealth.
Aboriginal land is owned communally, by a whole Aboriginal community. This presents the alternative of collective ownership for the benefit of all the community and suggests that private ownership for private profit is not the only way things have to be done.
It can even suggest the revolutionary idea that all the valuable assets in Australia could become the property collectively of all the people and be used not for private profit but to meet the needs of the people.
Aboriginal land rights threaten everything that the Howard Government stands for.
A common struggle
The Howard Government introduced WorkChoices to drive down workers’ wages and working conditions so corporations could increase their profits. Aboriginal communities defending their land have taken on some of these corporations in the past.
Corporations are investing billions in technology to increase productivity and profits, and have sacked thousands of workers in the process of technological change. The same corporations have brutally exploited Aboriginal workers, have benefited from the theft of Aboriginal land, and have spent a fortune on campaigns against land rights.
Aborigines battling for land rights and justice and workers fighting to defend their jobs, working conditions and their unions are fighting the same enemy.