Question Time

Treaty Negotiations

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (15:01): I thank the honourable member for his questions. He, as he usually does, tries to verbal people with the way he phrases questions, characterising the treaty policy, discussions and consultations that have been started as controversial. The only people who find it controversial are those on the other side. They are the only people who find it particularly controversial.

That having been said, questions were about the stated ambition to have something, if we can, signed by the end of this year. I can inform the chamber that, on the recommendation of the report of the Treaty Commissioner, the report was written after what is almost certainly the most comprehensive consultation that has ever been undertaken with Aboriginal South Australia. If my memory serves me correctly, about 700 individuals were consulted, and there were many more hundreds of submissions and engagement through electronic media. I think the treaty team over the six months they conducted consultations with Aboriginal South Australia clocked up about 11,000 kilometres doing those consultations.

I want to place on the record that overwhelmingly amongst the Aboriginal community this is not controversial. This is something Aboriginal South Australians want, but those opposite know better. They know better about what Aboriginal people want than what Aboriginal people say through comprehensive consultation.

That has been a hallmark of how some of those opposite have conducted Aboriginal affairs. We saw the Leader of the Opposition, who assumed the role of shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs, unilaterally declare that he doesn't support treaty. His consultation? He turned off the highway, talked to a few people on the APY lands and said, 'They didn't raise it, therefore it's off the agenda.'

For far too long, for a couple of hundred years, non-Aboriginal people in this country have been making policy for Aboriginal people, not with Aboriginal people. They have been doing things to Aboriginal people, not with them, and that continues that very sad history of doing that. That is not what we will do as a government; it is what those opposite do.

It is what they did federally, when the Prime Minister out of hand dismissed the statement from Uluru, one of the most comprehensive statements of the ambition of Indigenous people around Australia that was dismissed completely and utterly out of hand because those opposite think they know what's best for Aboriginal people, and they will continue to do policy to them.

In terms of treaty in South Australia, after the Treaty Commissioner's report we have started in-depth discussions with the first three Aboriginal groups after an expressions of interest process overseen by the Treaty Commissioner, and we are currently deep in discussions with Adnyamathanha, Narungga and Ngarrindjeri nations. They are going very well. For each of those I was at the start of discussions that have occurred progressively over the last couple of months, with Ngarrindjeri at Murray Bridge, with Narungga at Point Pearce and with Adnyamathanha at Wilpena. Those discussions are continuing.

It is possible we may have something signed by the end of the year with an Aboriginal nation. That is certainly the aim that has been stated, and that is the intention. With the goodwill that has been shown, that is certainly still the aim. We are not going to unnecessarily rush this. It is an aim to have an agreement completed by the end of this year, but we will not be forcing it, because we recognise that we need to work with Aboriginal people and not do things to Aboriginal people.