HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-16 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Closing the Gap Implementation Plan

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:02): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs on the topic of the role of land in our South Australian Closing the Gap Implementation Plan.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: The Aboriginal Lands Trust has this week made public comment, raising their concern that, as it currently stands, the role of landholding bodies, such as the Aboriginal Lands Trust, has not been included in our South Australian Closing the Gap Implementation Plan, despite the importance, of course, of land as a foundation for health, wellbeing, economic participation and cultural continuity. My question to the minister therefore is: what has or will the Malinauskas government do to ensure that the contributions of landholding bodies, such as the ALT and others, are better recognised and embedded in our state's Closing the Gap efforts and specifically in our Closing the Gap Implementation Plan?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Deputy Premier, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (15:03): I thank the honourable member for her question. Certainly, the role that can be played by the care and control that Aboriginal people and Aboriginal groups and communities have over land is a central feature of the economic empowerment of Aboriginal people.

There is a saying in relation to Aboriginal people's care and control of land that many Aboriginal people are land rich but dirt poor. The ALT, for example, has invested in I think about half a million hectares of land. A vast percentage, and I think it's now a majority of the percentage, of the South Australian land mass has native title determinations over it.

It is something I have said recently in speeches—as late as this week at the South Australian Aboriginal business showcase—that I firmly believe, and there are many others, that the next wave of Aboriginal empowerment is an economic rights agenda. Making sure that the interest in land can be used for economic empowerment for Aboriginal people is a centrally important area.

I am happy to take it on notice to see the parties to the current Closing the Gap refresh, which, from memory—it was 2018 or 2019 I think that the current 17 socio-economic targets were decided on and as a joint enterprise between governments, commonwealth and state and territory governments, and the Coalition of Peaks, the peak bodies representing a whole range of different areas.

I am not sure if landholding authorities feature in the Coalition of Peaks in other jurisdictions. It might be that in the Northern Territory, where there are commonwealth statutory landholding authorities such as the central and northern land councils, there might be some input, but I am happy to take that on notice and go away and have a look.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT