Chris Minns has pushed through a racist attack on Aboriginal land rights, with amendments to the law governing Crown Land passing the NSW parliament in September.
When the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act (ALRA) first passed in 1983, Frank Walker, Labor’s Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, promised “vast tracts of Crown Land” would be available for claim to “redress the injustices of dispossession”.
More than 40 years later, less than 0.2 per cent of the state has been returned to Aboriginal ownership and a backlog of more than 44,000 claims has not even been considered.
Under the ALRA, Crown Land can only be claimed in very limited circumstances, including if it is “unused”.
Recent court cases have established that if land is being used under a lease that was granted unlawfully, Aboriginal land claims can still proceed.
In one prominent case, a sub-lease granted to the tennis company Love and Deuce at Tallus Reserve in North Sydney, Crown Land gazetted for “public recreation” was ruled to be invalid because the company was making profit.
This opened the door to a successful land claim by Metropolitan LALC and they took over the reserve in 2022.
Love and Deuce continued to operate, but this year Metro said the arrangement was unviable given ongoing maintenance costs and entered a sub-lease with another company, Racquet Club, to run the courts.
Disgracefully, Labor used the case to run a racist fear campaign, amplified by the corporate media, and legislated so all leases can be declared valid retrospectively.
Minns told 2GB that without the laws, Land Councils would take over and evict surf lifesaving clubs and other community facilities, claiming “we could lose an enormous amount of land in our state”.
This has directly fed into Pauline Hanson’s hateful and false rhetoric that Aboriginal people receive special privileges at the expense of the rest of the community.
Ray Kelly, Chair of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC), slammed the “outlandish” claims, calling on the NSW government to negotiate, resolve all outstanding claims and deliver land justice.
NSWALC organised its biggest protest in decades when the legislation was announced, part of a campaign that also addressed delegates at Unions NSW, who resolved to oppose the laws.
This campaign did make some ground. Initially, Labor planned to rule out claims on Crown Land if a lease had ever been issued, even if it was currently unused. But the disgraceful provision to retrospectively validate leases is now law.
By Paddy Gibson
