This was posted on a law and society list serve recently. Does anyone have
any more information on this that could be shared? It sounds significant.
>From: Ian Duncanson
>To: Wes Pue
>Subject: australian aborigines
>
>
>Hi Wes,
>I'm up in north NSW visiting Southern Cross. I've promised a social
>justice meeting here to contact people overseas about the federal
>government's new plans for land rights. A lot of rural Oz is crown land
>granted to pastoralists under leasehold. The terms of the leases permitted
>the lessees to use the land for all purposes pursuant to pastoral activity,
>but Aboriginal people wer understood to have access and use subject to
>that. it was confirmed in the Wik decision. The Tories are planning to
>restrict and if necessary extinguish all "native title" in the case of
>leasehold, subject to compensation to Aboriginal paople. What compensation
>we don't yet know - we haven't sufficient info about how things will be for
>indigenous people, or how they feel about swapping access and management
>for compensation. If it is as bad as it could be we may be asking for
>international sanctions against Australian goods, sports (the Olympic Games
>for eg). If you could pass this message around I'd be grateful. I think
>it's important that the government feels that the world is watching. It's
>obviously been courting the Chinese and the Indonesians in case it needs
>international help with human rights criticisms. But the more people who
>know, the better the outcome is likely to be for Aboriginal people.
>Cheers,
>Ian.
>
>
>
>
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Nick Blomley
Department of Geography
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6,
CANADA
(604) 291-3713 (tel)
(604) 291-5841 (fax)
[log in to unmask] (email)
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