Nicola Roxon gave a speech commemorating the Mabo decision – but over-egged the pudding.
Sadly, Eddie Mabo, the man whose name will forever represent this turning point in reconciliation did not get to see this historic decision, after passing away to cancer just five months earlier.
This will not stop us remembering Mr Mabo, and his fellow Meriam people, for taking the courageous first step to conquer terra nullius and deliver native title rights for Indigenous Australians across the country.
Labor has a proud history of fighting the tough fight when we know that it’s the right decision to make.
There’s something to be said for being on the right side of history.
We led the way in fighting for the racial discrimination act, the sex discrimination act, the human rights and equal opportunity commission act.
Labor was there when it counted for Medicare, for the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, for superannuation…
And I’m proud to say that Labor was there for native title.
The Labor Government grabbed the opportunity presented to us. Many however, were not on the right side of history.
She then launches into those who were on the ‘wrong side of history’. Okay – it’s her speech. But I’m not sure that is quite right. From an economics perspective the Mabo (and Wik) decisions are fascinating because they revolve around the evolution of property rights. Generally speaking there are two broad theories that explain property rights – an efficiency theory and a legal-centric theory. Aboriginal native title, however, is inconsistent with both those theories. How do we know that native title is inconsistent with the legal centric theory? Because no less a commentator than David Marr said so (emphasis original):
Governments only intervene to oppose. … [G]overnments only come to court to argue against native title. This policy is bipartisan. Canberra in particular has never – neither under Labor nor the Coalition – intervened to give formal assistance to Aborigines in such test cases. The stock response of all governments is hostility.
Sure the Keating government legislated native title – but only after the courts had forced their hand.
Isn’t she a member of the same party that supports Wild Rivers legislation?
Infidel Tiger
6 Jun 12 at 4:34 pm
Mabo has been a great sucess. About half a billion dollars went to the legal profession before the first determination was made, and much more since.
Has there been any drop in the level of domestic violence in the Aboriginal community?
Rodney
6 Jun 12 at 4:50 pm
No person is further left in the ALP that Roxon
dan
6 Jun 12 at 4:55 pm
Native Title – I’ll tell you how bloody native title works! Alice Springs is a prime example – dependent on the fucking good will of government to survive because the government & traditional owners both want their “share”.
The government with Stamp duty & the traditional owners with their fees – the government subsidies the rents for the fucking voting block the public service is which pushes up the rent & house prices for anyone else trying to live & work in private industry!
End result you have an ex commission house that is trashed selling for 1/2 a million dollars. We live in the middle of fucking no where & there is no land!
It drives me bloody insane & then we want to put more shit in the path of land release by doing this – I don’t give a shit what the David Marr’s of this world say – the left & the fucking do gooders are killing this country!
Alice Springs is a microcosm of what is happening in pockets in the rest of the country & it is getting more & more widespread – that is what should be legislated on!
Dianne
6 Jun 12 at 5:42 pm
Same reason a piece of shit costs $1 million in Pt Hedland, Karratha etc.
Infidel Tiger
6 Jun 12 at 5:43 pm
Roxon should at least be congratulated for this:
steve from brisbane
6 Jun 12 at 5:50 pm
Steve, the whole of the ALP and their assembled alumni and media cheer squads all knew that was a bridge too far.
blogstrop
6 Jun 12 at 5:52 pm
You naysayers, you will be punished. Roxon has said Mabo has not caused any problems at all. Nope, all is hunky-dory. So quit ya whining.
/sarc.
Gab
6 Jun 12 at 5:53 pm
Aren’t they so low rent. Of course they can never win the battle of ideas, so it’s always about “fighting”. It’s such a primitive way of talking.
JC
6 Jun 12 at 5:56 pm
They don’t need to win the battle of ideas as long as low rent journalists are asking the questions
dan
6 Jun 12 at 6:04 pm
Going for a run? Applying make up? Getting her greasy hair washed?
Infidel Tiger
6 Jun 12 at 6:06 pm
IT, you force my hand. (I think I can count 4, by the way. How many do you get it to?)
steve from brisbane
6 Jun 12 at 6:15 pm
LOL.
One of the most racist political parties outside of the American (and African) South, the ALP in fact has a proud history of hating non-whites and fighting the non-Labor parties tooth and nail to preserve the White Australia Policy.
Note that the key ‘achievements’ Roxon cites are acts of Parliament – as if a “racial discrimination act” would make any difference to Aborigines. But as Andrew Bolt puts it, for lefties it’s all about the seeming, not the doing.
C.L.
6 Jun 12 at 6:27 pm
I get to $29 billion. She has created more wealth and prosperity for this nation and its people than a million Roxons and SfB’s could create in a million lifetimes.
Go hang yourself in the ladies restroom.
Infidel Tiger
6 Jun 12 at 6:35 pm
The words that precede the photo sfb links to:
dover_beach
6 Jun 12 at 6:47 pm
A bit harsh, that…
steve from brisbane
6 Jun 12 at 6:51 pm
I cant understand why she wasnt left on the side of a mountain to die or basically made to go and live in a cave so we wouldnt be so offended by her face and repugnant personality.
Using that logic, who would vote for this?
Or this?
Or this?
John Mc
6 Jun 12 at 7:01 pm
By the way, before getting all carried away with the magnificence of her contribution to Australia: she is, basically, the heiress to a family fortune and business. That a person in her position can make a lot of money (and yes, pay a lot of tax) is not exactly surprising, and is not self evidently a sign of brilliant business nous or general magnanimity towards the country.
In fact, the break down in the relationships between her and her children might indicate some less than admirable personal qualities, although to be fair I don’t know enough about the case to really be able to tell. I also don’t really know any detail about charitable work or donations either.
She does warrant criticism for her evident anti-science attitude to climate change, as I take it her support for Monckton trips indicates.
Honestly, it’s one thing for the man in the street to be skeptical of climate change; it is another for an incredibly wealthy woman, who could fly in the best experts to give her a personal briefing on the topic, to instead devote support to a contrarian anti-scientist like Monckton (and I would guess, others) when one would have to assume that it is likely at least partly motivated by her own interests in expanding her wealth.
So excuse me while I don’t go all dewy eyed at what a wonderful woman she is. She’s not the worst woman in the world; nor is she particularly deserving of admiration.
steve from brisbane
6 Jun 12 at 7:16 pm
Nor is she wrong on AGW. With her wealth it would make much more sense to mitigate against AGW than try to ignore it.
John Mc
6 Jun 12 at 7:24 pm
Why is SFB raving on about Gina when this thread is about Roxon and Mabo?
Gab
6 Jun 12 at 7:27 pm
she is, basically, the heiress to a family fortune and business. That a person in her position can make a lot of money (and yes, pay a lot of tax) is not exactly surprising, and is not self evidently a sign of brilliant business nous or general magnanimity towards the country.
Yes, she inherited about 50M and has turned that into 30B in the space of 20 years. According to you, this is neither ‘surprising’ nor evidence of ‘business nous’. And you wonder why Soon, who is usually even-tempered’, has concluded you have sfb.
dover_beach
6 Jun 12 at 7:29 pm
Steve, that probably sums up your knowledge on most of the things you continually intrude here about.
blogstrop
6 Jun 12 at 7:35 pm
That’s an astonishing 41% compound return per year. Way to go Gina.
Lets have a look at a comparable investment in say BHP over the same period. BHP was about 4 bucks a share 20 years ago. BHP’s return on the stock is 14.7% compounded.
Fuck you’re an outstanding fucking clown stepford.
I notice you save all your spite for black people and women.
JC
6 Jun 12 at 7:38 pm
Back to “mabo” .I thought his original claim was restricted to his Island. Wasn’t it the feral Australian legal industry that decided to stir up the natives? I must agree that the result seems to have done absolutely nothing for our benighted indiginies; they seem as simple now as they always were. To say that Australia was Terra Nulius is true. It wouldn’t be true where the natives had at least learned to write and use the wheel. the acquisition of Australia was a foregone conclusion whether it was the Poms the Frogs or indeed the Nips who’d got here first.
Phil E Steyn
6 Jun 12 at 7:41 pm
( don’t you just hate it when one’s ‘puter decides it’s time to “send” all by itself)
Indeed the Aborigines should be glad it was the Poms here first; the most civilized and civilising nation ever.
The Native Title Act is a sad and sorry affair that’ll take generations to unwind, by which time the perpetrators will be long dead and unaccountable.
Phil E Steyn
6 Jun 12 at 7:45 pm
Terra Nullius is a fabrication of 80s Ideological Historians. It is not a fact.
Winston Smith
6 Jun 12 at 8:19 pm
Mk50 is a black woman? Huh. Didn’t realize that.
steve from brisbane
6 Jun 12 at 8:27 pm
Whereas some unnamed women might ‘inherit,’ say, a million dollars in stolen union monies and blow most of it on clothes and home renovations.
C.L.
6 Jun 12 at 8:52 pm
C.L. If success in Bain Capital makes Romney a good candidate for POTUS, then Gina’s success makes her at least a good candidate for Senior Advisor to the Treasurer. Yes?
perturbed
6 Jun 12 at 9:54 pm
Labor on the right side of history huh?
White Australia Policy
Qld Gerrymander
Recognition of Soviet Union sovereignty over Baltic States
obstruction of gay marraige (Paul Keating said of gay marriage, “Two poofs with moustaches and a spaniel do not make a family”.
Vowed that by 1990 no Australian child would be living in poverty.
Snake oil salesmen selling pus in a bottle
Splatacrobat
6 Jun 12 at 10:16 pm
That’s nothing, little Steve is going to spend more than 30B to to create an asset worth maybe 50m and it will probably take longer than 20 years. Wayne can create 100s of billions of debt in no time at all. Julia is going to turn 76 into less than 10 in a years time.
Could always get a job working for Gillard, using the union connection.
Rob
6 Jun 12 at 10:20 pm
When Keating enacted Native Title legislation I mentioned to good friends (very leftwing ALP, probably like Roxon) that Australian Native Title legislation was actually nothing other than UN sanctioned diminishment of private property rights in Australia, and nothing to do with helping the aborigines, 1993 or so.
My comment was met with stunned silence and received no further comment from them, telling me I scored a direct hit.
There is an elite who sincerely believe in order to stop war and all sorts of bad things, that we need to get rid of the nation states and eliminate poverty. Their preferred route is world socialism, and Native Title is one such mechanism to wrest control of property from the individual to the collective.
Louis Hissink
6 Jun 12 at 10:47 pm
Louis,
It must have been just a coincidence that Native title was legislated just after Gareth Evans signed us up to Agenda 21 in Rio.
It (Native title) indirectly put a lot of small prospectors out of work as they could not afford the cost of a heritage survey , resulting in the closure of all the WA state batteries.
Since 1992 the Pastoral industry has seen their rents escalate by up to 700% and the dog problem go so wild there are now no sheep outside the farm country in the SW.
We have seen CALM buy up stations and return them to “nature” closing down the watering points which causes all the wildlife to invade the nearest going property.
Ripper
6 Jun 12 at 11:24 pm
Keating was correct.
DC
6 Jun 12 at 11:38 pm
I do laugh whenever I hear lefties bragging about Mabo. They did jack. I am old enough to remember that when the Mabo decision was first handed down, it was buried in a few lines about 10 or so pages into the Australian. I remember it well, because I thought at the time this was significant in its implications, more so than the space it took up in the papers (i.e. none at all). Like Abu Ghraib, it took about another year before the lefties latched onto it and turned it into their cause du jour.
CC
7 Jun 12 at 12:16 am
Anyone claiming native title should be required to prove they didn’t displace some other tribe who occupied it before them.
Eyrie
7 Jun 12 at 7:22 am
This will not stop us remembering Mr Mabo, and his fellow Meriam people, for taking the courageous first step to conquer terra nullius and deliver native title rights for Indigenous Australians across the country.
Is she asserting that Meriam people conquered an unoccupied land? Bit ambiguous.
coz
7 Jun 12 at 9:02 am
It is pretty hard to prove a native title claim. I am all for it, it solves a deficit in the law. The problem is that the legislation is in the “greens museum exhibition” kind of law, like the wild rivers laws. Native title is worthless unless you get compensation as well. Native title should be worth more – give it back as alloidal title.
.
7 Jun 12 at 9:15 am
Eyrie @ 7.22am
One of the most difficult aspects of establishing native title has been continuity. DERM recently published some guidelines for compiling a connection report. (Qld Dept Environment & Resource Mgt).
Along with some lawyers, the other industry neglected to be mentioned is the social science industry of anthropology. Given that the anthropologists only interview ‘elders’ one has to assume that there is a significant bias in their survey methodology.
Some may say confirmation bias.
Little like the ABS census and surveys have been for the past few decades. Sampling was often from a household, invariably the ‘elders’ or TO’s and the members of that household. H/hold members did not need to respond in many instances but had their responses transcribed. The transcribed responses often from the head of the house, the ‘elder’, or a selected family member with adequate educational skills.
ABS have improved on this methodology of recent.
Though not clear whether it is random stratified sampling of this self-identified population group.
Jessie
7 Jun 12 at 9:02 pm