Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is about their rights, and you are treating the traditional owners in the Northern Territory in a manner you would not dare treat any other Australian. It would not even occur to you to treat any other Australian like that. It is wrong, it is improper and it is also, sadly, very bad economics. It is ineffective. I strongly support some of the measures in this legislation. They would make a substantial economic contribution. I forgive you, Minister, because in your case it is ignorance, but in some parts of the government it is a deliberate attempt to be divisive. A week ago you knew nothing. Now you are an expert, and you have made the transition without gaining any knowledge.

We have here a very significant piece of legislation. It has about 45 more seconds to be debated in this parliament, which is a great pity, but that is the way the world is. It is a great lost opportunity to make a unifying step forward. We are going to have here a divisive step—a step that will almost certainly end up in court, that will almost certainly end up with traditional owners in dispute with the government, when we could have had a unifying set of progressive economic reforms which had economic literacy and political legitimacy. This has got neither political legitimacy nor economic literacy. It is very poor economics as well as being very divisive politics.

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