The Federal Government is using their financial resources to tip thescales towards Indigenous claimants purely for ideological reasons.
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The billion dollar bias costing the Redlands.
Good morning
Should you pay to use your local park?
Should your rates be increased so Council can lease back their own facilities?
Should you be excluded from accessing nature reserves in our city because you are from the wrong cultural background?
The answer to all these questions should be a resounding NO.
Yet, this may be the reality that Redlanders will face if the ongoing Native Title claim is successful. Over 3,500 of our community spaces, parks, and playgrounds including iconic sites such as Wellington Point Reserve, the Redlands Performing Arts Centre, and Cleveland Cemetery (where our first combat casualty of Vietnam lies in eternal rest) are currently being contested.
A federal court hearing on this claim will take place in September.
I applaud Council’s decision to defend our community spaces against this claim in the federal court, but this stance doesn’t come cheaply. Ratepayers will pay millions in legal costs thanks to the Federal Government withdrawing support from defendants.
While the Albanese Government is happy to bankroll Native Title claimants, they have abolished the Native Title Respondent Funding Scheme which provided modest contributions to communities like ours who find themselves forced to respond to a claim.
I engaged the Parliamentary Budget Office to demonstrate how unfair this is.
The latest figures show that over the last decade, the Federal Government has provided:
·$1.028 billion to support Native Title claimants.
·Only $9.78 million to the local governments, farmers and other organisations responding to these claims (this has now been abolished all together).
The graph below, shows the funding year on year. (You can barely see the level of federal support provided to respondents to claims!)
This is un-Australian.
The Federal Government is using their financial resources to tip the scales towards Indigenous claimants purely for ideological reasons.
While the Albanese Labor Government has refused my repeated requests for funding support for Redland City Council, I have been working hard to secure a commitment from a future Dutton Coalition Government. I am confident that we are close to a commitment to restore federal financial support to those responding to a native title claim.
Thank you for standing with me as I work to restore some sanity to this situation.
Yours sincerely,
Henry Pike MP
Federal Member for Bowman
PS. For those interested, I have compiled a new map based on the submissions of Redland City Council and the Native Title Claimants to the federal court. It outlines which sites Council’s legal team consider have had Native Title extinguished and for what reason.
Image of the week
It was a pleasure to be present at the opening of the new entrance to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra this week. At the centre is the striking glass and steel Oculus, a mathematical inversion of the Memorial’s iconic dome. Cast into the floor beneath the Oculus are the 15 qualities displayed in the stained glass windows in the Hall of Memory. It is a fitting tribute to our fallen.
