Federal plans to develop the north into a food basket for the booming populations of Asia must fully involve Indigenous groups and communities if they are to succeed, a conference has been told.
With hundreds of delegates from the farming industry and state, territory and federal politics gathered in Darwin, the Northern Australia Food Futures Conference focused on federal plans for a white paper on developing the region’s agriculture industry.
In a panel discussion on Indigenous participation, Leigh “Tracker” Tilmouth, the former CEO of the Central Land Council, said Australia needed a “segregated economy”.
“An economy [in which] we can develop our own systems of trade, our own systems and methods of production, and address a whole range of other cultural and social needs that aren’t being dealt with as we go forward on a conventional system of development,” he said.
Tilmouth outlined the differences, as well as social and cultural problems within Aboriginal communities such as high rates of Indigenous incarceration, but said “that doesn’t mean we drop the ball and put aside the welcome opportunities that come up”.
Companies which wanted to invest in the area therefore needed to understand the social and cultural fabric, he said.
“We have to develop a program that allows Aboriginal people to develop long-term economic and strategic [plans] that allow us to stay on our lands and develop our lands, but develop it on a sustainable basis, not just for the sake of developing.”
Joe Morrison, chief executive of the Northern Land Council and environmental and Indigenous development advocate, said the idea of a segregated economy was “nothing new” but suggested there would be broad benefits if a portion of the northern economy went to a dedicated issue.
Morrison told the delegates northern Australia was in a “post-determination” era, despite about 180 native title claims still to progress through his council alone.
“There’s plenty of land ready to go,” he said.
“We’ve done a lot of of work over the years in working out what the potential is, but when you get to actually finding the capital it’s not there, and that’s one of the fundamental challenges we face.”
Morrison sought to dispel a myth that land tenure is a barrier to development.
“That’s obviously not the case, the [Northern Land] Council processes hundreds of leases for third-party interests every year, from mining companies and even home ownership leases in Arnhem Land. There’s a need to understand that … in fact planning regulations and some of the other red tape associated with government processes are the barriers.”
He called for local people, including traditional owners and pastoralists to be involved in the debate on the future of the north. “They’re the people who live on the land,” he said.
Morrison said that in his role as CEO of the Northern Land Council he was trying to “not just be facilitating third-party interests all the time but also focussing particularly on how we get Aboriginal people as developers on their own lands”, he said.
“I’ve heard in just a short time that a lot of Aboriginal people want to be involved in agriculture, they want to be able to sell products to our northern neighbours in Asia and other places.”
He added that there was a unique advantage Indigenous people can bring to marketing and branding.
Wayne Bergmann, who led negotiations for the Kimberley Land Council over the failed James Price Point gas venture, said if a big development project was not going to have a good effect on the community it went into “then you’re just going to be pushing against the tide”.
He said local Indigenous people were a huge potential workforce for companies.
Bergmann controversially changed his position on the gas hub in 2011 after a deal was struck and called for then federal environment minister Tony Burke not to approve the project because there was nothing in place to deal with the social impacts. In 2012 the WA supreme court found its environmental approval to be illegal.
Bergmann said he wasn’t confident the wider community had worked out how to engage with Indigenous people, and thought there was misinterpretation of how bodies such as land councils and regulatory bodies worked.
The conference continues in Darwin, with federal minister for agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, expected to address delegates on Wednesday.
