Indigenous land in Australia: a quantitative assessment of Indigenous landholdings in 2000

This paper estimates the area of land held by Indigenous people in Australia in 2000. It details the legislation and programs that have lead to the accrual of land for Indigenous people in Australia since the concept of Indigenous ownership of land under Australian law, rather than the allocation of reserve lands, was first addressed in the mid 1960s. It is based on a literature review and data provided by a variety of government agencies and Indigenous organisations around Australia. Using this information, the paper estimates that Indigenous Australians either own, control or have management arrangements over land in the range of 16 to 18 per cent of the Australian continent. The lower range is based on reliable data whereas the higher range is speculative due to the fact that the aggregated area of many small landholdings has never been quantified. As the paper demonstrates, the types of tenures held by Indigenous Australians differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and within jurisdictions. This is a result not only of the federal system of government in Australia, where land management and administration is the role of the State or Territory governments, but also a product of different priorities and objectives set by Federal, State and Territory governments in addressing Indigenous peoples' aspirations for land. In some States and Territories, land rights regimes exist for lands to be claimed across the entire jurisdiction, while in other States and Territories land rights legislation is limited to the grant of specific parcels of land. The plethora of programs, statutes and government agencies involved in dealing with Indigenous land over the past decades has meant that, across Australia today, there is extreme diversity in the types of ownership, beneficiaries, tenures, property rights and governance structures available to Indigenous people. Indigenous landholdings in Australia in 2000 can be characterised as follows: most Indigenous land is located in the remote rangeland regions of the continent. There are many more Indigenous land parcels in the south-east of the continent; however these parcels are very small in area; about half of the aggregated area of Indigenous land in Australia is located in the Northern Territory as a result of successful claims under the Commonwealth's Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976; the aggregated area of Indigenous land in Australia was yet to be influenced by land subject to native title recognition under the common law or the Native Title Act 1993; the area of land accrued by purchase with the assistance of Indigenous Land Acquisition programs is very small by comparison with land accrued by land rights legislation. However, the significance of the acquisition programs cannot be underestimated as they may be the only means by which Indigenous aspirations to land can be addressed in many parts of Australia. The paper also assesses the area of Indigenous land in each State and Territory. It details the programs and legislative frameworks of the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments which contribute to addressing Indigenous aspirations for land in each jurisdiction

Reforming the Northern Territory Land Rights Act's financial framework into a more logical and more workable model

None available.The financial framework of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) has never been based on sound economic principles or even logical accounting, let alone clear and transparent policy messages or even obvious directives to Indigenous interests in the Northern Territory. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that Justice Woodward tried hard to accommodate pre-land rights vested interests in his Royal Commission recommendations that were largely incorporated into the legislation enacted in 1976 and which became law on Australia Day, 1977. Nevertheless, it is also apparent that Woodward did not intend that the financial framework remain unaltered, by and large, for 25 years after conclusion of his Commission in 1974 (Woodward 1974). The recent recommendations of the Review of the ALRA by John Reeves propose radical reforms to the financial framework of the legislation. Rather than restructuring or reformulating the prescribed statutory allocations of the current financial framework, Reeves recommended that it be replaced by discretionary allocations determined by a new statutory authority—the Northern Territory Aboriginal Council (NTAC). The Review’s recommendations have been criticised widely for many reasons. Much of this criticism has been focused on the radical reform of institutions, the methodological approach of the Review, and a lack of understanding of key concepts and constructs within the legislative framework (for example, the concept of traditional ownership). Most notable amongst the criticisms is that directed at the Reeves notion that the Land Rights Act should be the primary framework to facilitate Indigenous socioeconomic advancement in the Northern Territory (see, for example, Altman, Morphy and Rowse 1999). Our discussion here is not a detailed critique of the Reeves Review; rather that Review is placed in the sequential history of a series of reviews over the last two decades. The major focus of this Working Paper is to re-examine the logic and historical policy legacies associated with the financial streams of monies paid under the Land Rights Act. This is an issue that is neither rarely explored nor evidently understood by past and current reviewers. We intend to proceed firstly by re-assessing the history, issues of principle and logic in the construction of the ALRA’s financial framework and the inherent long-term problems and inconsistencies in that framework. In addressing these problems and inconsistencies, we raise three very straightforward but crucial questions informed to a great extent by earlier research undertaken on the ALRA’s financial framework by reviewers, academics, government agencies and consultants. Should royalties be paid to people in areas affected, and if so, how much should be paid, to whom and for what purposes? How much should land councils receive, for what statutory functions and from where (royalties or consolidated revenue or both)? Should royalties be paid to Northern Territory Aboriginal people as grants, and why? In conclusion, and for discussion purposes, we will raise some options for change to the ALRA’s financial framework and ask how a more logical and more workable model can be negotiated and devised given competing interests and pressures for reform

The Indigenous Land Corporation: a new approach to land acquisition and land management?

The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) is a relatively new Commonwealth statutory authority. Although it commenced operations on 5 June 1995, it has only recently started its functional operations of land acquisition and management. However, it is new not only in the sense of its short operational existence, but also in the unique policy mechanisms enshrined in its enabling legislation that aim to provide better outcomes in Indigenous land acquisition and land management. This Discussion Paper explores those unique policy mechanisms and contrasts them with past Commonwealth policies and practices of Indigenous land acquisition and management. It is argued that notwithstanding these mechanisms, the potential for success for the ILC lies in its ability to substantially address long-standing issues in Indigenous land acquisition and land management. Since the early 1970s a number of Commonwealth agencies have been charged with policy and program responsibility for Indigenous land acquisition and each institution has displayed a comparatively different approach. We suggest that the role of land acquisition as a measure designed to promote policies of self-determination and self-management for Indigenous Australians has rarely been clearly defined. There has been continual shifting between cultural, social and economic objectives; some approaches have focused purely on rural and remote acquisitions, while others have allowed urban land purchase. The paper demonstrates the combined outcome of market acquisition programs and land rights legislation, noting that it is the latter which has been most successful in addressing Indigenous aspirations to land. More than 15 per cent of the Australian continent is currently under the control of Indigenous interests. Notably, most of this land is located in the rangelands and a large proportion is marginal, overgrazed and degraded, and requires significant financial commitment to restore. The extent and type of land that makes up the Indigenous estate raises significant policy implications for the ILC as one of its major functions is to assist Indigenous people to manage their land regardless of whether that land was acquired by the ILC or another agency or granted through land rights or other laws

Native title compensation: historic and policy perspectives for an effective and fair regime

The concept of paying Aboriginal people compensation based on royalties was first introduced in the early 1950s. Critical ambiguities now exist in this area of policy with respect to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) and, more recently, to the future acts regime of the Native Title Act 1993 (NTA). This paper aims to: provide essential historical background to contemporary issues of compensation; explain the mining moneys and compensation regimes in the ALRA, providing illustrative examples from a number of agreements for major resource developments in the Northern Territory; briefly evaluate whether ALRA precedents have been incorporated in the right to negotiate processes in the NTA, using as an illustrative example the Century Mine Agreement; and discuss some principles that need to be incorporated in any framework that will provide effective and fair compensation for native title and to highlight some practical implementation issues for those providing expert input into the assessment of such compensation

Financial aspects of Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory

In July 1997 the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Senator The Hon John Herron, announced that the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 would be reviewed. Senator Herron appointed Mr John Reeves QC to undertake the review. Mr Reeves submitted his report Building on Land Rights for the Next Generation: Report of the Review of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 to the Minister in August 1998. This Discussion Paper focuses on financial aspects of the legislation. Since commencement of the legislation in 1977, approximately $400 million in mining royalty equivalents (MREs) have been transferred from the Commonwealth's Consolidated Revenue Fund to the Aboriginals Benefit Reserve (ABR) (previously the Aboriginals Benefit Trust Account). In accordance with the legislation this amount has been disbursed to other institutions, including land councils and royalty associations, and to incorporated bodies to be used for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. In the 20 years of the operations of the legislation the apportionment of these funds has never been substantially reviewed nor rigorously contested. The review provided an opportunity to resolve a number of long-standing issues which have historical legacies and have proven to be ambiguous and contestable in their application. These include the proportional division of ABR receipts, the public or private nature of MREs, the usage of those moneys and the imposition of Mining Withholding Tax (MWT). This Discussion Paper argues that many of the institutions created by the legislation are operating suboptimally and that the review provided the potential to clearly define the role and objectives of the financial institutions created in the Land Rights Act. Current developments such as the prospect of statehood for the Northern Territory become important issues for examination particularly in the context of Commonwealth/Territory relations and the governance of the ABR in the 21st century. This paper also discusses the heterogeneous evolution of royalty associations noting that blanket recommendations are difficult to apply given that royalty associations have operated variably both over the life cycle of individual organisations, compared to other Indigenous organisations, and in the context of wider political and economic forces. Notwithstanding the comments of this paper, and the recommendations of the review, there remains an urgent need for further research and assessment of performance of these associations in order to evaluate past performance and future viability. Nevertheless, it is apparent that some immediate amendments to the legislation are required particularly in the area of accountability measures, clarification in respect of the purpose of mining royalty equivalents and the provision of mentoring services for the future development of royalty associations

Regionalisation of Northern Territory land councils

The dispersal of the powers exercised and functions performed by the two major land councils has been a subject of debate and recommendations on a number of occasions since the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 came into effect. The Reeves Review of the Act in 1998, and the subsequent Inquiry into that Review by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs (HORSCATSIA) this year, have raised the issue to prominence again and ensured that it will be dealt with in the coming round of statutory amendments. This Discussion Paper considers the steps that have been taken towards regionalisation under the current provisions of the Act, and compares models for further regionalisation proposed by David Martin, the two land councils, and HORSCATSIA. These proposals, while more moderate than that of Reeves in that they all presume the continued existence of the Northern and Central Land Councils, differ on a number of points. Regionalisation within, or outside, the existing land council structures, provision for local initiative in seeking devolution, and the role of the Minister, are among the matters at issue in an attempt to secure both increased local or regional autonomy and improved land council efficiency. Funding of regionalised bodies also demands attention, given the criticisms directed at this aspect of the Reeves model. This paper goes on to express concern that regionalisation has been accepted as a selfevidently desirable policy, and that insufficient critical attention has been paid to the advantages expected to flow from its implementation. We begin our critique by distinguishing between ‘administrative’ regionalisation and ‘decision-making’ regionalisation of land council functions and powers. We then separate out the real process of decision-making from the formal act of decision-taking in the scheme of the Act. Most importantly, we point to the already localised character of decisions by traditional owners under the informed consent provisions, and argue that the primary danger posed by regionalisation is that the regional decision-takers will trespass upon the decision-making prerogatives of the traditional owners. While in our view this problem is a threat to the fundamental distribution of authority under the existing Act, and is sufficiently serious to call into question the rationale for moves towards greater regionalisation, the breadth of opinion, including local Aboriginal sentiment, in favour of more localised autonomy, needs to be accommodated. We therefore argue for a number of measures in mitigation. Establishing regional areas of sufficiently large size, each represented by a committee or council of sufficiently small size, and serviced, in the case of internal land council regionalisation, by professional staff employed through the central organisation, are steps intended to protect the informed consent procedures of the Act. Some formal certification witnessing the adequacy of those procedures in each case should also be introduced as part of the conditions attaching to the affixing of the land council common seal to agreements. As only some of these measures are available in the case of independent, or ‘breakaway’, land councils, some caution is due in approving more of these, especially in assessing the spread and depth of popular support

The use of proactive risk management to reduce emergency service vehicle crashes among firefighters

Introduction: Emergency service vehicle crashes (ESVCs), including rollovers and collisions with other vehicles and fixed objects, are a leading cause of death among U.S. firefighters. Risk management (RM) is a proactive intervention to identifying and mitigating occupational risks and hazards. The goal of this study was to assess the effect of RM in reducing ESVCs. Methods: Three fire departments (A, B and C), representing urban and suburban geographies, and serving medium to large populations, participated in facilitated RM programs to reduce their ESVCs. Interventions were chosen by each department to address their department-specific circumstances and highest risks. Monthly crash rates per 10,000 calls were calculated for each department an average of 28 months before and 23 months after the start of the RM programs. Interrupted time series analysis was used to assess the effect of the RM programs on monthly crash rates. Poisson regression was used to estimate the number of crashes avoided. Economic data from Department A were analyzed to estimate cost savings. Results: Department A had a 15.4% (P = 0.30) reduction in the overall monthly crash rate immediately post-RM and a 1% (P = 0.18) decline per month thereafter. The estimated two-year average cost savings due to 167 crashes avoided was $253,100 (95$192,355 - $313,885). Department B had a 9.7% (P = 0.70) increase in the overall monthly crash rate immediately post-RM and showed no significant changes in their monthly crash rate. Department C had a 28.4% (P = 0.001) reduction in overall monthly crash rate immediately post-RM and a 1.2% (P = 0.09) increase per month thereafter, with an estimated 122 crashes avoided. Conclusions: RM programs have the potential to reduce ESVCs in the fire service and their associated costs; results may vary based on the interventions chosen and how they are implemented. Practical applications: Risk management may be an effective and broadly implemented intervention to reduce ESVCs in the US fire service. (C) 2019 The Author(s). National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd.Open access articleThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

A Bi-Directional Refinement Algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions

The paper describes the refinement algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions (CIC) implemented in the interactive theorem prover Matita. The refinement algorithm is in charge of giving a meaning to the terms, types and proof terms directly written by the user or generated by using tactics, decision procedures or general automation. The terms are written in an "external syntax" meant to be user friendly that allows omission of information, untyped binders and a certain liberal use of user defined sub-typing. The refiner modifies the terms to obtain related well typed terms in the internal syntax understood by the kernel of the ITP. In particular, it acts as a type inference algorithm when all the binders are untyped. The proposed algorithm is bi-directional: given a term in external syntax and a type expected for the term, it propagates as much typing information as possible towards the leaves of the term. Traditional mono-directional algorithms, instead, proceed in a bottom-up way by inferring the type of a sub-term and comparing (unifying) it with the type expected by its context only at the end. We propose some novel bi-directional rules for CIC that are particularly effective. Among the benefits of bi-directionality we have better error message reporting and better inference of dependent types. Moreover, thanks to bi-directionality, the coercion system for sub-typing is more effective and type inference generates simpler unification problems that are more likely to be solved by the inherently incomplete higher order unification algorithms implemented. Finally we introduce in the external syntax the notion of vector of placeholders that enables to omit at once an arbitrary number of arguments. Vectors of placeholders allow a trivial implementation of implicit arguments and greatly simplify the implementation of primitive and simple tactics

Radio continuum observations of Class I protostellar disks in Taurus: constraining the greybody tail at centimetre wavelengths

We present deep 1.8 cm (16 GHz) radio continuum imaging of seven young stellar objects in the Taurus molecular cloud. These objects have previously been extensively studied in the sub-mm to NIR range and their SEDs modelled to provide reliable physical and geometrical parametres.We use this new data to constrain the properties of the long-wavelength tail of the greybody spectrum, which is expected to be dominated by emission from large dust grains in the protostellar disk. We find spectra consistent with the opacity indices expected for such a population, with an average opacity index of beta = 0.26+/-0.22 indicating grain growth within the disks. We use spectra fitted jointly to radio and sub-mm data to separate the contributions from thermal dust and radio emission at 1.8 cm and derive disk masses directly from the cm-wave dust contribution. We find that disk masses derived from these flux densities under assumptions consistent with the literature are systematically higher than those calculated from sub-mm data, and meet the criteria for giant planet formation in a number of cases.Comment: submitted MNRA