Opinion & Commentary
Land rights must come first
‘The difference between a black man and a white man is this: when a white man dies his family gets his house; when a black man dies the government gets it.’
So revealed a Palm Island Housing Report in 2006. We’ve heard the sentiment, colloquially stated, again and again from Aboriginal so-called landowners. They have been paying rent for years for run-down shacks built on land they theoretically own to which they cannot get individual title.
That’s right: Indigenous lands are nearly 20 per cent of Australia — an area that would make it the 20th largest country in the world— but Indigenous families cannot build a house on these lands. In mainstream Australia, private property rights complement communal property such as parks, roads and schools, and are the foundation of Australia’s high living standards. The higgledy piggledy return of lands to Indigenous Australians has resulted in a chaos of tenures ranging from freehold to mere access rights. Importantly, individual landowners were not identified. The benefits from Indigenous lands therefore flow to amorphous trusts, councils, andother organisations. Little reaches individual Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.
The 70,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders on Indigenous lands are condemned to living in overcrowded, decrepit ‘social’ housing. Many should be bulldozed. They would not be certified as fit for occupation in mainstream Australia.
‘Social’ houses are built for $400,000 to $900,000, although similar private houses can be provided in remote communities for $200,000 to $250,000. More than $6 billion of Commonwealth funding alone has been allocated to a Remote Indigenous Housing Program that, according to Bob Beadman, the Northern Territory’s Co-ordinator General for Remote Services, when completed, will not address the chronic and acute overcrowding in many Growth Towns.
The benefits of low rents for ‘social’ housing are far outweighed by subsidies for home ownership such as first homeowners’ grants and capital gains tax exemptions. They are denied to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders living on Indigenous lands.
The majority of Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (some 330,000) live and work in capital cities and regional towns. Like other Australians, a high proportion of these families — 68 per cent — own or are buying their own homes. (Australia wide home ownership, reflecting a higher socio-economic median, is 72%.)
Sixteen families have recently acquired long-term leases in Nguiu in the Tiwi Islands. They are virtually the only secure titles for private houses on Indigenous lands. These leases became possible after the Tiwi Land Council gave a 99-year head lease over Nguiu to the Commonwealth. The Anindilyakwa Land Council gave a 40-year head lease — renewable for a further 40 years — to the Commonwealth for communities on Groote and Bickerton islands. Similar head leases are proposed for other Northern Territory townships. While these townships include about 85 per cent of the Northern Territory’s remote Indigenous population, they do not cover 99.9 per cent of Indigenous land, which includes hundreds of outstations.
Landowners are understandably reluctant to hand control over their lands to the Commonwealth for long periods. But housing leases expire with the head lease. Most Northern Territory housing leases will thus be shorter than 40 years. This is barely long enough to provide security for a long-term mortgage.
Queensland has passed long-term lease legislation but not acted on it. The other states are even further behind. A Commonwealth Department of Families, Communities, Housing and Indigenous Affairs’ Indigenous Home Ownership Issues Paper does not show a way forward for private housing.
Handing control of Indigenous land to the Commonwealth is not the only option. Establishing private property rights requires individual Indigenous landowners to be identified. Like strata title owners, they could form body corporates that could plan land use for communal purposes as well as for private housing and businesses. Landowner body corporates could formalise their overall land ownership through freehold or long term (perpetual or 999-year) leases and issue long term sub-leases giving secure titles to private houses and business premises. Sublease covenants would prevent the alienation of Indigenous lands.
Making secure titles available for private business premises is as important as private housing. Current promises that townships will develop like normal country towns are just that: promises. Indigenous townships lack hairdressers and beauty salons, convenience stores, repair shops and other small businesses. Dreary communal stores barricaded behind iron bars are reminiscent of Omsk under communism, only without the snow. There is no dearth of Indigenous entrepreneurs, but they have to leave Indigenous lands or stay on welfare. Government and non-government organisations charged with Indigenous business formation do not seem to understand that the lack of private property rights is the insurmountable obstacle to private business.
Incessant litanies of woe from remote communities despite billions of dollars being spent on band-aid interventions show that private housing and business cannot wait any longer. To kick-start private housing, long-term tenants on Indigenous lands should be offered — at no cost — the ownership of the houses in which they live. Under many existing land tenures, all ‘improvements’ including houses and other buildings, even where constructed or funded by housing associations, territory, state, or federal governments, are owned by the relevant Indigenous land trusts or councils. The existing tenants, therefore, have a better claim to ‘ownership’ of the house they live in than the entity that built it.
The transfer of ownership would be more valued than apologies. Landowner body corporate could take over the management of remaining ‘social’ housing, using the rents to carry out maintenance and improve standards by their own efforts. Other families could start building their own homes under interim title arrangements. There is no shortage of land in remote communities! Non-governmental organisations currently spinning their wheels could engage in effective programs supporting private housing. If remote families take ownership of their existing ‘social’ houses, police are unlikely to jump into their four-wheel-drives and rush 250 kilometres down dirt roads to evict men, women and children out of shacks that would be bulldozed in any mainstream Australian town.
Emeritus Professor Hughes is a senior fellow and Sara Hudson is a policy analyst with the Centre for Independent Studies. Mark Hughes is an independent researcher.
