State vetoes Cape York land clearing
03.06.2009
A Howard government project to enable Aboriginal people on Cape York to build their own homes has been stalled for more than two years because the Queensland Government is insisting that trees in the vast unpopulated region cannot be cleared.
The delay has become so serious that Hopevale's Mayor, Greg McLean, will be without a home in six months because he has to give back the one he is renting to his sister, who is returning to the community from Cairns where she has had to live to receive thrice-weekly dialysis treatment for kidney failure.
But with a dialysis machine now being installed at nearby Cooktown hospital, she can return to her home and get her treatment there.
Mr McLean and his wife, Joan, expected the freehold home development project in Hopevale would have proceeded and they would have purchased their own home, but not a blade of grass has been cut on the 200ha block.
Howard government indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough gained approval for the development in March 2007 and $15million was provided to cover the infrastructure costs -- surveying, roads, sewage, water and electricity, with Indigenous Business Australia as the lead agency handling the proposal and managing the funding.
The Queensland Government ordered an environmental study of the block owned in freehold title by the Hopevale Council, which bought it several decades ago from a cattle grazier whose family had owned it for more than a century.
The state Government has told Hopevale that because the block is forest country, it cannot be cleared unless the council provides a similar area of cleared country for revegetation.
However, so little of the 110,000ha of land owned under native title by Hopevale people has ever been cleared that there is no such block available -- so a bureaucratic green tape deadlock has been reached and no work done.
Hopevale has a severe housing shortage with 1700 residents crammed into 224 homes. No new homes have been built for three years, and because of land tenure disputes with the Government, all the homes must be rented and nobody can buy one and own it.
Mr McLean yesterday said that home ownership by indigenous people should be more than just a dream.
``I have this week had to complete a tenancy agreement to try to get a rental home here, but there are none available,'' Mr McLean said.
``My wife and I had the reasonable expectation that this housing estate known as Miller's Block would be developed with the money that Mal Brough got for Hopevale, but that has not happened.''
Mr Brough, who is no longer in parliament, yesterday said it was appalling that the project had been allowed to stall through government ineptitude and bureaucratic bungling.
``Enabling Aboriginal and Islander people to own their own homes and provide for their families is something that is pivotal to getting rid of welfare dependency and giving them pride and dignity,'' he said.
``This was a farm for more than 100 years -- it is not pristine rainforest. It is unbelievable that government bungling has stalled this project and the money that the Howard government provided is sitting in a bank account somewhere. We have the temerity to demand that indigenous people get their act together, but the fact is, as is shown in this case, it is the Government that cannot get its act together.
``You just cannot keep doing this to people -- building them up and then putting artificial barriers in front of them. What does the Government really want from these people? Do they want them to live in sub-standard conditions or are we actually going to do something about it, as distinct from just continuing to talk and wring our hands?''
