Status: This Bill was introduced to the Legislative Council on the 1 of November 2018.
Stated Purpose: This Bill would excise an area of approximately 78,578 hectares from the Great Victoria Desert Nature Reserve 30490, in order to enable the grant of registrable tenure for the Tjuntuntjara Aboriginal community. The Tunjtuntjara community has existed on the western extent of the Reserve since 1988 but has never had a registrable land interest over the occupied area, or legal access to it, which has traditionally limited the community’s ability to seek investment for required infrastructure. The community members are part of a larger Aboriginal group known as the ‘Spinifex People’.
Native title implications: This Bill purports to grant the Tuntjtuntjara Community land lease to the Pila Nguru Aboriginal Corporation, the registered native title body corporate holding the native title rights and interests of the Spinifex People on trust, and being the people who will benefit from the grant. As native title has already been determined over the area of the proposed excision in favour of the Spinifex people, the grant of a new land tenure to the Community will constitute a future act under the Native Title Act 1992 and thus require the execution and registration of an Indigenous Land Use Agreement.
Once excised, the land is no longer ‘Crown land’ and thus will also become open to mining under s 18 of the Mining Act 1978, as well as exploration and recovery processes for petroleum or geothermal energy processes under the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Resources Act 1967. Clauses 9 and 10 of the Bill offer a ‘degree of protection’ from mining and exploration respectively, through substitute arrangements. These will require that the written consent of the Minister for Mines and Petroleum is required before mining or exploration may be carried out on the land.
According to the Second Reading Speech, it is not intended that any of the tenure changes should extinguish or adversely impact the native title rights held by the registered native title body corporate for the Spinifex People.
For further information please see the Explanatory Memorandum.