May 03, 2002 MEDIA RELEASE

TALKING TREATY IN NEWCASTLE AREA

The New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC) is hosting a series of meetings in the Newcastle area this week to ask local Aboriginal people their views on the concept of a treaty.

The meetings, which are co-hosted by ATSIC and are being held around the State, are designed to inform the Indigenous community about how a treaty might work and get its feed-back on the concept of a treaty.

"We have seen the failure of Government efforts to legislate for our rights through laws, the latest disaster being the highly expensive and litigious Native Title legislation. This hasn't worked for Aboriginal people, especially those of NSW - which has the country's largest Indigenous population," NSWALC Councillor for the Sydney / Newcastle Region, Veronica Graf said.

"However, we are not advocating a treaty in these meetings, nor are we negotiating anything to do with a treaty. These meetings are purely to inform and educate our people about what treaties are. Once properly informed the community can then make up their mind as to whether they wish to proceed down the path of negotiating a treaty.

"For too long, we have been told what's best for us by governments who couldn't be bothered consulting us about our own future. Our people are telling us that they don't want the treaty issue hijacked by government and other non-Indigenous interests. They want to make their own decisions about whether or not they want a treaty, and if so, what sort of treaty it should be."

Participants will be asked to complete a Treaty Survey Form at the end of the consultation workshop. The survey form, which looks at the seven key issues discussed in the workshop, will assist NSWALC in understanding the views of Aboriginal people on these issues. This information on the survey will be collated by NSWALC and put into a report which will be used to plan a strategy on how to proceed on this issue.

The first of the local area's meetings was held in Maitland today and another two will be held in Newcastle tomorrow (April 24th) at Garden Suburb and then on May 6th at the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council in Gosford. Both meetings will be held from 11am to 3pm.