SPEECH BY NSWALC
CHAIRPERSON BEV MANTON
NORTH WESTERN REGIONAL FORUM
5 FEBRUARY 2009, MOREE NSW
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First, as is our custom, let me acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand today.
Secondly, I want to thank my fellow NSWALC Councillor, Steve Gordon, for inviting me to speak at today's community meeting.
And it's good to have Steve with us today because I know in recent times his health hasn't been the best.
We should not underestimate the importance of today's meeting - a call to all members of the community, whether or not they are land council members, to attend.
It is a landmark meeting.
It is a meeting to try and secure the future of your local Aboriginal Land Council.
Steve's message to everyone in the community was clear - get involved, get involved with your Local Aboriginal Land Council.
Moree needs one.
Just like the 120 other communities who have their own land council throughout New South Wales.
They fulfil that must valuable and fundamental of purposes - to try and return land to us, the first Australians.
We need to have strong and functional land councils.
Moree, like so many land councils at various times in their histories, has had its difficulties.
Sometimes significant difficulties.
We all know it has had many administrators.
Now we have reached the point where we want to put in place the stepping stones that will underpin its future, a strong and durable future.
That will not come without its challenges.
We as your elected representatives know those challenges will be hard to overcome.
Since taking office some eighteen months ago the State Land Council has taken practical steps to improve the health and well being of our people.
We will be spending more than $200 million over at least the next 25 years to provide basic water and sewerage services to our people in partnership with the State Government.
We have put aside $30 million of our compensation monies aside to fund a perpetual education scholarship scheme to increase opportunity.
We are now looking at a number of other practical and innovative ways to provide greater community benefits in housing, health and business development and to increase participation in the political process.
We are working closely with both State and Federal Governments on these initiatives.
However it is clear to me, and my fellow Councillors, that we must find a balance between the practical and the symbolic, and between rights and responsibilities.
Only when that balance is struck can we truly believe that we have realised the vision of all of those great Aboriginal fighters for land rights in New South Wales.
And Moree has provided a number of those great warriors.
Without them we wouldn't be where we are today.
Today I believe firmly that the time has come for Aboriginal people at the grassroots level to continue that fight and deliver on their vision, to fight for agendas that were set by our great warriors.
They include such fundamental rights as
- Land rights
- A Treaty
And other key outcomes of more contemporary times such as:
- A properly elected national representative body
- The re-instatement of the Racial Discrimination Act, and
- An end to the racist and impractical Northern Territory Intervention - in particularly the quarantining of wages.
Steve has said for those who aren't members of the Moree Aboriginal Land Council to join up.
It's free.
It doesn't cost you a cent.
But any land council must enjoy the support of the people in its area.
It must have full and active community involvement.
I urge you to sign up and join the struggle for justice and rights.
But I must warn you that by stepping forward the path we tread won't be easy.
We need your determination, your will to right the wrongs.
There are many challenges that we will have to confront on the road ahead - but we need to work together.
Let us walk and work together.
A big task.
But surely one worth striving for.