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Concerns that native title changes may "water" down rights Thursday, 21 January 2010 By Leah McLennan NATIONAL, January 29, 2010: Indigenous leaders have raised concerns over federal government plans to speed up native title claims, saying it "waters down" their rights. The amendments to the Native Title Act give the Federal Court the power to manage the mediation of land claims by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. The Native Title Amendment Bill 2009 passed the upper house without amendment last year and is currently being considered by the Senate. The bill will give the Federal Court the central role in managing all native title claims, allowing it to more forcefully pull recalcitrant parties into line. And if a matter becomes deadlocked, the court would be able to use its case management powers to ensure it is resolved. The changes are aimed at speeding up the process of native title claims, with a current backlog of about 500. But National Native Title Council chair Brian Wyatt says the people he represents were "change fatigued" and there's no need to alter the act. "There has been amendment after amendment and there's been a general erosion of rights from a native title perspective," Mr Wyatt told a senate committee hearing in Sydney on Thursday. "The system we have is not bad. We can make it work." Cape York Land Council chairman Richie Ahmat also said continuous amendments to the act would diminish native title rights until they became worthless. "We believe in Cape York that to prosper the native title act should not be tampered with," he told the senators. NTSCorp (Native Title Service Corp) chief executive Warren Mundine said the bill doesn't address the problem of bureaucratic inefficiencies. He said the government was undertaking a process of "piecemeal picking" at the native title act. "We don't object to strengthening the act and making it work more smoothly, but we believe what's been happening since 1993 is more of a watering down of the act," Mr Mundine said. "In our experience the (current) process works well. "When people sit down and negotiate we find the process works quite quickly." The legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee is due to report to the Senate on February 2. - AAP Printer Friendly Version  Email Story to a Friend Submit Letter to Editor * A NOTE TO OUR ONLINE READERS: The multi-award winning National Indigenous Times is an independent newspaper and receives no government funding whatsoever. Our print edition is published every fortnight, but because of the public interest nature of our reporting, we ensure all of our stories are available online at no cost. Thus, we rely entirely on advertising and subscriptions to survive, and hope you'll consider subscribing to NIT's print edition to help us continue our work, or even just browse our Online Shop.

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