
CHAIRMAN'S WELCOME
28 February 2010
It is with great personal engagement I invite you to engage with and support the Cape York Land Council. The Land Council is one of the organisations working to realise the Cape York Agenda. Our Agenda is to resolve land ownership and land tenure in Cape York Peninsula, to make a break with the passive welfare economy and fully integrate into the real economy. Our Agenda is the best education and real work for our children and home ownership. We strive to resolve the tension between economic development and conservation into a win-win situation for both. We want our cultures to survive and develop, and enrich the cultures of Australia and the world.
I have lived this Agenda long before distinguished leader Noel Pearson put it on paper. I have been in the private sector employment and in business for decades, and the country’s first Indigenous trade union leader. My five children have been successful in their education and in the labour market.
My passion is the culture, sea and land of Cape York; the fishing industry, and traditional fishing and hunting, and our Indigenous land management. I work in The North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA) and other organisations for the sustainable management of Northern Australia.
Our Land Council’s logotype has borrowed its colours from your traditional culture and from the fire of our traditional land management. That fire and passion has driven Cape York’s traditional owners to create and run this organisation through two decades. The land council is not a lawyers’ construct that exists in response to the recognition of native title and the creation of State land rights legislation; indeed Cape York people started the land council before native title and have been driving in the major legal cases, campaigns and agreements that have brought Indigenous land ownership forward.
In spite of this fiery passion we have made mistakes. The Land Council has been through difficult times and I have made mistakes myself. But we have learnt, and organisation is now one of the best in the country.
Our administration, management system and finances are efficient and transparent. In every case where there is a land-related issue we can establish and facilitate the contact between the correct group of traditional owners and non-Indigenous private sector or government organisations.
My vision for the Land Councils future is that we offer integrated solutions that resolve native title, State land dealings under Queensland legislation, land tenure and home ownership issues at the same time. These integrated solutions will provide the link to Welfare Reform and business development.
We can be entrusted with that role because of our efficient and accountable organisation, our competence in native title, and our roots in the Cape York communities. We are the representative movement of Cape York traditional owners, and with the aid of our non-Indigenous staff we have built the best organisation of its kind. We will work in partnerships with government and the private sector to deliver land equity and certainty, tenure certainty, economic development, home ownership, conservation, cultural richness and a closing of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.