The next item on the ‘truth telling’ agenda will impose even more control

What’s intended to come after the Voice is equally important in this referendum debate. The Makarrata Commission is “to supervise a process of agreement making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”. The word ‘Makarrata’ is Yolngu Matha which the Uluru Statement from the Heart describes as meaning “the coming together after a struggle.

Dealing with the “truth-telling about our history” scares me. Is the Makarrata Commission going to be pushing its own version of history? Why does truth-telling about history need to be supervised at all, let along by some big bureaucratic commission? This is Big Brother stuff.

The first part: ”supervise a process of agreement making between governments and First Nations” – is also worrying. Australia’s ‘first nations’ are the traditional owner groups, like the Bundjalung, the Gumbaynggirr, Yuin and Yolngu peoples. A treaty is an agreement between a government and a traditional owner group. So, the Makarrata Commission would assume the role of supervising treaty conversations and negotiations between governments and traditional owners.

Note the reference to ‘governments’… plural. Several state and territory governments are already in discussions with traditional owners about treaties. The Liberal Party position on treaties has long been that it is a state and territory matter because those governments have jurisdiction over land rights and native title.

When these agreements are made with traditional owners, we’ll see what is left for the Commonwealth to do with a Makarrata Commission. Or is the intention for the Makarrata Commission to assume supervision of these discussions too? I don’t see why we need a centralised bureaucracy sitting over the top of all treaty conversations and negotiations across the country at every level of government.

Another type of agreement between traditional owner groups and governments are Native Title agreements, which are mostly entered into with state and territory governments. Registered Native Title Body Corporates currently hold some form of native title over 43.1% of Australia’s land area.

These agreements are currently made directly between the relevant government and a native title claimant group (constituted through a prescribed body corporate) who receives legal and other expert advice which may be provided by a native title services corporation or by other advisers.

Once agreed it can be brought before the Native Title Tribunal and registered through the Federal Court. Presumably a Makarrata Commission would supervise all of this. What will that supervision entail? Do the proponents of the Uluru Statement from the Heart envisage the Makarrata Commission representing or speaking for traditional owner groups in native title claims and negotiations? Will it become some kind of native title gatekeeper? I believe most traditional owners would find that unacceptable.

Conversations and negotiations between governments and traditional owners, on any subject, do not need supervision by a huge bureaucracy or to be brokered by a middleman.

The Makarrata Commission would be an unnecessary shadow governance body. And we don’t need it.

Through the native title process we already have representative organisations tied to traditional owner groups. For any traditional owner groups who don’t have recognised native title or a native title claim, there’s no reason they can’t have a representative body also.

All the information and data required to identify Australia’s traditional owner groups, their language, their country, their land and their eligible members is available. Representative bodies could be established for every one of them based on the native title model.

The Voice and Makarrata Commission sound like more bureaucracy controlling Indigenous lives and bossing us around. A key objective of the 1967 referendum was to dismantle the state and territory boards and protection boards that controlled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives on a day-to-day basis. It seems to me we’re just going to create new ones. These huge bureaucracies will also involve more expense and fewer resources getting to where they are needed outside of Canberra, in regional and remote areas.

Under my Goori culture, (Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin), only people of the country can speak for their country. I can’t speak for other people’s country. Where is the voice for the men and women on country? How do they fit into the Voice and the Makarrata Commission? These traditional owners seem to be the forgotten people.

Traditional owners should be their own voice for their own nation and country. They don’t need some new national Voice or a Makarrata Commission to speak for them. They need the government to listen and go talk to them through their own representative bodies.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine is Director of the Indigenous Forum at the Centre for Independent Studies.

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Photo by Jonas Schallenberg