GOVERNMENT POLICY

HIPP, HIPP, hooray for houses

Barkly News Pictorial spoke to Senator John Herron
Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs
when he was in Tennant recently to open one of the new HIPP houses.

How do you rate the achievements of the H.I.P.P Program?
The H.I.P.P. program is now part of the Commonwealth Housing Indigenous Program but the H.I.P.P. is Health Infrastructure Priority Project, so it's really a sub-division of the C.H.I.P. and a consultancy was done to determine the priorities as they exist and of course that's the reason that this part of the H.I.P.P. Program came to Tennant Creek because it was considered a greater priority than other priorities around Australia. Over 300 million dollars a year goes into the C.H.I.P. Program and 200 million goes into the H.I.P.P. Program.
So its not just housing, it goes into other things as well and that's where the health aspects come in, because we believe health is obviously related to the style of housing and also the roads and the dust and the water supply and the sewerage so its part of that.

And is this the way that the Government wants to see things going, in a sense that this is an example of local organisations winning the contracts?
Absolutely, and I've been encouraging that all around the place, and also the apprenticeships. If you contract out to private enterprise, you get the trainers and then if you make as part of that, that real apprenticeships occur so these people end up with training where they upgrade their skills, then they've got the opportunity of getting into mainstream construction and maintenance of the houses that are built. I think that's essential.
What we've seen today is a good example of that, you could easily see what those three apprentices were talking about, their enthusiasm and what they were getting out of it and I think that's important. I've gone around many communities and where you've got Aboriginal people involved in the training and the construction, you've always got a successful outcome. Where you bring in contractors outside who just come in, build and leave, there's no sense of ownership of the program, there's no sense of involvement in maintenance.
I can guarantee you that this one (the Julalikari HIPP) will work because it's done using locals. You heard some of the apprentices saying how much they look forward to being involved in the maintenance of the homes too.

Another group of people in town who seem to be happy with the program are the local sub-contractors who, because Julalikari, a local organisation, wins the contract to build the houses, then they can gain from it too.
Spin off, yeah that's right, Absolutely. That's the way to go because what you're doing then is keeping the money in the community as a whole. Not only the Aboriginal community, and that's what I'm trying to encourage, what I call regional autonomy, in other words, make sure the funds come down to that region and then they determine their priorities. The priorities might be housing in one place or it might be water supply, it might be sewerage, might be rubbish collection, but they're the ones that know - Canberra doesn't know!
If you can allocate the funding - and that's the direction the government is heading - allocate the funding to a particular group of people who've got the skills to do the job and then you retain the funds within that community and everybody benefits.
I've done that already with the Torres Strait Islands, that's on the board, so its not just pie in the sky that I'm talking about. With the Torres Strait Islander people, we've separated their budget from ATSIC, I've got the House of Representatives Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Affairs Committee to work out a structure whereby they can control their own budget and we've already done that through legislation and in this year's budget, we'll give them the funds.

Will ATSIC keep its existing role though?
It will, only in relation to mainlanders. Torres Strait Islander people - there are about 25,000 of them and 9,000 are in the Torres Straits and 16,000 are in the mainlands - so it's obvious that you can't really control the mainland distribution of funds from the Torres Straits, so we're leaving it with ATSIC. ATSIC will stay ATSIC with responsibility to the Torres Strait Islanders who are on the mainland. That was what was recommended by the House of Representatives Committee.

Does all this fit the Government's guidelines for Self Determination for Aboriginal people?
Well yeah, but I don't like the term Self Determination. Self Determination just means you determine the distribution of funds. I want to see people empowered, to have money in their pockets and to do it themselves and that's part of the program that I've released, removing the welfare shackles. There is no future in being on welfare the rest of your life. You're always going to be subject to vagaries of Government, you're going to be subject to recessions. Until you get the skills, like these apprentices have, until you get skills to have money in your pocket and control your own destiny then you're always going to be hooked on welfare. I think the big mistake that has been made in Aboriginal affairs for the last thirty years is that we've made Aboriginal people welfare dependent and if you ask them whether they want to be welfare dependent, they say, 'no we don't, we want money in our pockets, we want to get training, we want to control our own destiny'. I think one of the good things is - you can see for yourself, particularly in Tennant Creek, with the leadership that's shown by the ATSIC community here - that they've got the ability and the skills to do it. I'd be very happy for them to progress along in that direction just as the Torres Strait Islander people are. I think they can do it.
The Tiwi people can do it up at Bathurst and Melville Island. They're controlling their own education there. And they're getting outside contractors in and as part of that they have to have a training program for real apprenticeships and so they're another group that can do it. There are many groups around Australia that can do it.

Is C.D.E.P. as an employment scheme safe given the changes brought by the new Employment Provider Enterprises?
Yes. In fact I can confidently predict they'll be improvements in the C.D.E.P in the next budget.

There's a call from some parts of regional Australia which are suffering economically, for strategies to be worked out by communities which may not just be Aboriginal community strategies, they might be strategies for the whole community - Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal - to put together a submission for self help infrastructure projects. Do you see how this can happen?
It's the only way to go! I mean for example, in Western New South Wales, particularly in North Western New South Wales, the local government people realise that the major funding that is coming into the place is welfare, particularly to Aboriginal communities and you had duplication there. So an alliance was formed between the Aboriginal people and the local government authorities there and they called it the Murray/Barwon Alliance. The idea is that C.D.E.P workers contract for park clearing, rubbish collection or development of curbing using the equipment that was already in local Government. That way C.D.E.P didn't duplicate it and get more heavy machinery because they could use the machinery that was already in use by local Government who contract the services out. Everybody wins. Money comes into the council from C.D.E.P and the C.D.E.P workers get training and useful employment. The community benefits because all those things are being done by local labour - a great way to go. So I would encourage that. It's only been working there for six months, but the preliminary reports are that it's going well.

The Northern Territory Native Title Act presently allows for direct negotiation between Aboriginal communities and mining companies. There are two things that might effect that, firstly, the passing of the ten-point plan and the other is Statehood for the Northern Territory.
Well the first point is that number ten of the ten points. We believe in keeping it out of the way of the courts and doing it through individual negotiation. We would encourage that. Negotiation by the Native Title holders with whoever, whether it be miners, pastoralists, farmers, whatever - it doesn't matter. That's number ten of the ten-point plan, so we're strongly encouraging that. For example, of the two Native Title claims that have been settled, $210 million has been spent of tax payer's funds to achieve that and that's all gone on lawyers, basically. So we believe that there's more virtue in negotiation than in confrontation.
There are four major sticking points in the ten-point plan that the Senate found. One is the Racial Discrimination Act. The previous Government did not want to include that and it wasn't included because it makes a legal mine field. Everything that you ever do then could be subject to a claim that it was racially discriminatory. There are 227 different racial and ethnic groups in Australia today and that opens up the possibility of anything, so you know, being subject to the Racial Discrimination Act, we said that it shouldn't be.
We believe as part of the ten-point, that's it's up to the local Land Councils to determine, or the represented bodies, whoever they might be, to determine who are the traditional owners, because you've got multiple claims. In Western Australia we've got 13 different groups, all claimed to be the traditional owners of one particular part. And we say it's up to the Land Councils or represented bodies to determine the one claimant, and they object to that and that was knocked out in the Senate as well. That's called the Registration Test. They were the two main sticking points, but coming back to that number ten, no we have no difficulty, and I don't think the Senate had any difficulty with those few minor amendments to it.

What about Statehood?
The Prime Minister, and I was with him recently when he was in Darwin, agrees that the Northern Territory should become a State. I don't think there's any time line fixed on it except that the Chief Minister is keen that it becomes a State by the year 2000. I don't see Statehood effecting Native Title because with Native Title, the Commonwealth laws govern the whole of the country and of course you've got the Northern Territory Land Act anyway which has been in existence now for 20 years.

But wouldn't that power be handed to the NT Government?
Not necessarily. We've guaranteed the one-off right of veto regardless, you know, and the Northern Territory Government is against that. I think that if that handover occurs then we'd continue to guarantee that (the right of veto). Within the Northern Territory Land Act there is an initial right of veto by the Native Title holders.
John Reeves Q.C. is doing a review of the Northern Territory Land Act, the first one for 13 years. That report will be coming into me in July sometime, so we'll have a look at all of that at that time. It's not within his terms of references I understand it, to comment on the effects of Statehood, he may well do so, I don't know. The criteria that we used were very wide ranging, so it's possible for him to do that. The answer to your question is that I don't know.

Legal Aid apparently, is to remain with ATSIC, but will be subject to performance indicators. We're all interested to know what those indicators will be.
ATSIC itself did a review of the legal services and there was one legal service in particular that got into fault and that was the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service and ATSIC did a review of that. I believe, having seen that, that the criteria that were established within that, overcomes any future problems in relation to legal services and I'm hoping that those criteria are used Australia wide. But it's early days for that to occur because each one is autonomous in each State. The criteria are fairly detailed, I can't tell you off the top of my head entirely what they are but they for example include setting bench marks so that then you can determine the outcome. Are you keeping people out of the courts? Basically we want to keep people out of the courts rather than get them in the criminal justice process where they end up in gaol.
So those criteria include adequate representation of women and there are a few unfortunate that occurred in the past, where if a man and woman were involved in a claim, the tendency was for women to get second choice about representation. So one of those criteria are that if a woman makes a complaint and the legal service is already representing the man in the process, then an outside legal service is contracted to provide a service for the woman and they're the sort of things that are in these criteria that have been established. My belief is, having studying that that what the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service have produced could be a template for the rest of Australia.

Do you think there is going to be a double dissolution?
I don't know, I think it's absurd we have got two greens, one from Tasmania, one from Western Australia with a very small minority group vote and independent from Tasmania, controlling the outcome of legislation. But that aside, we do have a double dissolution trigger as a Government now, based on Native Title, based on Industrial regulations, the unfair dismissal laws and we've also got other triggers that constitute a double dissolution. We have to activate that before October, under the Constitution you can't have a double dissolution election when there is less than six months to the date when the next election is due. The next election is due in March 1999 so it has to be before October. The Government could announce it before then and then have it after October but who knows, I think it will be up to Prime Minister. Within our structure, it's the Prime Minister who determines when the election will be. Native Title has obviously bogged down now, there is significant hold up of mining and exploration which we depend upon for our prosperity.

Is the main purpose of it to have a joint sitting and get the legislation passed?
The main purpose is to get the legislation passed with a joint sitting. Unless of course the Labor Party changes its position on any of those matters. Those independents would be insignificant if the Labour party agreed with what we are proposing. So if they change their minds and we did not have a double dissolution, yes those bills could go through. But if they maintain their position and the independents and Democrats maintain their position, then we have to have a double dissolution to get those bills through and we believe those bills are essential for opening up and resolving the problems that the Native Title Act has brought about.
If you believed the Labour Party in 1993 you would have thought no problems would occur and here we are 5 years later, 2 claims only settled out of over 700 Native Title claims in this country. You'd think they'd have a conscience about this because it was their legislation in 1993 that produced this fiasco. It's now five years later and it is a fiasco. Now they're opposing the resolution of that fiasco and we think that's insane.

You don't think that if we do have a double dissolution and it's extensively on Native Title, it will send an adverse message to the Aborignal community?
No. You see our amendments to the Native Title Act, first of all respect Native Title. We respect it, we're not saying abolish it. Do you recall there was a problem particularly with National Party people who said that it should be abolished - get rid of Native Title altogether. We say, 'no, the High Court has determined there should be Native Title'. Then the Wik determination said that Native Title was revived in pastoral leases and we respect that too. Then after six months of consultation and probably two years of preparation, we brought forward the resolution - when we went to the last election we said we'd resolve this problem. It has to be resolved in Australia's interests. So, we don't believe that sends the wrong message. There are many indigenous people who have pastoral leases too.

More, hopefully in the future?
Yes, more hopefully. We have the Indigenous Land Fund which will be spending $45 million a year, forever, to allow Indigenous people to buy land that is not available under Native Title.
I keep saying to people in relation to Native Title, 'where is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in terms of Native Title'? I don't see it. We've got this $45 million a year that's there in perpetuity for people to purchase land. And isn't that far better? You can buy freehold land with that in the long term, it might take a little longer, but it'll achieve the same objective. There are only 350,000 Aborignal people in Australia and the median age is 20, in others words half are under the age of 20 years age. The good news is of course is that there are 9,000 now in secondary and tertiary education and there are 30,000 doing TAFE courses, or in education.
So I think the hope for the future is in young Aboriginal people, who are either doing formal education, or like today, upgrading skills. That's going to make a big difference.
I think it's going to make Native Title redundant. Philosophically it's always there, we accept that, but in the long term for the future prosperity of Aboriginal people it has to come through the other mechanism of upgrading skills or education so that they can control their own destiny.

HIPP, HIPP, hooray for houses Barkly News Pictorial spoke to Senator John Herron Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs when he was in Tennant recently to open one of the new HIPP houses. How do you rate the achievements of the H.I.P.P Program? The H.I.P.P. program is now part of the Commonwealth Housing Indigenous Program but the H.I.P.P. is Health Infrastructure Priority Project, so it's really a sub-division of the C.H.I.P. and a consultancy was done to determine the priorities as they exist and of course that's the reason that this part of the H.I.P.P. Program came to Tennant Creek because it was considered a greater priority than other priorities around Australia. Over 300 million dollars a year goes into the C.H.I.P. Program and 200 million goes into the H.I.P.P. Program. So its not just housing, it goes into other things as well and that's where the health aspects come in, because we believe health is obviously related to the style of housing and also the roads and the dust and the water supply and the sewerage so its part of that. And is this the way that the Government wants to see things going, in a sense that this is an example of local organisations winning the contracts? Absolutely, and I've been encouraging that all around the place, and also the apprenticeships. If you contract out to private enterprise, you get the trainers and then if you make as part of that, that real apprenticeships occur so these people end up with training where they upgrade their skills, then they've got the opportunity of getting into mainstream construction and maintenance of the houses that are built. I think that's essential. What we've seen today is a good example of that, you could easily see what those three apprentices were talking about, their enthusiasm and what they were getting out of it and I think that's important. I've gone around many communities and where you've got Aboriginal people involved in the training and the construction, you've always got a successful outcome. Where you bring in contractors outside who just come in, build and leave, there's no sense of ownership of the program, there's no sense of involvement in maintenance. I can guarantee you that this one (the Julalikari HIPP) will work because it's done using locals. You heard some of the apprentices saying how much they look forward to being involved in the maintenance of the homes too. Another group of people in town who seem to be happy with the program are the local sub-contractors who, because Julalikari, a local organisation, wins the contract to build the houses, then they can gain from it too. Spin off, yeah that's right, Absolutely. That's the way to go because what you're doing then is keeping the money in the community as a whole. Not only the Aboriginal community, and that's what I'm trying to encourage, what I call regional autonomy, in other words, make sure the funds come down to that region and then they determine their priorities. The priorities might be housing in one place or it might be water supply, it might be sewerage, might be rubbish collection, but they're the ones that know - Canberra doesn't know! If you can allocate the funding - and that's the direction the government is heading - allocate the funding to a particular group of people who've got the skills to do the job and then you retain the funds within that community and everybody benefits. I've done that already with the Torres Strait Islands, that's on the board, so its not just pie in the sky that I'm talking about. With the Torres Strait Islander people, we've separated their budget from ATSIC, I've got the House of Representatives Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Affairs Committee to work out a structure whereby they can control their own budget and we've already done that through legislation and in this year's budget, we'll give them the funds. Will ATSIC keep its existing role though? It will, only in relation to mainlanders. Torres Strait Islander people - there are about 25,000 of them and 9,000 are in the Torres Straits and 16,000 are in the mainlands - so it's obvious that you can't really control the mainland distribution of funds from the Torres Straits, so we're leaving it with ATSIC. ATSIC will stay ATSIC with responsibility to the Torres Strait Islanders who are on the mainland. That was what was recommended by the House of Representatives Committee. Does all this fit the Government's guidelines for Self Determination for Aboriginal people? Well yeah, but I don't like the term Self Determination. Self Determination just means you determine the distribution of funds. I want to see people empowered, to have money in their pockets and to do it themselves and that's part of the program that I've released, removing the welfare shackles. There is no future in being on welfare the rest of your life. You're always going to be subject to vagaries of Government, you're going to be subject to recessions. Until you get the skills, like these apprentices have, until you get skills to have money in your pocket and control your own destiny then you're always going to be hooked on welfare. I think the big mistake that has been made in Aboriginal affairs for the last thirty years is that we've made Aboriginal people welfare dependent and if you ask them whether they want to be welfare dependent, they say, 'no we don't, we want money in our pockets, we want to get training, we want to control our own destiny'. I think one of the good things is - you can see for yourself, particularly in Tennant Creek, with the leadership that's shown by the ATSIC community here - that they've got the ability and the skills to do it. I'd be very happy for them to progress along in that direction just as the Torres Strait Islander people are. I think they can do it. The Tiwi people can do it up at Bathurst and Melville Island. They're controlling their own education there. And they're getting outside contractors in and as part of that they have to have a training program for real apprenticeships and so they're another group that can do it. There are many groups around Australia that can do it. Is C.D.E.P. as an employment scheme safe given the changes brought by the new Employment Provider Enterprises? Yes. In fact I can confidently predict they'll be improvements in the C.D.E.P in the next budget. There's a call from some parts of regional Australia which are suffering economically, for strategies to be worked out by communities which may not just be Aboriginal community strategies, they might be strategies for the whole community - Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal - to put together a submission for self help infrastructure projects. Do you see how this can happen? It's the only way to go! I mean for example, in Western New South Wales, particularly in North Western New South Wales, the local government people realise that the major funding that is coming into the place is welfare, particularly to Aboriginal communities and you had duplication there. So an alliance was formed between the Aboriginal people and the local government authorities there and they called it the Murray/Barwon Alliance. The idea is that C.D.E.P workers contract for park clearing, rubbish collection or development of curbing using the equipment that was already in local Government. That way C.D.E.P didn't duplicate it and get more heavy machinery because they could use the machinery that was already in use by local Government who contract the services out. Everybody wins. Money comes into the council from C.D.E.P and the C.D.E.P workers get training and useful employment. The community benefits because all those things are being done by local labour - a great way to go. So I would encourage that. It's only been working there for six months, but the preliminary reports are that it's going well. The Northern Territory Native Title Act presently allows for direct negotiation between Aboriginal communities and mining companies. There are two things that might effect that, firstly, the passing of the ten-point plan and the other is Statehood for the Northern Territory. Well the first point is that number ten of the ten points. We believe in keeping it out of the way of the courts and doing it through individual negotiation. We would encourage that. Negotiation by the Native Title holders with whoever, whether it be miners, pastoralists, farmers, whatever - it doesn't matter. That's number ten of the ten-point plan, so we're strongly encouraging that. For example, of the two Native Title claims that have been settled, $210 million has been spent of tax payer's funds to achieve that and that's all gone on lawyers, basically. So we believe that there's more virtue in negotiation than in confrontation. There are four major sticking points in the ten-point plan that the Senate found. One is the Racial Discrimination Act. The previous Government did not want to include that and it wasn't included because it makes a legal mine field. Everything that you ever do then could be subject to a claim that it was racially discriminatory. There are 227 different racial and ethnic groups in Australia today and that opens up the possibility of anything, so you know, being subject to the Racial Discrimination Act, we said that it shouldn't be. We believe as part of the ten-point, that's it's up to the local Land Councils to determine, or the represented bodies, whoever they might be, to determine who are the traditional owners, because you've got multiple claims. In Western Australia we've got 13 different groups, all claimed to be the traditional owners of one particular part. And we say it's up to the Land Councils or represented bodies to determine the one claimant, and they object to that and that was knocked out in the Senate as well. That's called the Registration Test. They were the two main sticking points, but coming back to that number ten, no we have no difficulty, and I don't think the Senate had any difficulty with those few minor amendments to it. What about Statehood? The Prime Minister, and I was with him recently when he was in Darwin, agrees that the Northern Territory should become a State. I don't think there's any time line fixed on it except that the Chief Minister is keen that it becomes a State by the year 2000. I don't see Statehood effecting Native Title because with Native Title, the Commonwealth laws govern the whole of the country and of course you've got the Northern Territory Land Act anyway which has been in existence now for 20 years. But wouldn't that power be handed to the NT Government? Not necessarily. We've guaranteed the one-off right of veto regardless, you know, and the Northern Territory Government is against that. I think that if that handover occurs then we'd continue to guarantee that (the right of veto). Within the Northern Territory Land Act there is an initial right of veto by the Native Title holders. John Reeves Q.C. is doing a review of the Northern Territory Land Act, the first one for 13 years. That report will be coming into me in July sometime, so we'll have a look at all of that at that time. It's not within his terms of references I understand it, to comment on the effects of Statehood, he may well do so, I don't know. The criteria that we used were very wide ranging, so it's possible for him to do that. The answer to your question is that I don't know. Legal Aid apparently, is to remain with ATSIC, but will be subject to performance indicators. We're all interested to know what those indicators will be. ATSIC itself did a review of the legal services and there was one legal service in particular that got into fault and that was the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service and ATSIC did a review of that. I believe, having seen that, that the criteria that were established within that, overcomes any future problems in relation to legal services and I'm hoping that those criteria are used Australia wide. But it's early days for that to occur because each one is autonomous in each State. The criteria are fairly detailed, I can't tell you off the top of my head entirely what they are but they for example include setting bench marks so that then you can determine the outcome. Are you keeping people out of the courts? Basically we want to keep people out of the courts rather than get them in the criminal justice process where they end up in gaol. So those criteria include adequate representation of women and there are a few unfortunate that occurred in the past, where if a man and woman were involved in a claim, the tendency was for women to get second choice about representation. So one of those criteria are that if a woman makes a complaint and the legal service is already representing the man in the process, then an outside legal service is contracted to provide a service for the woman and they're the sort of things that are in these criteria that have been established. My belief is, having studying that that what the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service have produced could be a template for the rest of Australia. Do you think there is going to be a double dissolution? I don't know, I think it's absurd we have got two greens, one from Tasmania, one from Western Australia with a very small minority group vote and independent from Tasmania, controlling the outcome of legislation. But that aside, we do have a double dissolution trigger as a Government now, based on Native Title, based on Industrial regulations, the unfair dismissal laws and we've also got other triggers that constitute a double dissolution. We have to activate that before October, under the Constitution you can't have a double dissolution election when there is less than six months to the date when the next election is due. The next election is due in March 1999 so it has to be before October. The Government could announce it before then and then have it after October but who knows, I think it will be up to Prime Minister. Within our structure, it's the Prime Minister who determines when the election will be. Native Title has obviously bogged down now, there is significant hold up of mining and exploration which we depend upon for our prosperity. Is the main purpose of it to have a joint sitting and get the legislation passed? The main purpose is to get the legislation passed with a joint sitting. Unless of course the Labor Party changes its position on any of those matters. Those independents would be insignificant if the Labour party agreed with what we are proposing. So if they change their minds and we did not have a double dissolution, yes those bills could go through. But if they maintain their position and the independents and Democrats maintain their position, then we have to have a double dissolution to get those bills through and we believe those bills are essential for opening up and resolving the problems that the Native Title Act has brought about. If you believed the Labour Party in 1993 you would have thought no problems would occur and here we are 5 years later, 2 claims only settled out of over 700 Native Title claims in this country. You'd think they'd have a conscience about this because it was their legislation in 1993 that produced this fiasco. It's now five years later and it is a fiasco. Now they're opposing the resolution of that fiasco and we think that's insane. You don't think that if we do have a double dissolution and it's extensively on Native Title, it will send an adverse message to the Aborignal community? No. You see our amendments to the Native Title Act, first of all respect Native Title. We respect it, we're not saying abolish it. Do you recall there was a problem particularly with National Party people who said that it should be abolished - get rid of Native Title altogether. We say, 'no, the High Court has determined there should be Native Title'. Then the Wik determination said that Native Title was revived in pastoral leases and we respect that too. Then after six months of consultation and probably two years of preparation, we brought forward the resolution - when we went to the last election we said we'd resolve this problem. It has to be resolved in Australia's interests. So, we don't believe that sends the wrong message. There are many indigenous people who have pastoral leases too. More, hopefully in the future? Yes, more hopefully. We have the Indigenous Land Fund which will be spending $45 million a year, forever, to allow Indigenous people to buy land that is not available under Native Title. I keep saying to people in relation to Native Title, 'where is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in terms of Native Title'? I don't see it. We've got this $45 million a year that's there in perpetuity for people to purchase land. And isn't that far better? You can buy freehold land with that in the long term, it might take a little longer, but it'll achieve the same objective. There are only 350,000 Aborignal people in Australia and the median age is 20, in others words half are under the age of 20 years age. The good news is of course is that there are 9,000 now in secondary and tertiary education and there are 30,000 doing TAFE courses, or in education. So I think the hope for the future is in young Aboriginal people, who are either doing formal education, or like today, upgrading skills. That's going to make a big difference. I think it's going to make Native Title redundant. Philosophically it's always there, we accept that, but in the long term for the future prosperity of Aboriginal people it has to come through the other mechanism of upgrading skills or education so that they can control their own destiny.		Senator Herron Addresses the gathering as Nick Dondas, David Curtis and Shirley Lewis listen. Elliot McAdam, General Manager of Julalikari Council addresses the workers and guests at the opening of the HIPP house at Mulga Camp. Senator Herron explains to Paul Cockram which way the Goverment is heading on training, funding and Native Title legislation.