United We Stand - Does Culture Divide?

This is a difficult one, and will probably get too long.

I have been committed to the principles of collective action all of my life. The ALP has rules on its books based on those principles requiring solidarity on the part of members who are endorsed by the Party.

Last night 3 ALP Members of the NT Legislative Assembly crossed the floor to vote against a Bill being put by the ALP Minister for Mines. In accordance with the rules and precedent in the ALP Barbara McCarthy, Karl Hampton and Alison Anderson should be expelled if they don't resign first. The Chief Minister has said they wont be disendorsed.

How did it get to this? The brief facts are:

• Xstrata have an underground mine at McArthur River, originally built underground due partly to the difficulties they would have in getting approval to go open cut;
• Xstrata apply to go open cut and to divert the McArthur River to do so;
• long approval process, consultations, EIS and negotiations;
• decision finally made but appealed by the NLC on behalf of some traditional owners;
• appeal upheld due to an interpretation placed on words in the Mining Act by the Supreme Court;
• NT Parliament moves to correct the deficiency and allow its original decision to stand.

There are over 1,000 people dependent on the mine for work. McArthur River Station, the site of the mine, is owned by the company but there are people who are accepted as traditional owners for that country. Some disagree with the diversion of the river.

The news of the success of the appeal was hailed as a massive victory for the traditional owners and the environment. The NLC was ecstatic and the Environment Centre more so. The mine owners talked about closure and shut down work on the extension. The media ran about saying the Minister for Mines was incompetent. Celebrations all round.

Unfortunately for the people who cared, the group of traditional owners who are opposed, no one mentioned the bleeding obvious - if it all fell over on a technical issue, what would happen if that issue was fixed?

Into this mix we then inject the emotion of a funeral for one of the leaders of the opposing group. The man was the brother of Barbara McCarthy, MLA.

We have a highly emotional situation, a technical legal issue (that sounds simple) and the capacity for key lobby groups to make hay. What does the Government decide to do? Introduce a Bill and take it through the Parliament on urgency in 2 days with 3 of the 6 Indigenous MLAs crossing the floor.

There may have been a worse way to handle this but you would need to go back to the days of the CLP to find it.

The real point, and I have wandered off this a bit, is that the ALP government did what it was advised to do and relied on an understanding of the rules and principles of the Party, the culture if you like, to bring all of its members along. This put the Indigenous MLAs in an impossible situation. They well understand the principles of collective action, they live by them. But their first responsibility is to their family and to other Indigenous people. Allegiance to the Party is down the line a bit.

Does this mean they can't be part of the ALP or any other group that depends on collective action? I don't think so but I do think that it means that the two have to sit down and understand together what they are doing and why. Then they need to work out a way of dealing with the problem because, if they fail, the Labor Government will gradually be destroyed and Aboriginal MLAs run the risk of becoming a weak 'third force' with a CLP government in constant power.


Oh, and the other thing I would do is find someone to go into the Department of Mines and start removing the incompetent fools who stuffed up the original advice on the decision and then proposed an insensitive way of solving the problem.