Native title deal after 11 years, by Andrew Clennell - 3rd January 2006
(Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)

Two native title deals - including the biggest ever settled in NSW - are to be announced by the State Government before the election in March.

The Government confirmed yesterday that it would approve the biggest native title claim, with the Githabul people in an area north of Tenterfield, next month. It is also about to settle a claim with the Arakwal people, near Byron Bay.

The native title claimants gave up the fight for freehold title to make the deals possible.

The Premier, Morris Iemma, is expected to attend a ceremony at Toonumbar dam in the state's north-east on February 28 to settle the Githabul people's 11-year-old claim.

Settling the claim will give the local Aboriginal corporation about 120 hectares of land, allow Aborigines to hunt for turtles and give them a say over the handling of national parks and state forests. It should also provide job opportunities for Aboriginal people with the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

The deal is largely restricted to 70,000 hectares of national park and state forest land and will not affect farmland.

The director-general of the NSW Department of Lands, Warwick Watkins, said yesterday a final settlement was also expected before March with the Arakwal people. In 2001, the Government announced that it would negotiate with them about how the national park there would be used, but there has been a further claim, which is about to be settled.

Trevor Close, the native title claimant for the Githabul land, which extends from Tenterfield to Kyogle, said Aboriginal people got "very little" out of the deal other than the right to hunt turtles and a say in how the national parks were run.

However, he was happy to see it resolved after 11 years of negotiations.

"A lot of people think it's a great deal," he said, "but they don't actually see how much the Githabul gave up - we moved a hell of a lot to get this deal."

Mr Watkins agreed the deal was largely symbolic, but said it was important spiritually to Aboriginal people and similar to a native title agreement reached over Crown land covering Perth several years ago.

The National Party leader, Andrew Stoner, said that the native title agreement was an "obvious vote-buying exercise in the lead-up to the March state election".

He said greater involvement of Aboriginal people in the management of the areas was "likely to result in a more commonsense approach than the extreme green approach taken by the NSW Labor Government".

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Githabul people