The Editor, The Age: While Census data reveals that the number of Australians identifying as Indigenous has risen 20.5% since 2006, their joy at proudly standing forth as the nation`s first people is marred by the limited improvements in their living standards .
Adding to such disadvantages is the government`s failure, at a recent conference in Townsville, to undertake native title reforms that would reverse the onus of proof, currently required under the Act, for indigenous people seeking native title rights to show ongoing connections to the land.
Twenty years since the High Court found that terra nullius was a legal fiction, hundreds of native title applications remain unresolved as Indigenous people, who were forcibly removed from their lands, suffered massacres and had their children removed, are not surprisingly often unable to produce such documented proof. Australia will never be a proud multicultural nation while the shameful shadow of terra nullius looms over us.
– Keith McEwan, CLA member, Castlemaine Vic