Australia 'should sign treaty with Aboriginals’

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 8

Australia 'should sign treaty with Aboriginals’

NZPA-Reuter Canberra A group of prominent Australians,, including academics, professionals, churchmen, and artists, have sponsored a call for a treaty between white and Aboriginal Australians. Launching the campaign at the Australian National University in Canberra, the chairman of the newlyformed Aboriginal Treaty Committee (Dr H. C. Coombs) said, “As long as there is no negotiated settlement reached many people feel our occupation by. force of this laud has not been validated.” He said that Australia was .the only former British colony not to have negotiated a settlement with the indigenous people or recognised native title to land. A full-page advertisement in a national weekly news : paper called on the Commonwealth [Government to organise a meetifc of abo-

riginal representatives to propose the bases of nations. It was signed by more than 80 sponsors, including the national president of the United Nations Association (Mr Richard Alston) and the chairman of the Human Rights Council (Mr Ejim Dunn). Other signatories are Professor Charles Birch, Professor Geoffrey Blainey, Professor Manning Clark, and Sir Mark Oliphant. The advertisement stated: “We, the undersigned Australians, of European descent, believe that experience since 1788 has demonstrated the need for the status and rights of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders to be established in a treaty, covenant Or convention freely negotiated with the Commonwealth Government .by. their representatives. “In New Zealand, at the Treaty of Waitjgi in 1840,

the Maori chiefs were guaranteed by their conquerors ‘full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands.’ “We believe there is a deep and wide concern among Australians of European descent that our ownership of this land, as defined in the imported European law, should still be based solely upon force, without any documentary recognition of the quality and courage of those who were conquered. “It is time to right this wrong.” First reaction came from the Queensland Minister for Aboriginal and Island Affairs (Mr Charles Porter) who dismissed calls for a treaty as “unnecessary.” He described the treaty moves as another propaganda effort by people with “certain ideological views” bent on dividing Australia into a society of black and white,