Excellent to get further background to the debate. The reactionary right cheer squad has been quick to support Noel Pearson in what is a very deceptive campaign to prevent this river protection initiative.

I find it particularly interesting that the Carpentaria Land Council and Traditional Owners in the Gulf country supported Wild Rivers and lobbied with the Wilderness Society. This seriously questions the claim that all Indigenous people are outraged by Wild Rivers, and that they feel their native title rights have been impinged. I assume they understood the importance of preventing big developers stuffing up their rivers!

Indigenous people have many different opinions, they are human. Can always find one to back up your argument.

We keep taking the land they have kept pristine for our own purpose whether it is to degrade or to make up for our degradation. Still trying to run the show.

TheMissus, how does Wild Rivers take land away when it is simply a planning scheme? It's clear it in fact protects the rivers from nasty development, which is probably why many Indigenous people support it (including the Carpentaria Land Council as explained in the article).

Whether it's a multinational mining company, big irrigation developers, or an Indigenous business, it just makes sense to ensure NOBODY can destroy a river system for their own benefit and at the expense of many more.

Messers Walker etal are as always, interested in their interpretation of how things should be. Perhaps when he agrees to give up the right to manage his Apartment in the middle of Sydney to Noel, Noel will agree to let him determine how others should live on their land.

The Wilderness Society etc are as greedy as any developer he criticises, hoping to use the resources of others, to have an area reflect how they want things to be. Wearing cotton shirts, with the cotton sourced from another country, handing flyers out protesting Pulp Mills on paper made overseas, exported exploitation is all the rage.

Perhaps Mr Pearson and others have seen the insidious impact that exclusion from being able to engage "traditionally" (as much as that means these days) with the land has had on white communities and their people that had an indelible tie to the land and are afraid the misplaced paternalism of groups like the Wilderness Society enforcing their will on others will have a similar trickle down deleterious effect.

No matter what promises Politicians make about nasty legislation like this, what it means in reality, on the ground, when Mr Walker is back in Sydney is, exclude others and let me control it.

"Free of dams, weirs, polluting irrigation schemes and industrial development, the natural and cultural values of these rivers remain largely intact."
Dear Clown
The reason there are no "dams, weirs, polluting irrigation schemes and industrial development" is because largely there is no commercial return from such activities in the Cape.
But with no "polluting irrigation schemes" in Australia where do you think most of your food comes from? Rain grown agriculture?
"Through advocacy from the Wilderness Society, the Queensland government has initiated a program to employ 100 Indigenous rangers to manage ongoing threats to wild rivers such as invasive weeds and feral animals."
How many have been employed and what has this to do with Wild Rivers?

Dear Glen and Readers

The difference and dispute you describe in this article does not truly seem to be a dispute about the preferred 'end point' describe (healthy river systems).. but rather a dispute about the means by which that end point is being reached.

The position as put in the Australian and by Aboriginal protesters addressing public forums is more sophisticated, more reasonable (and more accurate) than your article makes out.

I have heard young protesters (akin to the kind of people who might otherwise get involved in the Wilderness society campaign) stand up and argue it is the the imposed regulation that comes with the Wild Rivers Act they are opposed to .. being regulation imposed from above in a way that doest not necessarily prohibit Aboriginal use of the river ways .. but, rather:

i. wraps Aboriginal future livelihoods, hopes and future aspirations in crudely insensitive layers of red tape (leaving some Aboriginal peoples hopes and futures at the mercy of distant bureaucrats)

ii. shifts the real power to manage and control future use of these vast catchments away from the locally indigenous peoples who live there .. into the hands of distant detached bureaucrats and officials many hundreds of kilometers away

iii. pays for itself by making all who may wish to seek approval to build toilet blocks etc etc .. to somehow pay transaction costs that are absolutely prohibitive to those most in poverty (ironically favoring those who may be backed by big corporations/businesses with the resources, know how and money to get through the red tape.

The story that is being presented by the local Aboriginal "Give Us a Go campaign" is very different to the one presented in this article .. being a call that, in the end, would seem to simply insist on a better process for achieving a shared end .

Sincerely

Bruceanthro