COMMENT
As the left explodes around the decision of The Nationals to publicly declare that they will vote "No" to the proposed constitutional change, the Voice for Indigenous Australians, I'd like to take your mind back to 1997.
Our then Prime Minister, John Howard, stood on a stage in front of a mass of critically concerned pastoral lease owners concerned about the Native Title decisions of the court.
The Prime Minister gave a number of iron clad guarantees that day.
I'd encourage you to look up the transcript, it's easy to find.
Our then Prime Minister guaranteed we'd not only enjoy the right to carry on our pastoral business on land we had bought, but to diversify into all aspects of primary production.
He guaranteed that any compensation paid for the extinguishment of Native Title would be shared by the Australian and State tax payers 75 per cent to 25pc and that "compensation would not be borne by the pastoralists of Australia".
Here we are some 25 years later and those iron clad guarantees don't seem to amount to much.
For a pastoralist to improve his tenure from pastoral lease to freehold, he has to cough up compensation at market value for Native Title alongside the freeholding payments needed to be made to government.
Remembering the decision of the day was whether or not the government should extinguish all Native Title on pastoral leases or offer his iron clad 10-point plan where pastoralists would suffer no impact.
So much for the compensation guarantee - it has seemingly been dismissed.
The guarantee of us being able to utilise our land for a broader definition of primary production also seems to have melted somewhere along the way.
If any of you have tried to negotiate an indigenous agreement of any sort, you may be aware of some of the challenges landholders face.
There are also new implications, issues that were unthought of on the placards of those wary producers 25 years ago.
Producers seeking to negotiate carbon farming revenues now have to ask themselves if the other stakeholders, including Native Title owners, need to consent and how much would be demanded for that consent.
Producers on pastoral leases facing the wind towers and solar farms headed their way are receiving just half of the compensation they should be entitled for the nuisance, the loss of production income and the extraordinary time put in to managing these large projects on their land - in their backyards.
Native Title holders now command the other half.
The very same activists who vocally denounced John Howard's speech in Longreach, people like Noel Pearson, have not been quiet in their intent behind the Voice.
Mr Pearson called out John Howard's plan as a dastardly deed that robbed Australia's indigenous people of their entitlement to our mining and farming wealth.
He's often stated that to progress Native Title, the indigenous need power.
Have a read of Noel Pearson's writings on Treaty. For every landholder, it should chill you to the bone.
As landholders in this nation, we need to find our voice - and find it in a hurry.
I for one support the position of The Nationals.
