Creating Opportunities for Positive Engagement: Aboriginal People, Government and Resource Development in Australia

O’Faircheallaigh C¹*

1. Department of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia

Much of the discussion about engaging communities assumes that Government is willing to ‘engage’. In reality this is not always the case. Over the last decade Aboriginal people have become much more extensively involved in negotiating terms for large-scale resource development on their traditional lands.

However in the large majority of cases, negotiations occur between Aboriginal traditional owners and the company that wishes to develop a resource – with a few notable exceptions, Government has remained at arms length from negotiations. To the extent it is involved, Government has tended to focus on ensuring that it is relieved of any liability to pay compensation for impairment of Aboriginal native title, rather than engage with Aboriginal people about the way in which resource projects could contribute to Aboriginal economic and social development. This is despite the efforts of many Aboriginal people to engage with Government and persuade it to play a more active positive role.

This paper documents and seeks to explain the reluctance of governments in Australia to engage positively in negotiations regarding resource development on Aboriginal traditional lands. It argues that this reluctance to engage involves significant loss of opportunity for Aboriginal people, Government, developers and the wider non-Aboriginal population. It discusses a small number of specific cases in which government has played a proactive role, and identifies strategies that Aboriginal people can use to achieve more positive engagement by government. The paper has implications for other situations in which Government is reluctant to engage with communities.

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