Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
The benefits of regional agreements are great and they are practically achievable in Australia:
· Regional agreements reflect the needs and identify of Indigenous peoples as whole communities, and provide better means for focussing and co-ordinating efforts to meeting needs and ensuring responsibility of leaders to the people they represent than do other approaches. In other words, regional agreements come closer than do other approaches to recognising and restoring Indigenous peoples as political entities in the modern world.
· The give Indigenous peoples the opportunity to achieve a comprehensive approach to and responsibility to solve socio-economic problems which governments have tried and expensively failed to solve with piecemeal programmes and `solutions' offered by non-Indigenous experts.
· They substantially remove Indigenous/regional grievances which otherwise provide fuel for political dissidence and conflict.
· Regional agreements can extend Indigenous control over lands and resources that they do not `own' (but have substantial interest) and can provide an enduring economic base for Indigenous peoples which goes beyond welfare payments.
· They provide better management and more fine-grained knowledge of territpry entrenched arrangements such as the status of an Australian State like Queensland, they are more easily improved to meet changing needs and there is no reason why their status cannot be upgraded or constitutionally entrenched at some later time.
Indeed, English-speaking countries find it much easier in their constitutions to recognise already proven arrangements than to promise or create unproven new ones.
Ultimately, a regional agreement can be anything which its authors wish it to be. After its application in a diverse range of contexts in other countries it remains a most promising policy concept. They can be negotiated in Australia on the basis of native title, the needs of Indigenous peoples and existing legislative provisions without constitutional amendment. Constitutional amendment is not precluded by regional agreements and can be pursued by Indigenous peoples as an important future priority.