EXCLUSIVE by ERWIN CHLANDA
The NT Government is offering Lhere Artepe (LAAC) a $20m “package of benefits over a 10 year period” if it will extinguish native title over five areas in Alice Springs to be used as residential and industrial land.
Based on an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) this will include:-
• Housing throughout the town for “particularly vulnerable groups” and the Akangkentye hostel worth $3.5m in South Terrace.
• $8.5m “employment and enterprise development” including government contracts for Arrernte businesses – improve existing ones and set up new ones.
• $2.5m for education and training.
• $1.6m for land and infrastructure intended to support youth engagement programs, including to “practice cultural skills, learn from elders and develop skills to live off the land”.
The amounts are contained in a fact sheet obtained by the Alice Sprigs News and relate to areas identified by Chief Minister Michael Gunner in Alice Springs in March but at the time without putting a dollar figure on the deal.
The objective, says the fact sheet, is to “materially closing the gap … through provision of practical benefits” and to building the true commercial capability of LAAC.
Meanwhile sources say the Alice Springs native title organisation has moved its office to Darwin.
The News is seeking information about this.
Will Lhere Artepe be consulting with apmereke-artweye I wonder, or will these gammon TOs just take the money and run?
Always was, always will be … except if the price is right.
Hell no, as Lhere Artepe never has consulted all Aboriginal people on this. Very underhanded, under the table.
Based in Darwin. How is it consulting with the Arrernte people?
Need to remove any trace of Indigenous organisation from the business, title ect; rename from Lhere Artepe to something in Larrakiya language.
Why pay for something thats not theirs anyway? Im so sick of native title and other things happening where ever money suits someone.
Should have been 10 years to submit any native title then no more. I wonder how many projects wouldn’t have to pay out money.
They love white people as we pay them everything … why?
David, here is a better question. Why are millions of whites paid Centerlink payments? White people are not Australian. Shouldn’t you be in Europe getting money from European governments instead?
Free money, again? To be wasted.
Lhere Artepe is a joke. They only consult themselves and not the wider Arrente people.
Moving to Darwin? Why? It is the native title holder for Alice Springs.
They just want to hide all the cheating of its own people and ORIC was no help in sorting them out.
Would the $20m make any difference to their ordinary people? Indigenous corporations have been reported to be sitting on millions of dollars while their people still suffer from huge social inequality and poverty.
Realestate lasts longer than money which just gets frittered away.
@ Dan: Here’s an even better question. You say white people are not Australian, but it’s the white people who pay most of the tax (based on population ratio) which pays Centrelink.
So based on your assertion, why do white people have to support the “Australians”?
It is actually a bit more complex than your simplistic idea.
If you own the land you have something of value, and you have power, the money never lasts or goes up in value. My advice to these people is to keep their titles. There is no more land being made.
This is just what the town needs for the future of Alice Springs and the people who come here to live, black or white.
Walpiri, Anmatyerre, Alyawerre, Pitji pitj what ever tribe coming into Alice Springs to be a part of this growing town of human services!
But a big plan like this one can’t work, if you have total dysfunction from a CEO who resides in Darwin and a chairman who doesn’t know what his CEO is up to.
Or the native title holders are too weak to get up and have a go and say “Enough is Enough” Shane and Robert!
No worth it to give up the land title.
Maybe a lease would be agreeable.
But ownership of the land is not so easy to sell.
You are talking about two continuous bodies of ownership, the Indigenous land owners and the NT Government.
The price tag of the land is not for the next 50 years, it’s forever.
I hope people in a decision making position say No.
I say don’t do it, simply for the reason that nothing good ever comes out of the government’s mouth.
Native title is far more important than any government body.
Once government possess the ownership of land they will only seek financial gain for themselves leaving local anangu and non-anangu to remain disadvantaged as demonstrated far too many times already.
So personally, I would say no.
All the know-it-alls. Come to a meeting and listen to what is being done and said.
Gossip is what people thrive on in this town and that’s all – it is GOSSIP and jealousy because something is being done.
All the loungeroom lawyers, sitting back listening to gossip. One little girl starting all the rumours (AGAIN) around Lhere Artepe.