Brian Ross wrote on Mar 12
th, 2025 at 10:22am:
The High Court needs to have a giant enema - and get rid of all thses lefty woke Judges.
Now there's another Yunupingu Big Man in charge up there. Djawa Yunupingu - Galarrwuy Yunupingus brother ... how fitting.
Gularrwuy, this bloke and the whole Gumatj clan have been receiving/controlling multi millions of dollars in royalties from the bauxite mining companies since it began in 1971.
Now this decision has put an extra $700 million into a Future Fund for the clans on the Gove Peninsular & this Gumatj mob will no doubt milk it for all its worth and nothing will change for the other clans/groups there.
This excerpt from February 1999 - written by the Managing Director of Nabalco - Colin J Agnew
https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/house_of_representative... Quote:Presently the local (ie. Section 64 (3)) royalty equivalents amounting to approximately $2.7 million annually are paid as to:
• 65% to Gumatj Association with which about 23% of the Aboriginal people resident in the Gove region are connected
ABORIGINAL LAND RIGHTS (NT) ACT 1976 (“ACT”) REVIEW
S/528295/01
• 20% to some members of the Rirratjingu clan representing an unknown percentage of the Aboriginal people resident in the Gove region are connected; and
• 15% to Laynhapuy Association with which about 41% of the Aboriginal people resident in the Gove region are connected.
Over the years, the distribution of ‘local’ royalty payments has moved from the original 100% distribution to Yirrkala Dhanbul Association,
to 50% to Dhanbul and 50% to Gumatj,
to 100% to Gumatj, and finally to the above distribution.
Leaving aside the “fairness” of the apportionment between the various groups, there is no accountability as to how the local proportion of the royalties are spent.
Not all of the 876 Aboriginal people living within the Gove Peninsula nor all of the 622 Aboriginal people in the homeland areas, receive benefits from this money.
As well, there is little evidence that any of the Aboriginal people deemed to be affected by the Gove
mining operations have benefited in any tangible way (eg. housing, health, communication, training etc) from the receipt of mining royalty
equivalents.
If the royalty payments made by the Participants were paid directly to the Aboriginal people who have a close geographic proximity to the mining and processing operations (namely those resident at Marngarr,
Nhulunbuy and Yirrkala) the payments would be equal to approximately $51,300 per family per annum free of tax (5 family members assumed).
Even if the Aboriginal people living in the homelands of the broader Gove region were included in this calculation, the distribution would still
amount to approximately $30,000 free of tax per family per annum.
There is significant disputation today at Gove in relation to the distribution of ‘local’ royalty equivalents.
One group of Aborigines feel that the monies should be disbursed to the traditional owners of the area from which the bauxite is extracted.
This raises the first problem of defining who the traditional owners of an area are.
A section of the Gumatj clan claims ‘ownership’ of the area on which the
mine is situated.
This is disputed by the members of another section of
the Gumatj clan who claim that they are the traditional owners of the land by virtue of being nominated as caretakers of that land by the Lamamirri clan.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that descendants of the Lamamirri clan have recently surfaced at Gove to claim they are the traditional owners.
This has been going on for 54 years from 1971 to the present day and all the Albanese Govt & High Court can come up with is throwing nearly a $billion dollars at them.
All the welfare/sitdown money is still on top of that.
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