Native title in Canavan’s sights

Senator Canavan was promoted into Malcolm Turnbull’s second ministry announced at the weekend as a dedicated Minister for Northern Australia.

The 35-year old former Productivity Commission director and economist will support the main agenda pushed by senior Resources, Energy and Northern Australia Minister Josh Frydenberg.

“Getting a gig like this requires you having the trust and confidence of colleagues and in my case that means the deputy prime minister and prime minister,” he said.

“It’s humbling for them to show that faith in me but now I have the daunting prospect of repaying that faith by doing a good job.

“But I do think it’s great to have someone based in northern Australia with boots on the ground to keep momentum going.”

When unveiling the Coalition’s $1.2 billion Northern Development White Paper, former National Party leader Warren Truss said clearing outstanding native title claims within a decade would help give investors land title security via freehold or long-term leases, which also supported the needs of Aboriginal communities.

This week, Senator Canavan said finalising all outstanding native title claims over the next decade was “an ambitious agenda” and “one of the big road blocks” to northern development.

But he said indigenous groups were not the ones holding up progress because they also wanted economic development in the region.

However, current institutional and legal arrangements are limiting the ability of native title holders to share in the “uplift” from economic development, he said.

“That’s a big concern to me – not just in regards to agriculture but also mining and all areas of development,” he said.

“If we can do just one thing in this space and we can resolve more of the native title claims that’ll lift a huge hand-break off the development of the north while unlocking enormous opportunity for our indigenous Australians.

“We’ve given indigenous Australians native title rights but they don’t have full property rights and without full property rights they’re not going to reach their full economic potential.”

Senator Canavan said resolving native title claims and securing land access arrangements would deliver a mix of benefits for agricultural growth with great potential in broad acre agriculture products like sugar, cotton or even rice.

“Certainly in the Gulf of Queensland I know a project intimately that has enormous opportunities for cotton growing,” he said.

“In other closely settled areas there will be more opportunity for horticulture and market gardens to greater supply cities, particularly around Rockhampton.

“It’ll be horses for courses for agriculture in Northern Australia and it’s a big area - 40pc of our country - so you’d expect a great variety of agricultural products to be produced.”

Senator Canavan said a key to developing Northern Australian agriculture and broadacre farming was the need to establish “critical mass”.

“You can’t send cotton 600 or 700kms to the nearest gin; that isn’t going to work,” he said.

“It’s hard to be the first mover and build something from nothing to straight away be big enough to get your production costs down low enough to compete on world markets.

“Most agricultural products like cotton compete on world markets and there’s no subsidy or quarter given just because you may be producing it in a new area.”