Our View

5th November 2009

KEVIN Rudd may not want to intervene in the Traveston Crossing dam decision to be made soon by his Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

And he may have a point in arguing that he should keep out of it, the law requiring the decision to be made by Mr Garrett on the basis of scientific evidence rather than political string pulling.

But nothing, it seems, will stop Eve Fesl and her Gubbi Gubbi people.

The courageous and arguably the only genuine claimants to Native Title in the area say other groups came into it, without having to prove the genuineness of their arguments, after the Bligh Government offered a $3 million incentive to any Native Title claimants, proven or not, who were willing to sell their claimed heritage.

But Dr Fesl says her people are the only ones who can prove that other very important source of indigenous power in the decision – the concept of contemporaneous history.

This is separate from Native Title and essentially means that she and her people can prove that they actually lived there and did not just come out of the woodwork to take the state government’s money.

She has argued that it is the people with contemporaneous history, which is family history in the area, who are the indigenous parties entitled to act under law.

Further to that, she says the government’s dam construction and negotiating company, QWI, has acted illegally in ignoring this aspect of the relevant law.

Unlike Native Title, which is extinguished by freehold ownership and which does not have to be proven, contemporaneous history is what Dr Fesl and her people can prove with family photographs of gatherings and meetings on the river where her mother and aunties and uncles were born.

The Gympie Times will be seeking comment today from the government and QWI.