Homelands

Action has begun in the High Court to try to stop a native title deal that could be worth $1.3 billion to the Noongar people of the south west of Western Australia.

The challenge is by other Noongar native title claimants who say they did not agree to the deal with the WA government to relinquish native title rights in return for a $1.3 billion compensation package.

The package would include land and funds for a trust to be managed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders. [node:read-more:link]

The number of doctors working in Western Australia's First Nations Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) will be reduced from 56 to 19 under a policy proposed by the Federal Government, according to the Aboriginal Health Council of WA.

"We currently have 56 doctors working in our sector. With this decision that will severely reduce that back to 19 doctors," the council's chairwoman Michelle Nelson-Cox told ABC Kimberley. [node:read-more:link]

Reports of deceased names used and Aboriginal people have been turned away from polling places in various places because their names are no longer on the membership roll despite having voted in the 2011 NSW Aboriginal Land Council election. Potential voters were turned away. We need to establish a register of how many people were actually turned away on the voting day and other irregularities. In this regard people can contact the Sovereign Union Facebook message system and tell your story. [node:read-more:link]

The first shipment of Australia's nuclear waste to be returned from re-processing in France has now left a French port, and will arrive on our shores by the end of the year. The return of the 25 tonnes of nuclear waste is putting renewed pressure on the Federal Government to find a location for a permanent waste dump. The shipment began its journey just a day after senior Aboriginal women gathered in Adelaide to mark their fight against a proposed dump in South Australia in the 1990s. The women say they will fight against any new move to put the waste on their land. [node:read-more:link]

Stephen Mayne Crikey 2 February 2015

The 2013-14 political donations data confirms a long trend in Australian politics, with the ALP still fundamentally reliant on the union movement and the Liberal Party in the thrall of big business, rent-seekers and a few wealthy families. [node:read-more:link]

Ancient Indigenous Australian bush-burning could be used around the world to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to United Nations research, which also challenges Prime Minister Tony Abbott's refusal to embrace the purchase of international carbon credits. Abbott has previously said buying overseas offsets sends money "offshore into dodgy carbon farms in Equatorial Guinea and Kazakhstan".

The government this month delayed considering the measure until 2017 or later, saying it would rather make cuts domestically. [node:read-more:link]

Of all middle and high income nations with a recent colonial oppressor history, Australia has the widest divide of its measurable indicators between first peoples and the rest of the nation. ATSISPEP is assessing the effectiveness of existing suicide prevention services and programs. In the last year we've buried an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old. The Northern Territory and Western Australia have some of the highest median wages in the world but also some of the highest rates of poverty. [node:read-more:link]

Despite repeated assurances that no Northern Territory remote homelands would be closed, a lack of government communication has left leaders in the Arnhem land community of Milingimbi believing it to be inevitable.

Residents' concerns have been outlined in a petition sent to the chief minister, Adam Giles, the local government and community services minister, Bess Price, and the federal Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, and signed by 135 elders and senior people. [node:read-more:link]