It is no secret that Australia’s major cities – Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide – are rapidly growing both in population and in urban development. While Sydney and Melbourne put Brisbane in third place for Australia’s largest concentrated population, Brisbane encompasses the most crowded local government area in the country as well as the biggest population growth rate. Such unforeseen growth projects a doubling in overall population just within the next three decades; even if there is to be increased urban planning and settlement redistribution, all of these cities will surpass their carrying capacities by the mid-21st century. Unfortunately, the desperate need for government action and planning in this regard remains unanswered.
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Governmental discrimination against indigenous groups is an ongoing problem in Brisbane, especially in the form of land ownership and rights. In his 2005 speech on the current challenges faced by Indigenous Australians, former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma acknowledged that Indigenous Australians hold distinctive rights as the original peoples of the land of which include “The right to land, which provides the spiritual and cultural basis of Indigenous communities” (Calma 2005). Alas, land rights are more than just a spiritual and cultural connection between Indigenous people and the Earth beneath them. Australia’s development and prosperity has come at the price of dispossessing Indigenous people of their lands and forcing them into slave labor without a regard for basic human rights. Throughout this unfortunate history, Australia has continually refused to grant sovereign land rights to Indigenous people, due in part to internal conflicts with a monopolizing mining industry that merely views the land as profit-to-be-made. However, land rights for Indigenous people would mean autonomy, wherein adequate housing and a solid economic foundation would be accessible without a dependence on the government. Indigenous economic, health, and social status will continue to suffer until access, ownership and control of land are granted – an issue that has been addressed by various Australian native title acts, land rights movements, and commissions in the past two decades but that have yet to be
Governmental discrimination against indigenous groups is an ongoing problem in Brisbane, especially in the form of land ownership and rights. In his 2005 speech on the current challenges faced by Indigenous Australians, former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma acknowledged that Indigenous Australians hold distinctive rights as the original peoples of the land of which include “The right to land, which provides the spiritual and cultural basis of Indigenous communities” (Calma 2005). Alas, land rights are more than just a spiritual and cultural connection between Indigenous people and the Earth beneath them. Australia’s development and prosperity has come at the price of dispossessing Indigenous people of their lands and forcing them into slave labor without a regard for basic human rights. Throughout this unfortunate history, Australia has continually refused to grant sovereign land rights to Indigenous people, due in part to internal conflicts with a monopolizing mining industry that merely views the land as profit-to-be-made. However, land rights for Indigenous people would mean autonomy, wherein adequate housing and a solid economic foundation would be accessible without a dependence on the government. Indigenous economic, health, and social status will continue to suffer until access, ownership and control of land are granted – an issue that has been addressed by various Australian native title acts, land rights movements, and commissions in the past two decades but that have yet to be