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Aboriginal land rights and uranium mining.

Article Excerpt
The federal government's new policies in relation to Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory, announced 21 June, have been portrayed by some as a land grab carried out on behalf of mining companies and, in particular, uranium companies. However, the view that these policies are being imposed at the behest of mining companies is tenuous for the simple reason that there is little or no mining exploration in the immediate vicinity of Aboriginal settlements.

The June announcements--in particular, the seizure of control over Aboriginal settlements for a period of five years--may facilitate the government's attempts to expand private property relations in Aboriginal settlements. According to Pat Dodson, writing in The Age: 'The Government's agenda is to transform indigenous larger settlements into mainstream towns and extinguish by attrition the capacity of indigenous people to maintain small homeland communities'. As Dodson goes on, to some extent, these policies can be seen as the outgrowth of free-market ideology:

In recent years, high-profile think tanks, the Centre for Independent Studies and the Bennelong Society, supported by a network of conservative journalists, have fundamentally changed Australian indigenous policy discourse. They have argued that only private ownership of land can generate wealth and provide the basis of community cohesion and...

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