Move follows successful Coffs Harbour bid despite fact past claims have been granted with easements for public access

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The New South Wales government is seeking to ban Aboriginal communities from making land claims on coastal areas and to cancel around 1,800 outstanding claims to beachfront land.

Hundreds gathered in Sydney on Monday to protest against the proposal, which the state’s Aboriginal Land Council has slammed as “racist” and “scare-mongering”.

The state government’s move follows a successful 20-year legal battle by the Coffs Harbour district local Aboriginal council to claim a section of land on the state’s north coast that includes a 3.7km stretch of Red Rock beach.

The land claim was initially rejected by the government on the grounds the area was needed for “essential public purpose”, but was granted by a court last December, with an easement guaranteeing public access to the beach.

But a spokesman for the state’s lands and water minister, Kevin Humphries, said the Red Rock decision clashed with the policy of successive NSW governments “that beaches belong to everyone and should not be owned by any particular individual or groups of individuals”.

“This action is not directed against the right to make Aboriginal land claims but defends the general principle, widely supported by the community, that our beaches should not be privatised,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aboriginal protesters in Sydney. Photograph: Michael Safi

The coastal lands bill, currently before parliament, would prevent any future claims to coastal land and retrospectively extinguish 1,800 claims that are yet to be determined.

Unlike native title, in which a federal court recognises a community’s pre-existing and uninterrupted ownership of an area, land rights claims involve the returning of unused crown land by the NSW government to local Indigenous groups, with the aim of redressing past dispossession.

The chairman of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, Craig Cromelin, said the bill raised “very misleading” suggestions that coastal land claims would prevent non-Indigenous people from accessing the beach.

“The two previous times beach frontage was granted under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, both times they were granted with an easement to allow public access,” he said.

Cromelin said the land council recognised the significance of waterfront land, and that Indigenous people had no desire to deny coastal communities access to the beach.

“As Aboriginal people, we live in these communities, we’re a part of these communities, our kids attend the schools, we play football and sport, we associate in these general communities,” he said.

“We’re telling the premier, don’t get scare-mongering people into thinking we’re going to lock things away.”

He said the government had “sneakily” tried to rush through the bill without consultation, in contradiction to earlier promises that no restrictions to the land rights act would be passed this year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aboriginal protesters in Sydney. Photograph: Michael Safi

The head of the Darkinjung land council, Sean Gordon, said a successful claim to coastal land had allowed his central coast Aboriginal community to become economically independent.

“We take no government funding at state or federal levels. We’re undertaking developments, we’re building homes, we have our own funeral fund, we do scholarships, we do community sponsorships,” he said.

“This is what the government should be aiming for: legislation that allows us to provide and support our own community and be self-dependent.”

Gordon said the government had granted coastal land claims 30 years ago “when they thought they were wastelands”.

“Now they’re realising it’s pristine land and they don’t want blackfellas to have it.”

He said the “racist” legislation undermined other positive initiatives by the Baird government, including the appointment of an Aboriginal deputy ombudsman and the devolution of power to local communities.

“This government wants Aboriginal land rights to end. They want us to no longer be able to claim crown land,” he said.