Our toxic native title system continues to divide the Australian community. One Nation’s candidate for the Queensland seat of Keppel, James Ashby, is doing a wonderful job holding the Miles Labor government accountable for its failure to meet 30 million dollars’ worth of commitments to Great Keppel Island.

James also deserves credit for exposing the latest native title claim on the island. This claim, if successful, would mean 84% of Great Keppel Island would be excluded from non-indigenous Australians. One of the jewels of Central Queensland and an Australian tourism icon would effectively be closed off for all time to Australians and international visitors.

This isn’t the first time an indigenous group has tried to close off Great Keppel Island from the rest of us with a divisive native title claim. In 2021, the Federal Court denied a native title claim over the Great Keppel Island leases held by Tower Holdings due to pre-existing infrastructure of commercial value.

One Nation calls on this latest claim to be thrown out too, and for the Miles Labor government to honour its 30 million promise to clean up and restore Great Keppel Island.

However, we must go much further than that.

We’re calling for a comprehensive review of the entire native title system, and a sunset clause on native title claims, because it’s getting out of hand and it’s excluding from any consultation on these claims the most important stakeholders of all: the Australian people.

More than 50% of Australia is now under native title in the past 30 years or so, but fewer than 3% of Australians have had any say in it. The rest of us are excluded from the process – state governments and councils get a say but almost never represent community views, because they don’t ask us for our views.

We’re not asked, because they don’t want to hear our views.

This is what happened in the lead up to the voice referendum. There was a lot of consultation costing a lot of money, but only with indigenous groups; there was none for the rest of us. It’s one of the main reasons it was such a spectacular $450 million failure: consultation was undertaken in an echo chamber where dissent was absent.

Native title claims are resolved in this sort of bubble as well—a bubble from which most Australians are always excluded. Even those people specifically intended to benefit from native title are excluded from those benefits.

Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts often visit remote communities in Cape York and the Northern Territory, and the number one complaint from Aboriginal Australians is their inability to get land title while unaccountable land councils act as robber barons and horde the benefits for themselves.

There will never be true equality in Australia as long as the native title system exists.