Ancient tennis club under threat from native title claim

Just as advocates for marriage equality had made no provisions for penguins being forced into loveless same-sex unions, this week has shown that Voice advocates may not have adequately considered the unintended consequences of moves to address inequality, however well-intentioned.

2GB host Ben Fordham brought us the story of the future of the Naremburn Tennis Courts, and claims that the club has been cast into a storm of uncertainty thanks to an unresolved Aboriginal land rights claim concerning the site. He’s dedicated two days to the issue, interviewing Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council CEO Nathan Moran, State MP for Willoughby Tim James and former Tennis Australia president Steve Healy.

The stakes are high — this represents 100 whole years of history that could be wiped out, as Healy puts it, by a stroke of the pen, seemingly without any need to compensate the community using and occupying the land.

Fordham was incredulous, asking Moran how the claims his organisation put forward on sites like Naremburn and Balmoral (among the tens of thousands of claims put forward by Moran’s organisation and others) could represent anything other than a “land grab”.

I mean, I can only ask, how would the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Councils of this world like it if that kind of thing was done to them?

Having to deal with the fallout of some kind of land grab, to have irreplaceable sites of deep history and community destroyed with the stroke of a pen, with generations passing before anything approaching could be even reluctantly discussed?

You can’t even imagine.