Table of Contents
Drought and dying cattle have always been part of life on pastoral stations in Australia. Banjo Paterson’s poem from 1896 captures the desperation of droving cattle to greener pastures in times of drought:
We cannot use the whip for shame
On beasts that crawl along;
We have to drop the weak and lame,
And try to save the strong;
The wrath of God is on the track,
The drought fiend holds his sway,
With blows and cries and stockwhip crack
We take the stock away.
As they fall we leave them lying,
With the crows to watch them dying,
Grim sextons of the Overland that fasten on their prey ...
(Paterson 1896).
On a more contemporary note, the manager of a family run cattle station near Meekatharra in the Murchison Gascoyne region of Western Australia (WA), articulates the inevitability of losing some cattle during periods of extended drought: ‘It can be tough during drought years having to deal with the pressure of dying cattle and dragging animals out of dams’.[1]
In early February 2005, the WA Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) received a complaint about animal neglect on an Aboriginal owned pastoral lease in the northeastern goldfields region of WA. A chain of bureaucratic responses flowed from this complaint. These responses included intervention by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) Western Australia Inc; a proposal by the State Government to forfeit the lease; an investigation by the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations (ORAC);[2] issuance of a care, control and management order over the station by the Pastoral Lands Board (PLB); and intervention by the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) and DAFWA.
This chapter explores the role of Aboriginal governance at the intersection between economic activity, corporate responsibility and community aspiration. A lack of attention to governance issues contributed to the problems experienced by the lessees. The preparedness of the community to refine its understanding of its corporate responsibilities, fuelled by an unwavering determination to retain its pastoral enterprise, was instrumental in the resolution of the issue. This chapter also touches on tensions within the community and the pastoral industry relating to Aboriginal pastoralism.
In WA, the ‘pastoral industry’ refers to the ‘grazing industry which occurs on sheep and cattle stations in more remote areas of the state’.[3] The PLB has the statutory authority under the Lands Administration Act 1997 (LAA) to administer pastoral leases. Under s.96 of the LAA, the relevant minister, currently the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, has the power to direct the PLB with respect to the exercise of its powers. The PLB is required by the LAA (s.137) to establish an ‘administrative mechanism’ with the Commissioner for Soil and Land Conservation to exchange relevant information about pastoral lease holdings.[4] In discharging this responsibility, the Commissioner, through DAFWA, provides an annual report to the PLB on the current condition of land under pastoral lease, and also provides ad hoc reports at the request of the PLB. In 2006, DAFWA prepared 116 reports to the PLB (DAFWA 2006: iii). This high level of exchange of information between the agencies is indicative of a significant sharing of responsibility for pastoral rangelands.
PLB figures show that as at July 2007 there were ‘527 pastoral leases covering 474 pastoral stations’.[5] Pastoral leases held by Aboriginal entities account for approximately 12 per cent of pastoral leases in WA. The majority (39) of these leases are in the Kimberley region. However, there are a further 26 Aboriginal owned leases in the regions south of the Kimberley.
Windidda Station, the Aboriginal owned pastoral lease that is the subject of this chapter, is situated in the Shire of Wiluna approximately 200km east of the town of Wiluna (Fig. 12.1). The town lies close to the western border of the shire boundary and is the only town in the shire. It is approximately 1000km northeast of Perth, and 550km north of the regional centre of Kalgoorlie. The town is the starting point of both the Canning Stock Route, which runs northeast to Halls Creek, and the Gunbarrel Highway, which runs east to Warburton.
I have been involved with this community since 2005 through my PhD research undertaken in Wiluna, and I also had contact with members of Aboriginal families from Wiluna while working on a native title claim to the south of Wiluna from 2001–04. From late 2005 and throughout the period discussed in this paper, I provided mentoring to the Windidda community and continue to do so. During 2007, I was engaged as a consultant trainer to deliver governance training to Windidda community members.
The Shire of Wiluna covers an area of 184,000km2 and is predominantly mining and pastoral land. Mining and pastoralism are part of the ‘culture’ of the Shire. There has been a merging of the pastoral and mining industries through the acquisition of pastoral stations by mining companies in the region. The lack of conformity in the way different agencies categorise pastoral lands creates difficulties in the compilation of data for a more concise area, such as within a shire boundary.[6] However, research reveals that there are 27 pastoral leases within the Wiluna Shire.[7] Ten leases are owned by mining companies, some of which have been destocked. The WA Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) has acquired two of the leases, which have been fully destocked and are run as nature reserves.[8] The remaining 15 leases are held by family groups or pastoral companies. The Windidda lease is included in this category.
Windidda Station was once part of a larger pastoral station owned by three brothers. In 1992, the large leaseholding was broken up into three smaller leases.[9] The Windidda lease of 384,000 hectares was purchased at that time by Ngangganawili Community Incorporated (henceforth Ngangganawili), an organisation set up by Aboriginal people in Wiluna. The lease was purchased without any government assistance; funds for the purchase were obtained ‘from people saving up for it through a chuck in account’.[10] It is the only Aboriginal owned pastoral lease in the shire.
Around 1994, Ngangganawili was wound up and its assets distributed to the three dominant kin based groups in Wiluna. The pastoral lease was one of the assets distributed. The extended family group that acquired the lease had a long association with the area previously covered by the original three leases, and a senior member was born and later worked on the leases. In common with the other family groups to whom Ngangganawili’s assets were distributed, it was necessary for this group to become incorporated in order to hold the assets and to receive Australian Government funding for infrastructure. The group incorporated as Windidda Aboriginal Corporation (WAC) under the Commonwealth Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976 (ACAA) in 1994.[11]
The transfer of the pastoral lease from Ngangganawili to the newly formed Aboriginal organisation was not properly completed at that time or subsequently. Ngangganawili remained on the books as the leaseholder until the lease reverted to the Commissioner for Fair Trading under the provisions of the Associations Incorporation Act 1997 (WA).
WAC members were apparently aware that the lease had not been put into the corporation’s name but understood that ‘DIA were doing something about it’.[12] This view appears to be justified by a Department of Indigenous Affairs (DIA) report which states that the DIA ‘Land Branch is arranging [for the] Pastoral Lands Board and Commissioner for Trading [sic] to transfer [the] pastoral lease’ (DIA 2004).
Since 1994, WAC has run the station, paid the rates and taxes, and seen itself—and has been acknowledged by others including government agencies—as the owner of the lease. Between 15 and 40 community members live and work on the pastoral lease. In common with most Aboriginal owned leases, the station workers were participants in the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program.
The failure by WAC to ensure that the lease was properly transferred in the intervening years was a sign that something was amiss in the governance process of the corporation. The lack of attention to the transfer also points to some other realities: that land tenure and the transfer of land are arcane to most of us, that these matters are usually left in the hands of people with experience in conveyancing; that in remote areas it is difficult to gain access to professional services; and that there was an underlying assumption that government agencies would conclude the transfer as part of their bureaucratic processes.
Regardless of the perceptions held by the corporation or its understanding of bureaucratic processes, securing the lease in its own name was an important matter that should have been pursued more diligently. It was in the corporation’s interests to have done so.
When a complaint was made to DAFWA in early February 2005 that there was insufficient water for the cattle on the lease, the region was in a period of drought. DAFWA (2005: 19–21) stated in its 2005 annual report to the PLB that: ‘To the east of Meekatharra, around Wiluna the run of good seasons ending … resulted in a number of properties moving stock out of the district in response to the very dry conditions’.
A Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) rainfall deciles[13] map for the period 1 January to 30 June 2005 shows that rainfall in the area of the pastoral lease was ‘very much below average’, and that rainfall just to the east of the station was the ‘lowest on record’.[14]
The complaint to DAFWA triggered a cascade of events over the following months:
February 2005
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DAFWA referred the complaint to the RSPCA;
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the RSPCA seized the cattle at the pastoral station;
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PLB placed the pastoral lease under a temporary care, control and management order; and
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cattle were mustered from the station by the RSPCA, transported to Geraldton and sold.
February–May 2005
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extensive media coverage focused on ‘dead cattle’ and ‘Aboriginal leaseholders’; and
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questions in Parliament suggested that the Minister should rescind the lease.
May 2005
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WAC was advised by ORAC that its affairs would be investigated under s.60 of the ACAA.
November 2005
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charges were laid against the corporation and three members by the RSPCA.
This was not the first time concerns about the station had been raised. There had been a previous occasion, in December 2002, when DAFWA had cause to assess rangeland conditions on the lease and report to the PLB. Following that report, the PLB requested that the corporation prepare and submit a management plan, but this request had not been complied with.
On any assessment, the organisation was in trouble. It was in danger of forfeiting its pastoral lease and thereby losing an asset that was the foundation of its community and work life; it was facing prosecution by the RSPCA; and it was being investigated by the corporate regulator. It was also the subject of a negative media campaign that by any objective criterion was distorting the facts.
The remainder of this chapter takes a closer look at these events and at the remedial strategies that enabled the organisation to favourably resolve the situation over an 18 month period.
DAFWA had referred the complaint that there was insufficient water for cattle on the station to the regional RSPCA office on 8 February 2005. Over the next week, RSPCA officers visited the station and inspected the watering points. In the period they were on the station, the daily temperature was averaging around 41°C. The officers noted that a number of the watering points appeared to have been de-commissioned and others were not fully operational. In the officers’ opinion, the watering points on the station were not producing enough water to sustain the cattle. At many of the watering points only minor repairs were necessary to make them productive. The RSPCA subsequently made arrangements for water to be carted to the station.
On 16 February 2005, the RSPCA seized the cattle on the station under s.42(1)(a) of the Animal Welfare Act 2002 (WA). On 18 February, the Minister transferred temporary care and control of the station to the PLB.
Following these actions, there was a period of negotiation between WAC, the RSPCA, and the PLB to reach agreement on how to resolve the issue. The community was assisted in these negotiations by a legal representative arranged by the Goldfields Land and Sea Council. Agreement was reached on 3 March 2005 that the cattle would be mustered and sold and the proceeds, less costs, would be returned to the corporation.
The muster was completed by 18 March, six weeks after the complaint. The RSPCA mustered ‘just over 1800 head of cattle from the station’ (Grieve 2005c). The cattle were understood to be in good condition when they arrived at the sale yards, a fact supported by the good sale price received.
The WAC and three of its members were each charged under s.19(3)(d) of the Animal Welfare Act 2002. The charge was that the corporation and each member, ‘[b]eing a person in charge of animals, namely approximately 1500 head of cattle, was cruel to the animals as they were not provided with proper and sufficient water’ (Magistrates Court 2005). The Aboriginal Legal Service provided legal representation when the case was heard in the Magistrates Court in May 2006. A plea bargain saw the charges against the three members of the corporation dropped in exchange for a guilty plea by the corporation. The corporation was fined $10,000 and ordered to pay costs.[15]
An independent assessment of the condition of station infrastructure and the peril of the cattle raises the possibility that the RSPCA’s initial response to the allegation of insufficient water on the lease, may have been disproportionate (Centre for Management of Arid Environments 2006). In fact, the RSPCA’s statement of material facts read out in the court hearing stated only that ‘some dead animals were sighted’ when its officers went the station in February. The statement did not identify whether the ‘dead animals’ were cattle or feral animals. Similarly, all the initial media reports, including RSPCA media comment, sensationalised the incident by claiming that large numbers of dead cattle had been found on an Aboriginal-run station. The following extracts from some of the media reports at the time show it took a while for accurate reports to be given coverage:
[RSPCA] Spokeswoman … says the pastoral lease, about 200 kilometres east of Wiluna, is held by an Aboriginal corporation, and it’s the second time in 12 months the RPSCA has had to intervene (ABC Rural 2005).[16]
You might recall, last week, RSPCA inspectors found around five hundred cattle dead on Windidda Station and a further 2500 in need of assistance (Grieve 2005b).
The pastoral lease for a remote West Australian station where 500 cattle were found dead and another 2,500 were struggling to survive must immediately be cancelled, a parliamentarian and a farmers’ group said today (AAP 2005).
Later in the same press article, the president of the Pastoralists and Graziers Association stated his view that:
Obviously the lease has got to be taken off them immediately, the cattle removed and the fines that everyone else has to stand by have to be enforced for them as well ... There can’t be one rule for Aboriginal stations and one rule for the white stations (AAP 2005).
These media reports show that the Aboriginality of the station management was a significant factor in the outcry about the incident.
By early March, the dead cattle were now only in ‘the tens’: ‘Initial estimates of animal fatalities on the property, provided by State Government staff, appear to have been high and ongoing assessment suggests the actual figure would be in the tens rather than the hundreds’ (RSPCA 2005).
By mid April reports were more circumspect: ‘[B]ack in February, the RSPCA found a number of dead cattle on the station’ (Grieve 2005a).
The fact that a large number of healthy cattle were mustered from the 385,000 hectare property in the last month of summer, following a period of high temperatures and ‘very much below average rainfall’, is jarringly at odds with the media reports and public statements made by the RSPCA and other instrumentalities about the extent of animal neglect.
[1] Getaccess, n.d., ‘Cattle station manager—Ben Forsyth’, Government of Western Australia, available at <http://www.getaccess.com.au/careers/myjob/data/BenForsyth.asp?> [accessed 13 July 2007].
[2] As of 1 May 2008, this Australian Government office is now called the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations.
[3] Department of Planning and Infrastructure (DPI) website, ‘Western Australia’s Pastoral Industry’, Government of Western Australia, available at <http://www.dpi.wa.gov.au/pastoral/1597.asp> [accessed 3 July 2007].
[4] The position of the Commissioner of Soil and Land Conservation is established by the Soil and Land Conservation Act 1945 (WA). The Commissioner administers the Act for the Minister of Agriculture.
[5] DPI website, ‘Western Australia’s Pastoral Industry’, Government of Western Australia, last updated 9 January 2006, available at <http://www.dpi.wa.gov.au/pastoral/1597.asp> [accessed 3 July 2007]. The differences in the figures indicate that some pastoral stations consist of more than one lease.
[6] For instance, the PLB refers to three regions—the Kimberley, Pilbara, and ‘the Gascoyne, Murchison, Goldfields and Nullabor’—and DAFWA refers to two broad categories—the ‘northern rangelands’ and the ‘southern rangelands’. There is some conformity between the ‘Kimberley’ and the ‘northern rangelands’, but for areas south of the Kimberley it is difficult to correlate data.
[7] This means that there is a margin for error as my data have been compiled from a range of sources, including from informants with a long association with the industry in the shire.
[8] DEC has entered into joint management negotiations with the native title applicants’ representative relating to the leases.
[9] One brother retained one of the leases and still runs it.
[10] Windidda Aboriginal Corporation committee member, pers. comm., 2006.
[11] On 1 July 2007, the ACAA was replaced by a new package of laws called the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders) Act 2006 (Cth) (CATSIA).
[12] WAC committee member, pers. comm., March 2005.
[13] Deciles provide a measure of the spread of rainfall experiences in the past. Rainfall in a current year can be compared against decile information to see where it stands in relation to historical records. The BOM generally categorises rainfall as ‘below average’, ‘average’ and ‘above average’. ‘Below’ and ‘above average’ rainfall are sometimes further categorised according to the degree of deviation from the average.
[14] BOM website, ‘Western Australian Rainfall Deciles 1 January to 30 June 2005’, available at <http://www.bom.gov.au> [accessed 19 July 2007].
[15] Plea bargaining is not unusual in this type of legal proceedings. In this case, concessions were made by the defence and prosecution to expedite the process, protect individuals and arrive at an outcome that all could live with.
[16] This statement by the RSPCA is incorrect. The last intervention was in 2002.