This chapter highlights contestation over economic development, with the state and mining companies looking to exploit the mineral wealth of the Indigenous estate, and Indigenous Australians often seeking to challenge this powerful alliance with different and diverse notions of development. It has been argued that the state, having made laws in the recent past to return considerable tracts of land to Indigenous Australians, is now looking at this estate as ‘greenfields’ for mining development and as the means to deliver mainstream development to Indigenous communities. The state has constructed a new discourse of policy failure and a need to break business-as-usual approaches. Arguably, the state is also seeking to encourage commercial penetration of the Indigenous estate by weakening already weak Indigenous property rights and institutions in a manner that is at odds with emerging international conventions on the recognition of Indigenous rights such as numerous articles with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The analysis here highlights two fundamentally different views about the appropriate development pathways on the Indigenous estate. The perspective of dominant national interest and global geopolitics seeks to explore and exploit the mineral wealth of the Indigenous estate irrespective of the wishes of the land owners. An alternative view, based on emerging alliances between Indigenous land owners and environmental and developmental non-government organisations, emphasises the biodiversity value of the Indigenous estate as an alternative form of development to mineral extraction.

At present, the former perspective is in the ascendancy, dominated by the views and political and economic power of the state and mining companies. At the start of the twenty-first century there has been an acceleration of a new economic order predicated on world trade and energy-intensive industrialisation that is right now being challenged by a global slowdown. As a commodity-export dependent economy, Australia has been at the vanguard of the neoliberal order that has been so dominant in recent years. At the same time, there are concerns about climate change that the Australian Government, in recent years, has been at the vanguard of ignoring, at least until a change of national government in November 2007. At such a time it is extremely difficult for any alternative development perspective, based on proven links to land and continuity of custom, to gain political traction. This is especially the case because the Australian state is in the process of depoliticising Indigenous institutions, and mainstream political channels reflect the views of the majority only.

The means that the powerful use to support arguments in favour of modernisation is to suggest that Indigenous people living in remote Australia face a stark choice between tradition and modernity: the former is associated with material poverty, the latter with affluence. This is a false dichotomy because Indigenous people in remote Australia are already participating in a hybrid economy that is thoroughly intercultural and is inclusive of both the customary and the market. Indigenous people undergo rigorous tests to show that they maintain custom and identity in order to regain land ownership; they now face new challenges in retaining that land ownership. There are immense pressures to join the mainstream, but the issue then arises of whether economic integration is possible for Indigenous Australians without losing their links to the land. Conversely, if a choice is made not to join the mainstream, then there is the unenviable prospect of ongoing poverty and marginalisation.

There are many possibilities that are currently not being considered. A new approach is needed that gives institutional recognition to the inherent rights of Indigenous Australians to control the nature of development on their ancestral lands by bestowing them with more potent property rights. Indigenous peoples need to be empowered by the state, as noted by the MCA, so that they can participate in negotiations with mining companies on a more equitable basis. Such empowerment will ensure that Indigenous Australians have the capabilities and capacities to engage with the state and mining companies, and can define their own aspirations. This is a right, as espoused by Sen (1999), to develop capabilities to negotiate the forms that development and participation will take. The Australian states and mining companies need to recognise that the security of the poor and of the prosperous are inter-linked; poverty and instability has the capacity to destabilise states and to enhance risk.

In the political struggle over ideas about development and how Indigenous land should be used, Indigenous Australians need to use available political instruments and alliances to gain a hearing. This may entail appeal to international forums, although as noted the Australian state has historically been relatively impervious to international opinion. There is a glimmer of hope in the shifting national mood and changes in direction of the moment (post the onset of the global financial crisis) that might see a greater acceptance of alternate development models, like the hybrid economy framework, that have the capacity to incorporate Indigenous priorities. The challenge for the Australian state is to recognise the value of cultural diversity and economic hybridity; and to acknowledge that there is nothing inherently valuable about monolithic approaches based on resource extraction. The challenge for mining companies is to recognise that the fostering of sound regional relations with Indigenous people might involve agreement making that supports their aspirations for economic diversity beyond mine site options. Given poor past relations, Indigenous scepticism about rampant development is understandable. Whether the marginal situation of Indigenous peoples in remote Australia can be improved will be highly dependent on acceptance by the state and mining companies that all their interests are interdependent.