QLD: Aboriginal community leaders in Qld to forge new peak body

AAP General News (Australia)
04-15-2004
QLD: Aboriginal community leaders in Qld to forge new peak body

By Lloyd Jones

CAIRNS, April 15 AAP - A new peak body to replace Queensland's Aboriginal Coordinating
Council (ACC) aims to forge a better partnership with the state government, the council's
new chairman said today.

Peter Guivarra, who was elected chairman at an ACC meeting in Cairns today, will oversee
the dismantling of the council as a statutory body this year.

The government has ruled that the state's 15 Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) communities,
formerly run as church missions or reserves, must become shire councils without an over-riding
statutory body.

But today's meeting agreed to push ahead with plans to create a new non-statutory peak
body to replace the ACC after it ceased to exist at the end of this year.

A draft constitution was discussed today and the 14 councils at the meeting backed
the new body, said Mr Guivarra, who is chairman of the Mapoon Community Council on Cape
York Peninsula.

The new body is tentatively known as the Aboriginal Local Government Association of Queensland.

Its structure would be much the same as that of the ACC and most councils had agreed
to forward funds from their future state government financial aid to the body, Mr Guivarra
said.

Priorities for the new body were to form closer working partnerships with the government
and to continue to be a strong voice for remote indigenous communities.

"Government and indigenous people have been at loggerheads for a couple of years now
... it hasn't been good and needs to be fixed and we aim to fix it and have a good working
relationship," Mr Guivarra said.

Outgoing ACC chairman Thomas Hudson, who did not stand for re-election, said the new
council faced a challenge with the transition to shire councils.

Hope Vale Community Council chairman Greg McLean was elected the ACC's new deputy chairman.

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KEYWORD: ACC (PIC AVAILABLE)

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