Paul Cleary

Author: Paul Cleary

  • Fortescue’s disruption not a positive for Native Title

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    Australian Financial Review The Yindjibarndi case boosts the case for law reform to establish minimum standards in agreements between developers and Indigenous communities. Disruption has been the modus operandi of iron ore miner Fortescue ever since Andrew Forrest took control of a small prospector back in 2003, and now this force looms large in debates…

  • The long hot road towards a self-made future

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    Australian Financial Review The Yindjibarndi in the Pilbara have a clear vision for a business conglomerate to revitalise and provide for their community’s long-term stability. After two decades of sustained mining expansion, Australia’s resources “super-cycle” has shown mixed results for traditional owners whose land has yielded trillions of dollars of wealth. In the Pilbara region, which has…

  • Cultural fishing: Rights to an ancient practice left unprotected

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    Oxfam Australia Powerful and confronting testimony has been given by South Coast Aboriginal people to a NSW parliamentary inquiry into cultural fishing, who have spelled out the immense cost to their communities from the refusal of successive governments to legislate these rights. Oxfam Australia has been working with South Coast communities for the past four…

  • An Indigenous fight with Fortescue makes a case for reform

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    Australian Financial Review The mining companies have learnt how to divide and conquer Indigenous communities. Change is needed to put things on a fairer footing. Throughout the mining boom, the public has been given a very positive narrative about the benefits generated for Aboriginal communities, and it wasn’t until Rio Tinto’s Juukan Gorge blast that…

  • Mining giants must share wealth

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    Sydney Morning Herald It’s time to revisit unfinished tax business and make miners contribute to a national future fund. As mineral prices soar to record highs and companies automate their digging, mines in Australia should perhaps be renamed Money Printing Operations because the cash they make has become truly astronomical. Take Australia’s biggest export industry,…

  • WWII hero dies but his Timorese love story blossoms

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    In collaboration with Paige Taylor for The Australian One of Australia’s last World War II commandos, who escaped the Japanese after being shot and garrotted through the neck and then spent the rest of his life repaying the kindness of the Timorese people who saved him, has been laid to rest in Perth. Keith Hayes’s…

  • Serving Our Country: Indigenous Australians, War, Defence and Citizenship

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    The Australian When Charles Bean wrote his 12-volume official history of Australia’s involvement in World War I, he made a passing reference to just one Aboriginal Digger, a private who was highly decorated in the epic battle of Mont St Quentin on August 31, 1918, when the Australians overcame the German stronghold. William Irwin rushed and…

  • Sydney Wars: Conflict in Colony, Quiet Invasion, Myall Creek Massacre

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    The Australian When Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River, about the massacre of Aboriginal people on the Hawkesbury River in the early 1800s, was put on stage a few years back, the comments from some audience members, at the performance I attended, were incredulous. “Did that really happen?” one glumly asked a friend. Others made…

  • Delivering the right stuff: The F-35A Joint Strike Fighter

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    The Australian He wears a pair of Clark Kent glasses, and with his tall, solid build, this senior air force officer could easily play the part of Superman. But the man charged with delivering Australia’s $17 billion defence baby, a fleet of 72 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters, doesn’t just look the part. Air Vice-Marshal Leigh…

  • Australia should meet East Timor halfway on maritime boundary

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    Paul Cleary
    in

    The Australian When Australian commandos landed in the colony of Portuguese Timor in 1941, they immediately noticed that the gum trees, rocks and ochre-coloured earth were strikingly similar to home. As novelist Nevil Shute observed after the war, the commandos found that much of the Timor landscape consisted of “stony hills covered in thin forest…