Following the 1988 elections, the structures of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (ALRA) meant that Aboriginal people were less exposed to the whims of government and equipped with a ‘war chest’ of sorts to challenge the government’s agenda.  And challenge they did: in the court of public opinion and the courts. 

While the Greiner reforms were unrealised the changes to the Act that did eventuate radically changed the operations of the land council and caused bitter division and enmity amongst Aboriginal people.  As Keane’s diary entries reveal the bitter split between those who agreed with the changes and those opposed to Greiner’s ‘deal’.

Once in office the Liberals moved swiftly to implement their Aboriginal Affairs reforms. Just four weeks into the new Government, in April 1988, the Premier placed the existing Ministry for Aboriginal Affairs (MAA) under more direct control of the Premier’s department, with Paul Zammit appointed Parliamentary Secretary assisting the Premier.  In the first instance, plans to abolish the ALRA were blocked in the Legislative Council.*  The second attempt by the Government to abolish the ALRA, via the appointment of an administrator to the NSWALC, was also unsuccessful as there was insufficient legal basis to make an appointment. The final and ultimately unsuccessful attempt by the Government was to introduce an amendment to the Regulations of the ALRA that gave the government power to take control of the assets and finances of the Aboriginal Land Council network.

The NSWALC lodged an injunction and proceeded to successfully challenge the legality of the regulation.  Thus, litigation by NSWALC and lobbying of the cross-parties in the Legislative Council stymied any immediate Government plans to dismantle the land council network and control its assets.  But the Government’s influence over the operations of the ALRA continued.  Relocating the Aboriginal Affairs bureaucracy to the Premier’s department meant that its officers, including the Registrar of the ALRA and others in relevant departments, variously pursued the Government’s agenda.

It was in the Court of public opinion that the ALC and its ever-vigilant members were most effective.  By May 1990, the Aboriginal Land Council network members had been in a sustained campaign mode for two years against the Government’s varied efforts to dismantle and then dramatically reform Aboriginal land rights in NSW.  It was in this context that the newly elected NSWALC Chair, David Clarke, came to approach Keane to work for the NSWALC in a part-time advisory capacity. The elected Council were aware that the future of land rights was in grave danger and the grass roots activism strategies that had been effective in the past needed renewing.  The political negotiations of the elected Aboriginal leadership also needed to step up a level. 

The campaign developed with the view to impressing the wider Australian public the benefits of land rights for all Australians. To this end from July 1990 the elected Councillors embarked on a two-pronged strategy: an image-raising public relations campaign and a massive parliamentary petition campaign.  Keane believed that ‘once the State Government realized that the Aboriginal people were prepared and capable of mounting a campaign that would win public opinion to their side, they would retreat from their hard line policy ... they would begin the process of consultation to negotiate amendments which would be mutually acceptable’. 

By September 1990, the NSW Government entered into negotiations with the Council Chair David Clarke, to come to a mutually acceptable agreement. At a joint news conference on 6 September the Premier and NSWALC Chair announced the details of the agreed amendments to the ALRA Act.  The main change was that the regional tier was abolished and the election process and tenure of Councillors was altered.  They were to be directly elected with full-time salaried positions instituted. Thirdly, land could be alienated.

While generally viewed as a ‘back down’ from this more extreme position, the Greiner amendments that eventuated contained a relatively simple but dramatically transforming change to the ALRA land dealing provisions.  Amongst other changes, they allowed for land recovered under the Act.

These changes saw a bitter divide emerge amongst land council members. Characterised generally as pragmatists on one hand and those concerned with ‘grass roots’ community involvement. 

But the divisions went deeper still and reflect a naivety as well as vulnerability on the part of elected representatives.  The Greiner changes saw much greater control concentrated in the state office.  At around the same time a scandal unfolded that revealed corruption on the part of a senior non-Aboriginal administrator know far and wide across the Aboriginal grapevine as the ‘lawn mower affair’.  In his diary Keane meticulously documented the revelations by the senior bureaucrat (subsequently investigated by the NSW Police and ICAC).