Australia Aborigines reject land deal, fear eviction

CANBERRA, May 24 (Reuters) Australia's government has been accused of behaving like an authoritarian ''Big Brother'' after Aborigines rejected a deal to give up their land for development in return for better housing.

Australia's Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough yesterday angrily withdrew a 60 million Australian dollar offer to rebuild outback shanty communities in central Alice Springs in return for control of the land by local authorities for 99 years.

Aboriginals living in the squalid ''town camps'' said they feared eviction if they accepted the government's offer.

''The living conditions may have been run down but we always had control of how we lived on our town camps, and we were concerned that that all was going to be taken away,'' Mount Nancy Camp President Walter Shaw told Australian radio.

Local native title holder Betty Pearce said while there were problems, they were better managed by Aboriginals than imposed by the government.

''I would not like to see the money just taken away and put somewhere else in such a Big Brother attitude as in saying, ''you do this'' or ''you give up the leases and we'll give you the money,'' she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Many of Australia's 460,000 Aborigines live in remote communities with poor access to jobs, good housing, health services and education. They account for around 2.3 per cent of the 20 million population.

Brough said the camps, given to former Aboriginal squatters years ago on a perpetual lease, were not traditional indigenous lands, but simply run-down Alice Springs suburbs.

He said the government wouldn't repair private property unless it had final say over how that property was used.

Brough, a former army officer, said he was ''deeply disturbed and hurt'' by the rejection, which came as the government tries to push private home ownership in Aboriginal communities.

Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government has often clashed with Aboriginal leaders, favouring practical measures such as better access to health and education.

Howard has repeatedly refused to apologise for past racial injustices suffered by the Aborigines.

''I have always held the view that the best way to help the indigenous people of this nation is to give them the greatest possible access to the bounty and good fortune of this nation, and that cannot happen unless they are absorbed into our mainstream,'' Howard told Parliament on Thursday.

Earlier this month, Brough said the camps were using a reverse apartheid by controlling who came in and out.

''There is nowhere else in this country, black or white, where someone has a house, electricity, sewerage, water supplied and roads supplied on to their private land,'' he said.

''We're basically running an apartheid operation here in Alice Springs in reverse, in that you have 16, 18 or whatever it is, 20-odd communities where you need a permit to enter.'' The row occurred as rights group Amnesty International criticised Australia over conditions for Aborigines in its annual report, pointing to the poor housing endured by many indigenous people.

REUTERS AE RAI1051