The Wik 10 Point Plan
The Howard Government promised a response to the decision and came up with the “Wik 10 Point Plan”. Howard argued the decision "pushed the pendulum back too far in the Aboriginal direction (and) the 10 Point Plan will return the pendulum to the centre". The Native Title Amendment Bill 1997 (Cth) was drawn up to implement the plan. It was introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament on 4 September 1997. It was passed by the House of Representatives, however, the Senate made 217 amendments to the bill and returned it to the lower house for reconsideration. The House of Representatives agreed to half of the changes but returned the bill to the Senate again. It was eventually passed two years later on 8 July 1998 by the Senate after the longest debate in the history of the Senate. One commentator described the amendments to native title law as using a "legal sledge hammer to crack a political nut".
Read more about this topic: Wik Peoples V Queensland
Famous quotes containing the words point and/or plan:
“The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn’t ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought:
Whose high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
And in himself posses his own desire;”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)