Fed: Yanner takes ATSIC to court

AAP General News (Australia)
02-10-2000
Fed: Yanner takes ATSIC to court

By Suzanne Klotz

BRISBANE, Feb 10 AAP - Controversial Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner today launched
a Federal Court bid to be installed as an ATSIC commissioner despite being sentenced to
jail.

Yanner last week also threatened to sue the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission,
saying ATSIC forced him to resign as chief executive of the Carpenteria Land Council because
of his conviction.

Elected to the position of commissioner by the far north west zone ATSIC regional council
on December 14 last year, Yanner was made ineligible because of a jail sentence imposed
four days earlier.

Under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989, anyone sentenced
to at least 12 months jail is disqualified from being a commissioner for two years.

However the act also entitles Yanner to seek to have the Federal Court declare him
eligible despite the convictions.

Last December 10, the Queensland Court of Appeal upheld an Attorney General's appeal
and sentenced Yanner to 18 months jail, suspended for four years, over his role in a pub
brawl at Burketown in north Queensland in 1997.

The Attorney General had appealed an October, 1999, Mt Isa District Court decision
in which Yanner was only placed on three years probation, ordered to perform 240 hours
community service and fined $2,500.

Yanner 27, had pleaded guilty to three charges of assault causing bodily harm and one
of assault causing bodily harm in company over attacks on a woman, a Telstra worker, and
a male nurse.

His barrister Angelo Vasta today asked during a brief mention of the Federal Court
case that the issue be resolved as quickly as possible.

"It has a degree of urgency because in a sense the people up there (in the far north
west zone) are disenfranchised," he told Federal Court Justice John Dowsett.

Mr Vasta said today's application was a legal precedent.

"There's never been an application under the act prior to this," he said.

Barrister Maurice Swann for the commonwealth government said it was undecided whether
the government or the minister would be an interested party in the case.

But Mr Vasta said there was no requirement for the federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister
John Herron to be a party to the application.

Justice Dowsett ordered that the far northwest zone's 20 regional councillors from
the Cooktown and Mt Isa areas be informed of the action and have the opportunity to be
represented in the case.

He set a hearing date for March 30.

Yanner's legal team will argue that notwithstanding the conviction he is capable of
representing the people who elected him.

There are expected to be supporting affidavits, including one from outspoken Aboriginal
leader Noel Pearson.

AAP smk/sc/ah/bwl

KEYWORD: YANNER

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