Dr Ed Wensing (Life Fellow) FPIA FHEA | Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU | Special Adviser and Associate, SGS Economics and Planning
Who are you? What Country are you from and what Country do you work with?
I am a cartographer, geographer, planner and a political scientist. I was born in Australia within a day of my parents arriving to settle here from the Netherlands as post-war migrants. I was about 3-4 months old when my parents moved from the migrant hostel in Richmond NSW to Canberra. We lived on Russell Hill, now Campbell, for about four years before moving to Torrens Street in Braddon. I live in the ACT on the lands of the Ngunnawal/Ngambri peoples. Over the past 25 years I have had the privilege of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples all over Australia on a wide range of matters, but with a special focus on the ‘intercultural contact zone’ between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights and interests (however defined by them) and the state’s interests in land and waters (however defined by the Crown). It is a privilege to work with Australia’s first nations peoples and especially in understanding their innate connections to and responsibilities for their ancestral lands and waters, all over Australia.
What brought you to the world of planning?
I started out as a cartographer and by the time I had been in the workforce for three years, I had seen the whole of Australia from the air. My first job was making sure that the aerial photography that was to be used to compile topographic maps of Australia had sufficient overlaps and were free of cloud or fog. I was very involved with the Youth Council of the ACT and in the early 1970s the Council received an invitation for 25 young people to spend a week at Guthega in the Snowy Mountains planning Canberra’s fourth new town of Gungahlin. I was one of the 25 people selected to participate. After 6 days intensive work, thinking and discussing what a town of 90,000 people could or should look like, we produced our own report: How to Build a Utopia… and not bomb out by much!’. It wet my appetite for town planning. So I sought a transfer from the Division of National Mapping in the then Department of National Development to the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC), which Sir Robert Menzies established in the late 1950s to plan, develop and construct the nation’s capital. I started in the drawing office and over 13 years, worked my away up the ladder to be a senior planner. The rest is history as the saying goes.
Where do you want to see planning go?
In 1992 the High Court of Australia found the notion of ‘terra nullius’ (land belonging to no-one) to be a convenient myth that enabled settlement of Australia by the British to ignore the fact that this land was owned and occupied by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for centuries. The High Court determined in Mabo v State of Queensland (No. 2) that the common law of Australia is capable of recognising their prior ownership and occupation and termed it native title. In 1995 I was PIA’s inaugural National Policy Director, and PIA’s National Executive directed me to prepare a policy on Native Title. We didn’t prepare a policy, but we did work collaboratively with the property valuation profession (the Australian Property Institute) to develop guidance notes for its members on their obligations under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). I then went on to co-author the only lay-person’s working guide to the Native Title Act after it was substantially amended in 1998. My experience working with Justice Robert French, Professor Mick Dodson and Lowitja O’Donaghue and their staff in the National Native Title Tribunal, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission made me realise that planning theory, policy, practice and education had to change to better recognise the rights and interests of Australia’s First Nations peoples if we are to be a better nation. It is a matter of public record that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia had their land stolen from them without their free, prior and informed consent, without a treaty and without compensation. They never ceded their sovereignty. The truth is that we as a nation are failing the First nations peoples of Australia. We cannot erase the past, but we can, and should, do better for their future. We should also heed the call of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. A gift to the nation about how we can heal the hurt of the past. PIA’s establishment of the Planning with Country Knowledge Circle is a huge step in the right direction, and I am honoured to be working with my colleagues in the circle.