The inquiry was taking place in a five-star hotel in the town of Alice Springs. With a population of fewer than 30,000, the town appears small to an outsider but it’s the second largest town in the Territory.

Inside the meeting room, there was white linen on the tables, and straight-backed chairs for participants, witnesses and senators. Outside the rain was slowly cutting off the town, and making travel in and out difficult.

I was reminded of a meeting I had with a National Parks and Wildlife officer. He was involved in ensuring that the Penang National Park, the first of its kind, met all the requirements and set out a best practice of community involvement. He said how difficult it was to ensure orang asli participation, then noted that the community became forthcoming with ideas, complaints and criticisms only when they were met on their own terms. This not only meant in their towns, but, as he put it, even "in the water", when trying to draw out comments from the women.

This isn’t because orang asli are backward, or stubborn, or greedy. It’s just that they’ve been at the sharp edge of development. And the majority of them don’t trust outsiders, their promises, or their motives. And they’re likely to feel intimidated rather than honoured by pomp and show. What the wildlife officer showed was that if you were willing to take the time to talk to people, to meet them where they felt comfortable – literally on their own turf – you would be rewarded.

Sadly, most government consultation with indigenous people in Malaysia doesn’t follow this formula. The survey on EIAs is done in such a cursory manner that the people hardly remember being asked – leading to some strange discrepancies between these surveys and surveys done by anthropologists specialising in orang asli affairs. Later consultation, for example in the Kelau dam project, has been conducted with select leaders, in places far removed from the villages – the board rooms of the EPU, for instance.

It was this that felt familiar about the consultations at the Senate inquiry. Although – in contrast to many Malaysian consultations – the communities could choose their own representatives, and all were given a place to speak, the language, the setting and the distance all conspired against the indigenous people. Even I, with English as my mother tongue and being English-educated, found some of the questions impenetrable. Even the appointed lawyer for the group endorsing the nuclear waste dump got tied in knots during some parts of the proceedings.

The senators at the inquiry seemed sympathetic to the communities. They asked penetrating questions. But there was an obvious clash of cultures – the laws of White Australia and the laws of Aboriginal Australia are clearly different. It may be that the senators understood more of the lines of culture, family, clan and totems than I did. I certainly hope so. But I wonder whether it was even possible to get to the truth of the matter in such a setting.

And this is, sadly, what reminded me of home. Indigenous people faced with the prospect of the desecration of their land and sacred sites faced by a culture whose very modus operandi makes it difficult to find the truth of matters, that in the gaps it builds for indigenous people guarantees that they will fall.

So, despite our claims to the contrary, I found that in our systematic racism – against the Penan, the Temuan, the peoples whose names are known to too few Malaysians – we find common ground with the whites of Australia. Sadly.