Aboriginal landowners have been deprived of control over their land
Mabo’s native title victory squandered, says judge The Age, June 1, 2013 Jane Lee Eddie Mabo’s High Court win has been ”squandered”, with native title reduced to something of little practical significance, a retired Federal Court judge says.
Peter Gray, previously the Aboriginal land rights commissioner and deputy president of the National Native Title Tribunal, retired after 29 years at the Federal Court on May 17.
In his farewell speech to the court, he referred to the historic 1992 decision that overturned the terra nullius doctrine that Australia belonged to no one before white settlement, paving the way for native title rights for indigenous people.
”The biggest disappointment in my career has been to see the opportunity given to us by the High Court in the Mabo case squandered,” Mr Gray said. ”The concept of native title has been reduced to something of little practical significance by judges who have been unable to understand, and legislators who have been consciously averse to, the vital relationship between people and land in Aboriginal traditions.”
He said a future generation of Australians had to devise a new native title system that ”recognises and respects the rights of our indigenous peoples and returns to them a measure of control over what, but for colonisation, would have been indisputably theirs…
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Mick Gooda disagreed.
His bone of contention was that the onus of proof of ongoing connection needs to be reversed. Paul Keating said the same. Rachel Siewerts proposed amendments to the NTA last year included a such a provision. Last year Nyoongar Elder Richard wilkes said the same thing.
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