European settlement of Australia commenced in 1788. Prior to this, Indigenous Australians inhabited the continent and had unwritten legal codes
Terra Nullius:
Terra Nullius: A Latin term which translates as 'Empty Land ' or 'Nobody 's Land '. Captain Cook declared Australia to be 'Terra Nullius ' when he sailed into Botany Bay on April 28th 1770, so that he could claim Australia for Britain. This proclamation ignored the fact that hundreds of different groups of Indigenous people occupied the land.
The indigenous people did not have any form of political organisation. The British could not find any recognised leaders with authority so they couldn’t sign treaties.
The first test of terra nullius in Australia occurred with the
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This assertion, however, was undermined by the fact that in 1913 the Queensland government had bought land from the Meriam people on which to build a police station. If the Crown (and therefore the State government) already owned the land then why would it have to buy some from the Indigenous inhabitants? The government had also established a land court in the early part of the 20th Century to preside over land disputes between the Meriam people. Again, why establish a court to make judgements if the land belonged to the Crown?
On 3rd June 1992 six of the seven High Court Judges ruled; 'The Meriam people are entitled as against the whole world, to possession, occupation, use and enjoyment of the lands of the Murray Islands '
On June 3rd 1992, six months after Eddie "Koiki" Mabo 's tragic death, the High Court upheld his claim that Murray Islanders held native title to land in the Torres Strait.
Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992) 175 CLR 1 (Mabo) declared that terra nullius had never legally existed and that it had been wrongfully applied to Australia. The high court said that 'ultimate ' title existed instead, and through that, native title could be claimed. Australian land law has developed from English land law and it was under those principles that Australia was settled. At common law all land is owned by the Crown which then deals with that land as it sees fit.
Under common
The court case consisted of the Queensland government passing an act and trying to pass a law which prevented Aboriginal people, from claiming native title. Native title in Australia being the government recognising the traditional connection that the Indigenous people have with the land and waters. Mabo eventually won this case, the result not being that they could claim native title but that the possibility was
In 1992, the doctrine of terra nullius was overruled by the High Court in the case Mabo v Queensland (No.2) [1992] HCA 23. After recognising that the Meriam people of Murray Island in the Torres Straits were native title landholders of their traditional land, the court also held that native title existed for all
The term 'terra nullius' meant a land that belonged to no one, Australia was titled this by Captain Cook in the 18th century and it legally meant that no one could claim rights over the land because no one lived there. However, people were living there, the indigenous people of the country had been living here for many centuries, and once the land was claimed by European settlers the Aboriginal people lost their rights of the land that had been theirs for such an extensive
In 1788 when the European settlers “colonised” Australia, the Australian land was known as “terra nullius” which means “land belonging to no-one”. This decision set the stage for the problems and
This was assumed because the Aboriginals had not cultivated the land, so it
Importantly for Australia has been the take over of land by the British under the doctrine of
Terra Nullius comes from the Latin word ‘no body’s land’ which is used to describe a piece of land that has not been subjected to the state of sovereignty and is the legal basis of the European settlement of Australia.
The case was started by five Meriam people, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Reverend David Passi, Celuia Mapoo Salee, Sam Passi and James Rice. (Keon & QC, 2011) These men fought against the State of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia. In the early years, Mabo expelled from the island by Murray Council because of Mabo’s father, Robert Zezou Sambo was the leader of Murray islanders’ maritime strike at the same year when Mabo was born in 1936. The Mabo case was started in 1982; after ten years working on the litigation, the “Native Title Act” was passed in 1993. It signalled the success of the lawsuit and the rights of Murray people of their traditional lands, as well as Aboriginal people.
They claimed that their rights to the land had not been extinguished by the Crown when their islands were taken over or annexed by Queensland. They still had a legal right to the land based on the legal concept of ‘native title’ – right of ownership based on traditional ownership of the land. The Queensland Government’s response was to pass the Coast Islands Declaratory Act, 1985.
Consequently, the indigenous Australians were considered a primitive race, with no obvious system of local law, and Australia was deemed uninhabited land under the doctrine of Terra Nullius - thereby, allowing Britain to claim sovereignty over it
Case by case indigenous Australians begin to gain access to the land that was taken from them.
The term ‘Native Title’ refers to the right of Indigenous people to their traditional land. In Australia it has a legal significance of the right to an area of land, claimed by people whose ancestors were the original inhabitants of the land before European settlement. Also who can prove that they have had a continuous connection with the land. Native Title is the term given by the High Court to Indigenous land rights by the Court in Mabo and others v State of Queensland (No.2) [1992] HCA 23. The case required
The high court made a judgement (15) which was Mabo 1992, which attempted to assist the Indigenous people with the act of racial decimation dealt with the injustices that were served by the government. Attempts were made to help the government that was under the rule of Paul Keating, who tried to help with the injustices that both parties were dealing with the RDA. This acknowledged the idea that there were things like native title had been beyond the likeness that some places were either private or public and had ownership which included idea that terra nullius was then wiped out. The opposition at the time was John Hewson with support of John Howard. After the decision was made, Keating was then compelled to act in the face of the high court’s
On 30 June 1993 the Wik peoples made a claim in the Federal Court of Australia for native title to land on Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. The land claimed by the Wik people (and the Thayorre people, who claimed native title rights to an area partly overlapping the Wik claim) included land where two pastoral leases had been issued by the Queensland government.
European settlement due to the effects of the removal of people from their very own traditional lands. There are many ways through which we know that Australia was different in the past than what it is today. Before the arrival of the Europeans on the first fleet, there were no use of horses or carriages, not even a single building, no large farms to take care of and no foreigners travelled from different parts of the world. Australia was a descent, unspoilt country where people respected each other and took care of the environment, animals and plants around them. People never wasted food, they used as much was needed.