Surrendering Australia Mabo, Wik and Native Title

Map displaying the extent of native title claims as at April 1997

Welcome to the wonderful world of Mabo, Wik and Native Title:

In 1994, 200 of the Yorta Yorta (Aboriginal river people) filed claim on behalf of their 4000 member community for 10,000 square kilometres of land stretching in the north to within 50 kilometres of land stretching in north to within 50 kilometres of Deniliquin in New South Wales, to Euroa, Victoria, in the south, Kow Swamp near Cohuna to the west and in the east to beyond Wangaratta. They claimed compensation for land lost to freehold title of 16,000 square kilometres and claimed native title over 4000 square kilometres of Crown land around the Barmah State Forest. Along with this they claimed title over the Murry, Owens, Goulburn and Edward rivers and their tributaries, as well as all water in lakes and dams on crown land. The Yorta Yorta claim that they will not restrict access to water.

The first successful claim under the Native Title Act was made by Ms Mary-Lou Buck of the Dunghutti community. A claim was lodged over 12.4 hectares of former crown land on October 10 1994. Ms Buck proved that her forebear James Davis was living in the area of Crescent Head at the time of white settlement. The Dunghutti people remained in the area. The agreement reached grants the Dunghutti community $738,000 to be paid within 28 days for one-fifth of the 12.4 hectares which has already been sold for housing. As the remaining land on the outskirts of Crescent Head near Port Macquarie is sold, further proceeds will be paid to the Dunghutti.

The Worimi Aboriginal Land Council in Tanilba Bay at Port Stephens, north of Newcastle has received ownership of five islands, worth $1.6 million, at this popular New South Wales holiday destination under the New South Wales holiday destination under the New South Wales State land rights legislation.

The Barngarta people have claimed a large part of south Australia from Carrieton in the mid-north, to Roxby Downs in the far north, to Streaky Bay on the west coast to Tumby Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. Along with this claim also includes Port Augusta, Whyalla, parts of the Flinders Ranges, the Gawler Ranges and the coastal waters south-west of Port Augusta (excluding freehold land) and islands including the Sir Joseph Banks Group, the Whidbey Isles and Lipson Island.

Sixty percent of South Australia has been claimed by Aboriginal groups. Sixteen claims as of July 15, 1996, totalling more than 550,000 square kilometres have been lodged with the National Native Title Tribunal.

The Larrakia Aboriginal people have claimed all undeveloped Crown land in the Darwin and surrounding area, including breaches, reserves and parks in Darwin, as well as Casuarina Breach, Rapid Creek Reserve and the Bicentennial Park in Darwin’s central business district. They would not restrict access to beaches and reserves. The Northern Territory Chief Minister, Shane Stone said: ‘I hope that the Prime Minister will recognise that we have reached an absurd point in this whole native title process, that a whole capital city can be claimed.

Up to 70 percent of Australia could be subjected to native title claim as a result of the High Court’s Wik decision. Legal advice to the Western Australian and Queensland governments indicates that the Wik decision would apply to all forms of land except freehold land. The ATSIC Commissioner for Victoria, Geoff Clark, said that if the government tried to override the Wik decision:

"At a political level we would use any avenue available including international action...there’s the forthcoming Olympic Games in the year 2000, there are a whole range of major events planned for Australia that Aboriginal people could concentrate their efforts on.

"This is all tied up with the race debate; people are feeling threatened, people feel that their security is being threatened. That includes ethnic groups.

"Asians, Italians, Greeks - nobody’s feeling comfortable at all in this country at the moment and I think this has been allowed to happen because there are hidden agendas."

Aboriginal activists have formed an international alliance which will challenge the Australian Government in the United Nations and the Australian government in the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for granting mining leases without the full consent of the local Aboriginal communities. At a World Council of Churches-sponsored Mining and Indigenous People’s confidence, the Aboriginal delegate Ms Wadjularbinna said:

"Mining is going on all over Australia, often without our consent, and we are not getting anywhere...desperate people resort to desperate measures,... There are ways and means to stop it through the United Nations outside Australia. People from outside are prepared to help us and put pressure on the Government.

"This is the beginning. There will be solid international challenges. If we have to take Australia to the international courts we will. We will not allow Australia to do what it is doing to us now. We are building a network of support. We are not poor black people. That mentality has to change we have to help to change it.

" Mick Dodson, Aboriginal and Social Justice Commissioner has said:

"Indigenous people are fast losing patience in exhausting domestic remedies to human rights abuses and will look more and more to the international arena if human rights are continually denied us.

"The Government has an obligation to ensure that domestic legislation is in line with our international human rights obligations. The Government has a long way to go to establishing a rights-based approach to the delivery of services and programs.

"The welfarist and paternalistic attitude of the new Government will ensure that Aboriginal peoples remain Australian society’s most expandable minority group and political cause."

In early January 1996 all of the Perth metropolitan area was claimed under native title.

Richard Court, premier of Western Australia, observes in his article in the Australian of January 8, 1996, that if and when the entire metropolitan area was claimed under Native Title Act the Claimants must be treated as if they hold a freehold title over the land even though there has been no prior determination by the National Native Title Tribunal or a court that any native title rights exist. In other words claimants can draw a line around the index page of the Perth metropolitan street directory, lodge it as a native title claim and immediately receive the full protection and rights of a native title holder.

Richard Court may not have been surprised at the decision by the High Court (as in Mabo by a divided judgement this time of 4-3 with assenting Justices being Toohey, Gaudron, Gummow and Kirby) on December 23, 1996, that native title can coexist with pastoral leases, so each lease would have to be examined individually is a claim was made. The Keating government had given a commitment to protect pastoral leases by writing this into the preamble of the Native Title Act. With the Wik decision Aboriginal groups have thus won the right to seek ownership of more than 40 percent of Australia, a result immediately given new class approval. Compensations may have to be paid to Aborigines for developments on soldier-settlement land.

A fear has developed among graziers that the Wik ruling will devalue properties. There is also concern that the decision throws into doubt the legality of mining leases issued after 1994. David Russell QC, President of the Queensland National Party, sees the decision as a type of dispossession of mainstream Australia, as the so-called dispossession of the Aborigines cuts both ways.

This is truer than Russell realises. Most working people in Australia today have no land rights whatsoever, no right to any piece of land which they can call home. Our economic system has it that land is a commodity which must be paid for. Consequently most of us spend most of our lives working to pay for a home. Some of us are paid so little that we can only afford to rent shelter and others, mainly young Australians, live on the streets. This is modern life, rightly or wrongly. But it is the context in which the Mabo judgement and the entire issue of native title should be viewed. Further, while the new class generally despises rural Australia and activities such as mining, these are necessary industries for modern life to occur. If the new class are to live, they must have at least food and materials. It is true that these things can be imported, but in the long run imports must be paid for.

Unfortunately political correctness is not a leading export revenue earner for Australia. For academics, lawyers, judges, teachers and other members of the Cognitive elite, the basic bread and butter issues that concern most of us are not their concern. They can buy what they want because they have assured, since the 1960s revolution, that they are both well paid and well rewarded. Mabo and migration do not threaten their soft, relaxed and flabby world. How many of the cognitive elite have done a Jesus and given their homes and wealth to the people whose causes they passionately champion? What Australian academic has his/her home full of refugees, boat-people, Aborigines, ect ect.

Imagine if in the future in the light of a new High Court case, the Meta -Mabo, that it was found that Native Title and freehold land could co-exist. How would the champions of justice, truth and the Mabo-way respond to a Meta-Mabo challenge on their land?

To develop our hypothesis about the possibility in principle of a meta-Mabo we need to consider the philosophical motivation for Mabo, the June 3, 1992 High Court decision and the Native Title Act, passes by Federal Parliament on December 11, 1993. First this legislation is United Nations inspired, especially delivered for the ‘Year of Indigenous Peoples. Second, it is based on the New Morality of White guilt. This position has been accurately summarised by Ron Brunton in his analysis of the Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody.

Dr Bain Attwood takes the view that the British colonisation of Australia lacked and continues to lack legitimacy, and this is the message which many of the contributors to his edited work In the Age of Mabo seem also accept. This Meta-Mabo position, in the words of Attwood’s critic, Dr Bruce Knox, declares that non-Aboriginal inhabitants are interlopers, not merely in terms of the land he says was unsurpassed, but in all ways. Moreover, Anglo-Australia committed genocide in obtaining Australia. For former Prime Minister, Malcom Faser, The old, narrow Anglo-Celtic view of Australia is very much a thing of the past. Robert Manne sees Mabo as Keating’s most important contribution as Prime Minister.

Manne acknowledges that the moral basis of Mabo and reconciliation in the acceptance of shame. For Justices William Deane (now Governor-General) and Mary Gaudron, the dispossession of the Aborigines was the darker aspect of Australian history and has given us a legacy of unutterable shame, which had to be addressed at law. The same settlement that the occupation of Australia was a moral mistake is found in the terra nullius argument, which is now a staple diet of history students.

This style of argument, along with all aspects of the New Morality, is to be found in the work of Henry Reynolds. We shall not consider Reynolds work here. It has been subjected to a brilliant critique by Dr Geoffrey Partington. Now what about there terra nullius claim? Graeme Campbell, in a speech before the Samuel Griffith Society in 1994, refuted this furphy.

The British settled Australia, recognising prior occupants, but not observing a prior settlement of the land in the European sense of prior townships and buildings - what was once called civilisation. In the historical context, Australia was legally acquired by Britain. There were clear cut and internationally respected laws governing the acquisition of new colonies. Colonies could be obtained either by settlement or by right of conquest.

Most nations have come into being through conquest. It is a hard fact of life of the pre-modern world. It is by the right of conquest that the Turks hold Asia Minor and the city of Istanbul. The British annexed the Transvaal in 1902. In modern times in international opinion has changed - but in an inconsistent fashion. The Australian government and most of the new class elites do not condemn Indonesia for the annexation of East Timor.

China is not condemned and stoned from the international stage for its invasion and genocide of Tibet. The United States is free to topple any South American government which threatens US interests - and the list goes on. The point to be made is that the British must be judged by the standards and laws operating at the time. Even if the British had conquered the Aboriginal people. By contrast Australia has treated its Aborigines very well. We will see cases of real genocide where an entire people have been annihilated. Obviously, nothing like this happened in Australia.

It was also recognised at the time of the settlement of Australia, that lands with a sparse occupation of people without a single recognised leader and government and no legal system of land tenure, could be acquired by effective settlement. Lands that were not conquered were acquired in this way. That is what human history, perhaps until very recently, was about. The British claim on Australia was made on this basis. Henry Reynolds, although inconsistent on this point, has also said that; the British claim of sovereignty over the whole of Australia was not surprising given the attitudes of European powers. It would have been unexceptional at any time in the nineteenth century.

Six of the seven High Court Judges found that a declaration of sovereignty in itself was not sufficient to extinguish pre-existing native title. The land had to be aligned in some way, such as by the granting of freehold which did extinguish pre-existing native title? And why, on the basis of New Morality, should it? Surely if the declaration of sovereignty is not sufficient to extinguish native title, then the mere granting of freehold would not either. The legality of freehold depends upon the legality of the sovereign. If I take an occupied property by force and attempt to set up an alternative society, none of the laws which I make are valid because I am simply not a sovereign. So it follows that either Mabo is totally invalid or it is valid and applies to free hold as well. And shouldn’t it?.

If Australia was founded on a criminal act, by the New Law, it must be an illegal colony. What then does this say about the legality of the High Court rulings such as Mabo itself? Isn’t the High Court itself an illegal institution? Are not all High Court judges who are not Aboriginal, invaders? If I steal a property and my wife has a child on that land, that in itself gives my child no right of ownership.

There is thus no reason why a Meta-Mabo decision could not be made by the High Court in its infinite wisdom in the future. Who would have thought in 1967, during the summer of love of Lennon and McCartney, that 30 years down the track we would have the Australia which we have today? Even an enemy invasion would have been kinder than the death by a thousand cuts that mainstream Australia is now experiencing in this cowardly battle of Psycho-political warfare. Surely anything is possible.

Turning to the original Mabo judgement we find the same contradictoriness and shonkiness of reason. The case commenced in the High Court in 1982. The claim for native title was led by Eddie Mabo for the Murry Islands off Queensland, a group of islands of about nine square kilometres, close to New Guinea. The differences between the Murry Islands and the mainland were stressed by the claimants lawyers themselves. For a start the people of the Islands are Melanesian, not Aboriginal: they are not even of the same race as the mainland Aborigines. The islands were annexed by the colony of Queensland in 1879 and in 1882 they were set aside for exclusive use of the natives. Apart from leases granted by the Crown to the London Missionary Society and a sardine factory, there has been a continuous occupation of the island by the natives. As Campbell and Uhlmann note, there are in fact two Mabo Cases - Mabo 1 and Mabo 2:

"The so-called Mabo 1 case - the first case determined in relation to Mabo, occurred after the Queensland Government tried to finalise the matter by itself. It passed legislation in 1985 which retrospectively declared that on the annexation of the Murray Islands in 1879 the Queensland government of the day has intended to extinguish all rights of native title.

"In February 1987 the Queensland Supreme Court was given the task by the High Court of determining the issues of the fact of the Mabo case. These proceedings were adjourned when a challenge was launched against the 1985 Queensland legislation. In December 1988 the High Court ruled by a narrow majority that the Queensland legislation was invalid on the basis that it was in breach of the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act of 1975. This act was based on sections of the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination and passed by the then ALP Government of Gough Whitlam. Whitlam was one of the first in Australia to realise the potential of such power to override the states, though similar tactics had been used in the US."

The Mabo 2 judgement commenced in the Supreme Court in 1989 and a judgement was made in November 1990. The court then heard the native title case and handed down its Mabo desicion on June 3, 1992 in the matter of Mabo and others vs State of Queensland:

"Six of the seven judges ruled that native title existed in the Murray Islands case and had survived the group's annexation by the Crown. The seven judges delivered four separate judgements between them. Justice Brennan wrote a judgement which was supported by chief Justice Mason and Justice McHugh. Justices Deane and Gaudron wrote another, Justice Toohey another and Justice Dawson was the dissenter.

"It was one thing to recognise native title on the Murray Islands with its distinctive differences from the mainland conditions, but it was another thing altogether to extend this decision to the mainland. There were no plaintiffs and defendants covering the mainland situation, there was no opportunity to put forward arguments about the Mertits of the differing cases.

"If the High Court wanted to deal specifically with the mainland it could have expressed a desire to pursue a test case and such a case could have been brought forward.

"As S E K Hulme QC has pointed out, Justice Brennan extended the Mabo judgement to the mainland by the fiction of claiming the islands had been settled by the British. In fact it was a central fact to the case that the islands had not been settled by whites, apart from leases mentioned. They were already settled by the Murray Islanders and this settled existence was fundamental to the success of their claim to native title.

"By saying the Murray Islands had been "settled" by the British, Justice Brennan then jumped to the claim that as native title applies to in this case of settlement it must also apply to the settlement of the mainland. So the Justice roughly twists the circumstances to suit his purposes. He dismisses the differences between the Melanesian and Aboriginal peoples on the basis that to allow such a difference would be racially discriminatory.

"Hulme states the approach was to proceed to overrule long decided cases, in the total absence of argument from interested persons, and a total absence of evidence as to Aborigines generally. This was for some reason seen as preferable to deciding the necessary case, as presented, and putting mainland questions aside for consideration, with full evidence and parties and argument, when they arose.. pp 47-48 (Samuel Griffith Society lecture "Aspects of the High Court's Handling of Mabo" July 1993)."

This magical type of thinking is also present in the Wik decision:

"Council for the Thayore peoples Sir Maurice Byers QC argued that native title existed outside the common law system of tenure in a different universe of discourse... and therefore things that occur only within the system of tenure do not affect it. Executive director of Cape York Land Council, Noel Pearson said outside the hearing that native title was part of Aboriginal law, not common law so native title itself unaffected by common law. Non recognition did not mean that native title had been extinguished: it could only be extinguished if the Aboriginal way of life was extinguished."

Apparently The High Court discerned in its Mabo decisions the existence of natural law, which is neither Australian statue law nor common law but a principle inherent in the nature of things. But if this is so, what about the right to bear weapons for the personal self-defence. If there is a natural law, this must be one such law as this need per-dates the formation of societies and perhaps even language and conceptional thought. We can be sure that a politically correct new class institution such as the High Court would reject this reasoning immediately even though it obviously had greater merit than its reasoning accepted in Mabo.

Consider another example. In 1994 the High Court created a new constitutional defence against defamation over political material. The case involved labor politician Andrew Theophanous who sued a Melbourne newspaper over a letter implying he was misusing public office to favour migrants. The reasoning in the 1994 decision was based on the 1992 conclusion that there had to be a guarantee of free speech in the Constitution, for without such a guarantee, representational government wouldn’t work. The aim is correct here, but the principle is wrong.

However, having attempted to minimise our common law heritage from British common law, this sort of presuppositional reasoning (it is technically known as a transcendental argument) about implied rights is the best that the High Court can come up with. However the same sort of presuppositional reasoning could in principle be applied to the gun debate as well, if it is valid at all.

P H Lane, Emeritus Challis Professor in Constitutional law at the University of Sydney, published a paper in The Australian Law Journal of March 1996 arguing that The role of the High Court is changing these days from an emphasis on literalism and legalism to the pursuit of rights, to new values and perceptions. The sovereignty of parliament and the people has been replaced by judicial elitism and constitutional sloganising by rights-driven social engineers operating in their elitist way outside Parliament House and outside the electorate.

Indeed, Sir William Deane, who has departed from the bench to become Governor General, has directly politicised that office in publicity attacking Pauline Hanson and defending multiculturalism in the typical cultural cringing way of the new class elite (for example, multiculturalism is what we are: as if an identity relationship could even meaningfully be defined by difference). We are reminded of a brilliant passage in Taylor Caldwell’s Great Lion of God, a very much neglected imaginative account of the life of St Paul:

"The Roman soldiers at the Damascus Gate knew Joseph well and honoured him and were grateful for the small pouches of sesterces which he always brought for them.

"They are good and simple and childlike boys, these young soldiers, he said to Saul. "They are proud of Rome. Once Rome was to be deeply honoured when she was a Republic and worthy of any civilised man's respect, for never had so great a nation been founded on so great and noble principles - though admittedly built on a fracticide. Her Bill of Man's Rights, propounded by her Founding Fathers notably Cincinnatus has never been by our Moses. But her Constitution was inevitably eroded by ambitious and Wicked Lustful men, in whom patriotism had long died and who saw their nation not as a Colossus of freedom in the world and a light to the nations, but an arena in which they could gain prizes and eventually crown themselves. It is true as Aristotle has said, alas: 'Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.' Yet, Republics have the potentialities for immorality, if they retain masculinity and do not become feminine democracies. Forgive me, I love the vision of the Roman Republic, ruled by just and honourable men. I weep that she has become a female Empire, lascivious cruel, bloodthirsty, terrible, powerful with evil an oppressor and an enslaver. But that is the history of nations who first forget God, then honour and virtue."

He sighed, "Those boys at the gates are not to be held accountable. They believe the lies they are told by their government. When will people not believe the lies of their government? If that day arrives surely the Messianic Age is at hand, and a Theocracy emerges!"

Aboriginalism or romantic primitivism are doctrines being used by the new class elites, not to advance the welfare of the Aboriginal people, but to divide Australia, generate race hate and to ultimately break down Australian society so that it can be remoulded according to their plans. In particular the ultimate ideological aim of Maboism is to show that mainstream Australia has no right to Australia, that it has no right to resist mass immigration, Assassination at internationalisation.

This theme comes through strongly in the work of the Australian multiculturalists and constitutes the decalogue in their new theology of guilt and anti-Anglo racism. We shall support these allegations in the concluding section of this chapter. It is important to realise that the law, like the universities, is firmly in the grip of the new class and that our battle is necessarily one of power politics.

To aim we need to look more closely at the new theology of Aboriginalism or romantic primitivism. We believe that these new class doctrines are racist and genocidal and have caused terrible damage to the Aboriginal people. Pauline Hanson, a great fighter for Aboriginal self-worth and dignity has exposed this and for her pains has been condemned by the new class as a racist and hater of Aborigines. It is a vile and unforgivable insult.

Associated section:
Hansonism: We are all Australians


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