Australian Property Law - Land Law

Land Law

Land is the predominant focus of Western property law, particularly Australian property law. Legal developments in this field outweigh the development of other forms of property law, this is primarily due to the high value of land in comparison to other forms of property, such as chattels. Each state in Australia has a different regime for the regulation and bureaucratisation of land. It is a largely statute based area of the law but can still be influenced by the common law and principles that originate from Australia's history as a colony of the United Kingdom, where land and estate law developed through the ambit of feudalism. Property law is enabling in that it creates a system for evidencing, recognizing and transferring title to land, facilitating its use as an economic instrument. Other legal instruments in property law that facilitate the private and commercial dealing of land include the mortgage, lease, covenant and easement.

Property legislation in all states is grounded upon the Torrens principle of registration of title. This posits that each state have a central register of all land in the state and that the register also show the 'owner' of the land. This system was devised to reduce the amount of fraud relating to land due to falsification of title deeds. The system also provides for registration of other entitlements to land such as a mortgage, by which land is used to secure a loan. Another major principle of this system is 'indefeasibility' of title - where a right has been entered on the register, it cannot be defeated by later rights except in certain circumstances.