Native Title Act 1993

The Native Title Act 1993 provides for determinations of native title in Australia. The Act was passed by the Keating Labor Government in response to the High Court's decision in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992). The Act commenced operation on 1 January 1994.

This legislation aimed to codify the Mabo decision and implemented strategies to facilitate the process of granting native title.

The Act also established the National Native Title Tribunal, to register, hear and determine native title claims.

According to the Australian Government:

The Native Title Act 1993 establishes a framework for the protection and recognition of native title. The Australian legal system recognises native title where:

  • the rights and interests are possessed under traditional laws and customs that continue to be acknowledged and observed by the relevant Indigenous Australians
  • by virtue of those laws and customs, the relevant Indigenous Australians have a connection with the land or waters
  • the native title rights and interests are recognised by the common law of Australia.
The Native Title Act sets up processes to determine where native title exists, how future activity impacting upon native title may be undertaken, and to provide compensation where native title is impaired or extinguished. The Act gives Indigenous Australians who hold native title rights and interests—or who have made a native title claim—the right to be consulted and, in some cases, to participate in decisions about activities proposed to be undertaken on the land. Indigenous Australians have been able to negotiate benefits for their communities, including in relation to employment opportunities and heritage protection. The Act also establishes a framework for the recognition and operation of representative bodies that provide services to native title claimants and native title holders. The Australian Government provides significant funding to resolve native title issues in accordance with the Act, including to native title representative bodies, the National Native Title Tribunal and the Federal Court.

Famous quotes containing the words native, title and/or act:

    “Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other. In the progress of degradation the distinction of races is soon lost.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.”
    —Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)

    “We all have—to put it as nicely as I can—our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terrible power that sometimes destroys us; but they don’t talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before—truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.”
    —George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)