History
In 1996, the High Court’s decision in Wik Peoples v Queensland was handed down. The case dealt with the question of whether pastoral leases granted between 1910 and 1974 in Far North Queensland had the effect of extinguishing native title. A 4:3 majority of the judges decided that the grant of a pastoral lease did not confer exclusive possession, and that native title could therefore continue to exist – this has been called “coexistence”. Where an inconsistency between the native title and non-native title rights occurs, the non-native title rights prevail.
The NTA had not adequately dealt with the possibilities of native title existing over pastoral leases or of native title rights co-existing with other rights. Since the NTA had come into effect, governments had been taking action on pastoral leases that did not comply with the NTA. Wik raised the possibility that those acts could be invalid and showed that the ‘freehold test’ (the principle used to determine where proposed activities could be done without regard to native title) in relation to future acts was inappropriate. The Federal Government developed the Ten Point Plan, which became the basis for the amendments, to deal with these inadequacies of the NTA.
Read more about this topic: Native Title Amendment Act 1998
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.”
—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)