Terra Nullius

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Australian courts don't often see cases litigated for years and years. But in the Queensland Supreme Court this week, a trial commences that's been before the courts since 1982 and looks like going on for quite a while yet. Professor Garth Nettheim from the Aboriginal Law Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney tells us what it's all about.


Professor Garth Nettheim:
Australia stands out as the one major British former colony that has never recognised the pre-existing rights of the indigenous peoples. If you take comparable countries like the United States of America, Canada or in New Zealand there has been recognition of the prior rights of the people In all of those countries there were treaties negotiated, none in this country, and in those countries the courts have recognised that pre-existing rights can continue. To this date, there has been no such recognition in Australia


Narration:
In 1788 the British claimed sovereignty and ownership of the entire Australian mainland, a continent in which Aborigines had dwelt for more than forty thousand years.

At the time of colonisation, as many as half a million Aborigines lived in distinct tribal areas throughout the land but to the European mind they were nomads without systems of law, social organisation, or property rights. So the British could claim the continent without need for treaty or compensation. Legally it was held to be Terra Nullius a land belonging to no-one.