A Greater Sense of Tradition: The Implications of The Normative System Principles in Yorta Yorta for Native Title Determination Applications
| Author: |
Daniel Lavery BA, LLB (Hons) (Qld)
Senior Lawyer, Department of Justice, Northern Territory
|
| Issue: |
Volume 10, Number 4 (December 2003)
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Contents:
Acknowledgement: The author would like to thank Maureen Tehan of the University of Melbourne and the anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments.
All opinions expressed are those of the author and not the Department of Justice or the Northern Territory.
- In December 2002, the High Court of Australia handed down the decision of Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v Victoria.[1]
By a majority of 5:2, the High Court dismissed an appeal by the native title claimants against a trial finding that, for the Yorta
Yorta People, native title rights and interests could not be recognised because they had ceased to acknowledge their laws and customs
in the period since the assertion of sovereignty by the Crown. The tide of history, the trial judge found, had washed away any real
observance of their traditional laws and customs.
- The High Court upheld this conclusion essentially determining that the jural foundations of the native title capable of recognition
under the Native Title Act 1993("NTA") had been irrevocably eroded. For the majority, Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ. gave a joint
opinion, and McHugh J and Callinan J wrote separate judgments likewise dismissing the appeal. McHugh J's short opinion concurred
with the joint majority judgment. Gaudron and Kirby JJ. jointly dissented.
- The joint majority opinion is of particular interest. The judgment charts the relevant principles from the proposition that only
certain indigenous rights survived the assertion of British sovereignty to the statutory definition of "native title" in s.223(1)
NTA. In particular, the term "traditional" within that definition is accorded a restrictive and forensically-onerous meaning.
- The decision was a severe bodyblow to the Yorta Yorta, and one that was felt by other indigenous claimants throughout Australia.
The implications of the decision are still being comprehended and this paper attempts to add to this on-going analysis. The first
section of this paper outlines and discusses the principles enunciated in the joint majority judgment in the Yorta Yorta decision.
The second section attempts to apply these principles to several claim scenarios. The third analyses some of the potential implications
for claim purposes, particularly the now-critical issue of the proper framing of the 'native title claim group' in a NTA claimant
application and the post-determination circumstances. Some interesting conclusions arise.
- The joint majority opinion of the High Court in Yorta Yorta, that of the Chief Justice and Justices Gummow and Hayne, is undoubtedly
the leading expression of the relevant law. It begins by emphasising again that because this is an application for determination
of native title under the NTA, it is necessary to begin and end with a consideration of the provisions of the NTA itself.[2] However, their Honours said, to understand what the NTA seeks to achieve and what is defined therein as "native title", it is important
to comprehend "some fundamental principles".[3]
- The joint opinion then enunciates a body of legal principle that surrounds the acquisition of radical title by the Crown across Australia.
Subject always to the act of state doctrine, these fundamental principles theoretically commence with the (now) well-established
proposition that certain indigenous rights and interests survived the Crown's assertion of sovereignty.
What survived were rights and interests in relation to land or waters. Those rights and interests owed their origin to a normative
system other than the legal system of the new sovereign power; they owed their origin to the traditional laws acknowledged and the
traditional customs observed by the indigenous peoples concerned.[4]
- With the introduction of the normative system concept, it is then developed.[5]
When it is recognised that the subject matter of the inquiry is rights and interests (in fact rights and interests in relation to
land or waters) it is clear that the laws or customs in which those rights or interests find their origins must be laws or customs
having a normative content and deriving, therefore, from a body of norms or normative system - the body of norms or normative system
that existed before sovereignty. Thus, to continue the metaphor of intersection, the relevant intersection, concerning as it does
rights and interests in land, is an intersection of two sets of norms.
- The opinion then explains how, with enormous legal facility, the fundamental premises from which the Mabo (No. 2) decision[6]
and the NTA severally proceed are married:
[T]he fundamental premise from which the decision in Mabo [No 2] proceeded is that the laws and customs of the indigenous peoples
of this country constituted bodies of normative rules which could give rise to, and had in fact given rise to, rights and interests
in relation to land or waters. And of more immediate significance, the fundamental premise from which the Native Title Act proceeds
is that the rights and interests with which it deals (and to which it refers as "native title") can be possessed under traditional
laws and customs. Of course, those rights and interests may not, and often will not, correspond with rights and interests in land
familiar to the Anglo-Australian property lawyer.[7]
- Their Honours then state that what is important is not this jurisprudential backdrop but "to recognise that the rights and interests
concerned originate in a normative system, and to recognise some consequences that follow from the Crown's assertion of sovereignty."[8]
- There follows an elaborate enunciation of principle which was not necessary for the decision but, their Honours said, must be taken
into consideration in the understanding of the definition of native title.[9]
These principles will be teased out in discussion. The core concept is the intersection of normative systems, that of the common
law and an indigenous legal system. Those indigenous rights and interests in relation to land or waters that survived the intersection
were recognised and styled "native title". They owe their existence to the indigenous normative system. What the common law in
Mabo (No.2) did was to acknowledge this recognition. Later, native title was protected and defined in the NTA, specifically in s223(1).
Their Honours stressed that the definition in s223(1) is centrally important to any application under the NTA. That sub-section
reads:
Key concepts: Native title and acts of various kinds etc. Native title.
Common law rights and interests
223 (1) The expression native title or native title rights and interests means the communal, group or individual rights and interests
of Aboriginal peoples or Torres Strait Islanders in relation to land or waters, where:
(a) the rights and interests are possessed under the traditional laws acknowledged, and the traditional customs observed, by the
Aboriginal peoples or Torres Strait Islanders; and
(b) the Aboriginal peoples or Torres Strait Islanders, by those laws and customs, have a connection with the land or waters; and
(c) the rights and interests are recognised by the common law of Australia
- Their Honours grafted onto the term "traditional", as used in paragraph 223(1)(a), a greater meaning than is suggested by the ordinary
sense of the term. The joint judgment stated:
As the claimants submitted, "traditional" is a word apt to refer to a means of transmission of law or custom. A traditional law or
custom is one which has been passed from generation to generation of a society, usually by word of mouth and common practice. But
in the context of the Native Title Act "traditional" carries with it two other elements in its meaning. First, it conveys an understanding
of the age of the traditions: the origins of the content of the law or custom concerned are to be found in the normative rules of
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies that existed before the assertion of sovereignty by the British Crown. It is
only those normative rules that are "traditional" laws and customs.
Secondly, and no less importantly, the reference to rights or interests in land or waters being possessed under traditional laws acknowledged
and traditional customs observed by the peoples concerned, requires that the normative system under which the rights and interests
are possessed (the traditional laws and customs) is a system that has had a continuous existence and vitality since sovereignty.[10]
- The origins of the laws and customs which found these rights which are capable of recognition, and which are protected, must pre-date
sovereignty. Otherwise, the term 'traditional' would have no present meaning in the statutory definition. Their Honours held that
acknowledgment and observance of these laws and customs by the indigenous society must have continued, substantially uninterrupted,
since sovereignty for native title rights and interests to achieve and maintain recognition and protection.[11] The joint judgment explained the qualification:
In the proposition that acknowledgment and observance must have continued substantially uninterrupted, the qualification "substantially"
is not unimportant. It is a qualification that must be made in order to recognise that proof of continuous acknowledgment and observance,
over the many years that have elapsed since sovereignty, of traditions that are oral traditions is very difficult. It is a qualification
that must be made to recognise that European settlement has had the most profound effects on Aboriginal societies and that it is,
therefore, inevitable that the structures and practices of those societies, and their members, will have undergone great change since
European settlement.[12]
- After the acquisition of sovereignty, however, a pre-sovereignty indigenous normative system cannot create new rights and interests
that are recognised by the new sovereign order because "there could be no parallel law-making system after the assertion of sovereignty",[13]
their Honours explained. The only indigenous rights or interests in relation to land or waters which will be recognised after the
assertion of the new sovereign are those that find their origins in pre-sovereignty law and custom.[14]
This corpus of principle might conveniently be called the intersection of normative systems doctrine.
- The joint opinion then examined the lower courts' findings and reasoning, concluding that the trial judge's express rejection of the
claim that the Yorta Yorta had continuously observed traditional laws and customs since sovereignty was, more fundamentally, a finding
"that the society which had once observed traditional laws and customs had ceased to do so, and by so ceasing to do, no longer constituted
the society out of which the traditional laws and customs sprang."[15]
The jural foundation of the native title rights had fundamentally and irrevocably eroded. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed.
- The intersection of normative systems doctrine offers some far-reaching challenges for the future framing and carriage of native title
determination applications.
- Perhaps the foremost implication is that the definitional gateway to the NTA, s223(1), has been significantly narrowed. The requirements
of traditionality are likely to prove fatal to many current native title claims. Claimants must establish on the evidence that the
society under which laws and customs the native title rights and interests are claimed has continued through the post-sovereignty
epoch as a vital body united in the acknowledgment and observance of these traditional laws and customs.[16]
This is a question of fact, as the Court stressed.[17]
However, in eastern and southern Australia, indigenous societies have suffered catastrophic interruption and whilst vital and increasingly
dynamic, they are no longer 'traditional' in the sense now required by the High Court.
- Consequently, it seems likely that for all of Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, and much of
Queensland and South Australia, native title claimants will not be able to demonstrate, as a matter of fact, extant traditional laws
and customs and so establish native title.[18]
For these claimants, the high water mark of native title may be the winning - for a time only - of procedural rights accorded by
the NTA whilst their claims remain registered. It is perhaps only in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, along with select
areas of Queensland and South Australia, that it is likely that Aboriginal societies retain sufficient factual underpinnings to make
a successful native title claim on a contested application.
- Yet it cannot be said of the Yorta Yorta decision that the High Court of Australia did not understand the profound difficulties of
proof its decision presented for indigenous claimants. The joint majority opinion fully understood the forensic implications its
reasoning would have, their Honours stating:
It may be accepted that demonstrating the content of that traditional law and custom may very well present difficult problems of proof.
But the difficulty of the forensic task which may confront claimants does not alter the requirements of the statutory provision.
In many cases, perhaps most, claimants will invite the Court to infer, from evidence led at trial, the content of traditional law
and custom at times earlier than those described in the evidence.[19]
- But the requirements of s223(1)(a) have been altered - some no doubt tempted to say by judicial epiphany - from the ordinary sense
of the term "traditional" to a greater sense, one which requires a jurisprudential key to unlock. Such a prospect, that this reference
to "traditional" might be accorded a meaning sourced in the Anglo-Australian jurisprudence, was dismissed in dicta by Lee J in the
trial decision in Ward v Western Australia[20]
where he said, incorrectly it now appears:
The expression "traditional laws and customs" used in Mabo (No 2) should be taken to be an inclusive statement consistent with the
expression "practices, traditions and customs" referred to in Canadian authorities. (See: Wik per Toohey J at 126; R v Van der Peet
per Lamer CJ at 548.) The expression necessarily implies that the words are to be understood from an Aboriginal perspective, not
constrained by jurisprudential concepts.[21]
- In the chain of major native title decisions by the High Court since Mabo (No.2), and those quoted in the Yorta Yorta judgment itself,
it is a flexible interpretation of traditionality which has uniformly held sway. Other commentators have developed this point.[22]
Neate has minutely traced the jurisprudence on "tradition" through the Australian case law,[23]
the vast bulk of which is against the restrictive interpretation accorded the term by the Yorta Yorta High Court, and Strelein has
argued in the years between Mabo (No.2) and Yorta Yorta, there has been a very marked change in the interpretation of traditionality
within the High Court of Australia.[24]
- In Canada, Mabo (No.2) has been regarded as expansively treating the concept of tradition. Thus in 1996 in R v. Van der Peet,[25]
Chief Justice Lamer, for himself and six other members of the Supreme Court of Canada, quoted Brennan J. in Mabo (No.2) as persuasive
for a generous and ordinary meaning to be given the concept. The Court stated:[26]
This position is the same [in Mabo No.2] as that being adopted here. "Traditional laws" and "traditional customs" are those things
passed down, and arising, from the pre-existing culture and customs of aboriginal peoples. The very meaning of the word "tradition"
- that which is "handed down [from ancestors] to posterity", The Concise Oxford Dictionary (9th ed. 1995), - implies these origins
for the customs and laws that the Australian High Court in Mabo is asserting to be relevant for the determination of the existence
of aboriginal title. To base aboriginal title in traditional laws and customs, as was done in Mabo, is, therefore, to base that
title in the pre-existing societies of aboriginal peoples. This is the same basis as that asserted here for aboriginal rights.
- There are other criticisms of the intersection of normative systems doctrine which has fallen from the High Court in Yorta Yorta.
It is, on one view, a decidedly recondite and restrictive set of principles to place at the gateway to beneficial legislation.
And from a doctrinal perspective, the jurisprudential backdrop which is presented to the acquisition of sovereignty issues is bald
of precedent and unorthodox in its development. In the result, however, these concerns are moot and claimants and practitioners
are left to assemble what they can of the pieces that have fallen and assess their practical implications.
- The bold and mostly-unwelcome conclusion that native title is no longer a legal possibility for most of eastern and southern Australia
will be tested through the years.[27]
Such a conclusion would erase nearly half of the 550 native title determination applications currently before the Federal Court.
But might we test this conclusion? Can we run some well-known scenarios from those jurisdictions, principally the Northern Territory
and Western Australia, where indigenous societies are the likeliest to retain sufficient factual underpinnings to make a successful
native title claim on a contested application, through the principles enunciated in Yorta Yorta to determine how matters might proceed.
This is the task of the remainder of this paper.
- Ward v Western Australia,[28]
commonly known as Ward or the Miriuwung-Gajerrong decision, presents the possibility of a multi-faceted application of the intersection
of norms principles to some judicially determined facts.
- The Miriuwung-Gajerrong and Balangarra had a trial decision of Lee J which positively determined their native title in the east Kimberley
region, largely in Western Australia but overflowing into the Northern Territory.[29]
The trial took 83 days of evidence in 1997-98 and voluminous archaeological, historical, anthropological, linguistic, genealogical
and 'primary' Aboriginal evidence presented by both applicants and respondents underpinned the determination. On appeal to the Full
Court of the Federal Court, many of the trial findings were challenged by Western Australia and the Territory. However, the Full
Court was not persuaded by any of these submissions, upholding the trial judge on all counts stating that there was evidence sufficient
to support the findings of fact.[30]
These findings remained undisturbed by the further appeal to and decision of the High Court in 2002.[31]
- His Honour found that, prior to the assertion of British sovereignty, the Gajerrong and the Miriuwung were distinct "organised societies",
that they held adjacent territories which overlapped in part and they spoke separate languages; separate peoples, separate languages
and separate territories. Yet they shared knowledge of some Dreamings and co-operated in ritual and economic activities.[32]
The Full Federal Court later summarised the evidence by saying that the claim area, at the time of assertion of sovereignty, was
inhabited by organised societies[33]
"operating under elaborate traditions, procedures, laws and customs which connected them with the land".[34]
- These 'organised societies' that were the Miriuwung and the Gajerrong were substantially impacted upon in the post-contact epoch.
With European settlement in the East Kimberley, and its impact upon Aboriginal people and their lifestyle as described, Aboriginal
communities had to face and accommodate substantial change. Events such as near extinction of sub-groups and removal of people from
the country in which the subgroups were located brought greater reliance upon the identity of the Miriuwung or Gajerrong community
than the identity provided by a subgroup. Such adjustment was a necessary phase in the development of this Aboriginal community
in the East Kimberley.[35]
- The pre-contact links were reinforced with the depletion of the Gajerrong in the post-contact period. This turbulent period saw the
Miriuwung and the Gajerrong fuse and evolve into a 'composite' community of members with a common outlook and beliefs, and common
traditions and customs in respect of the land with which they were connected. There was a post-contact ethnogenesis. For the Gajerrong,
the blending with the more-numerous Miriuwung was not such as to lose all indicia of a once-separate identity,[36]
unlike some neighbouring groups, such as the Doolboong, who had fared much worse as they had been wholly absorbed into the composite.
- What evolved was a composite post-contact society, one created by the combination of the pre-sovereignty organised societies that
were principally the Miriuwung and the Gajerrong. As the Full Federal Court concluded:
His Honour has addressed in detail the evidence that the Miriuwung community and the Gajerrong community at one time acknowledged
and recognised separate territories. His Honour has given reasons for his conclusion that the two communities in more recent times
have become regarded (amongst themselves) as a composite community with shared interests. In our opinion that conclusion was in
accordance with the evidence.[37]
- The several laws and customs of the Gajerrong and the Miriuwung blended too, forming a new, compounded set of laws and customs. Lee
J gave an example of this compounded law.
Rules relating to control of knowledge of separate men's and women's law are followed and regarded as important in the organization
of the community. There is a common belief that breach of an important aspect of Miriuwung Gajerrong "law" will visit consequences
upon that person.[38]
- And, in relation to the now joint territory, his Honour found that a member of the Miriuwung-Gajerrong community is now entitled to
forage over all of that territory.
The traditional laws, customs and practices of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community provided for the distribution of rights in respect
of the use of the land for sustenance, ritual or religious purposes. For example, a member of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community
is entitled to forage over Miriuwung and Gajerrong territory, and is not confined to the "country" of a sub-group with which that
person has connection.
- As a matter of courtesy or custom that person may be expected to inform the "dawawang" of a sub-group, as persons responsible for
the "country", of the intended use of the land in the care and control of the sub-group and to confirm that Miriuwung or Gajerrong
traditions and customs would be observed by that person on that land, however, the right to be on the land arises under the laws
and customs of the community and not of the sub-group.[39]
- In the unforgiving light of the intersection of normative systems doctrine, the factual conclusion of a composite Miriuwung-Gajerrong
society that was drawn by his Honour has some damaging consequences. It is clear from Yorta Yorta that an indigenous society that
claims rights to land or waters recognised as native title under the NTA, must be extant at the time of the assertion of sovereignty
by the Crown for the rights to be so recognised. It is equally clear, based on their Honours' reasoning, that if a new normative
system has since evolved which has compounded the laws and customs of once-separate pre-sovereignty societies, these compounded laws
and customs cannot be "traditional" as the statutory sense now requires.
- Rights in relation to land or waters which might now be sourced in this new compounded law might be traditional in the sense that
those laws are now several generations old, yet they are not "traditional" as the definitional sense requires, and so rights embedded
in them cannot be "native title" within s223(1) NTA. The entitlement to forage, for example, when traced to its jural source, is
a post-sovereignty right sourced in the compounded laws and customs of the Miriuwung-Gajerrong. Under the doctrine of intersection
of norms, therefore, it cannot be recognised as native title.
- Perhaps informed by the circumstances found by Justice Lee to have evolved in the East Kimberley,[40]
the joint judgment in Yorta Yorta addressed this societal circumstance when it stated:
When the society whose laws or customs existed at sovereignty ceases to exist, the rights and interests in land to which these laws
and customs gave rise, cease to exist. If the content of the former laws and customs is later adopted by some new society, those laws and customs will then owe their new
life to that other, later, society and they are the laws acknowledged by, and customs observed by, that later society, they are not
laws and customs which can now properly be described as being the existing laws and customs of the earlier society. The rights and interests in land to which the re-adopted laws and customs give rise are rights and interests that are not rooted
in pre-sovereignty traditional law and custom but in the laws and customs of the new society. [41]
[Emphasis added]
- Thus, if pre-existing indigenous societies suffer in the post-sovereignty period a fundamental re-alignment such that, like the Miriuwung-Gajerrong,
a new normative system has evolved through a process of ethnogenesis, this newly-evolved normative society will have laws and customs,
but they are not "traditional" laws and customs which will source recognisable rights within the statutory definition of native title.
- And it is not merely by reason of paragraph (a) of s223(1) that this definitional failure occurs for the Miriuwung-Gajerrong because
it cannot be said, pursuant to s223(1)(b), that it is by "those laws and customs", that is, traditional laws and customs, that a
connection to the land or waters is had. As the majority of the High Court had earlier said in Ward:
The question in a given case whether [s223(1)](a) is satisfied presents a question of fact.It requires not only the identification
of the laws and customs said to be traditional laws and customs, but, no less importantly, the identification of the rights and interests
in relation to land or waters which are possessed under those laws or customs. These inquiries may well depend upon the same evidence
as is used to establish connection of the relevant peoples with the land or waters. This is because the connection that is required
by par (b) of s 223(1) is a connection with the land or waters "by those laws and customs". Nevertheless, it is important to notice
that there are two inquiries required by the statutory definition: in the one case for the rights and interests possessed under traditional
laws and customs and, in the other, for connection with land or waters by those laws and customs.[42]
- After the assertion of the sovereignty of the Crown only those rights or interests in relation to land or waters that find their origin
in pre-sovereignty law and custom will be recognised, otherwise than those created by the new sovereign order.[43]
This is demonstrably not the case forwarded by the first applicants in Miriuwung-Gajerrong.[44]
- The Miriuwung-Gajerrong decision also demonstrates another not-uncommon societal phenomena in the post-contact period - the attenuation
of one indigenous society wholly into another. In this context, Lee J found in the trial decision in Ward that several other societies
once connected to the claim area, the Doolboong, the Wardenybeng and the Goolawarreng, had been wholly absorbed into the Miriuwung-Gajerrong
composite and so had ceased to exist as separate societies. Beaumont and von Doussa JJ (joined by North J on this issue) in the
Full Federal Court stated:[45]
- The evidence linked Wardenybeng in times past with the northern portion of the claim area more recently treated as Gajerrong country.
However, there is ample evidence to support the conclusions of his Honour that the Doolboong, Wardenybeng and Goolawarreng no longer
exist as separate Aboriginal communities, and now identify as part of the wider Miriuwung and Gajerrong community.
- The High Court in Yorta Yorta commented on pre-sovereignty societies that have ceased to exist:
To speak of rights and interests possessed under an identified body of laws and customs is, therefore, to speak of rights and interests
that are the creatures of the laws and customs of a particular society that exists as a group which acknowledges and observes those
laws and customs. And if the society out of which the body of laws and customs arises ceases to exist as a group which acknowledges
and observes those laws and customs, those laws and customs cease to have continued existence and vitality. Their content may be
known but if there is no society which acknowledges and observes them, it ceases to be useful, even meaningful, to speak of them
as a body of laws and customs acknowledged and observed, or productive of existing rights or interests, whether in relation to land
or waters or otherwise.[46]
- Such is the position of these attenuated societies. Doolboong laws and customs, for instance, may be known of but without a vital
society that has continued to acknowledge and observe Doolboong laws and customs, those laws and customs cease to have a continued
vital existence.[47]
The rights and interests once sourced in the traditional laws and customs of such a society wither to extinction.
- And, there is no prospect of a resurrection of these native title rights and interests in these circumstances. Attempts to subsequently
reconstitute these laws and customs, out of which the rights and interests were once sourced, will be nugatory. As the joint majority
opinion in Yorta Yorta noted:
If that normative system has not existed throughout that period, the rights and interests which owe their existence to that system
will have ceased to exist. And any later attempt to revive adherence to the tenets of that former system cannot and will not reconstitute
the traditional laws and customs out of which rights and interests must spring if they are to fall within the definition of native
title.[48]
- A type of claim common in Western Australia and the Northern Territory is the 'hybrid' claim. Both jurisdictions, with very active
minerals and energy sectors, have notified many proposed grants of exploration and productive minerals titles under the future act
procedures of the NTA. In response, claimants, usually with the assistance of their relevant NTRBs (native title representative
bodies), have filed applications for determinations which are necessarily formulated within the three months of the s29 NTA notification,
and then filed in the Federal Court. They are then tested by the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) Registrar against the NTA
registration provisions so as to hopefully capture the procedural rights for the claimants.
- These 'hybrid' claims conventionally choose the geographical limits of the proposed licence or lease as the claim area (save, of course,
for excluded areas). This is a sound practical approach as it ensures that any group whose native title may be impacted upon by
the proposed future act might gain these procedural rights. The 'native title claim group' is composed of, usually, two of more
language groups that join together for the limited purpose of responding to the proposed future act. Thus the term 'hybrid', connoting
a number of self-sustaining components.[49]
- The 'native title claim group' of the hybrid claim is very convenient but it is contrived in the sense that the framing of the native
title claim group of the application is a happenstance wholly dependent on the boundaries of the future act area notified by the
State or Territory.
- It is commonplace in the necessary accompanying affidavits of the applicants[50]
in a hybrid claim that they swear or affirm they are authorised to make the claim in accordance with decision-making processes under
traditional laws acknowledged and traditional customs observed by all the persons in the native title claim group. This assertion
is normally unsupported by other affidavit materials. It is, however, usual for the relevant NTRB to certify under s203BE that the
applicants have been authorised under the relevant traditional decision-making process. In effect, the applicants and the NTRB are
asserting a s251B(a) NTA authorisation, that is, that the authorisation is pursuant to traditional laws and customs of the native
title claim group of the application.
- So many hybrid claim applications have been filed on these terms that it is now a matter of routine and almost formulaic. However,
the application of the intersection of norms doctrine may rein in the convenient framing of the hybrid claim and further strain NTRB
operations, particularly certifications under s203BE NTA. This is because the various references to traditional laws and customs
in the certificates and the affidavits may not carry the statutory connotation accorded the term by the leading opinion in the Yorta
Yorta decision. Assuming that the term "traditional" in s223(1)(a) is accorded the same meaning in s251B(a), general social anthropology
suggests that if there are multiple distinctly-named groups in the claim group, this claim group will have multiple and distinct
sets of laws and customs, that is, it is a convenient conglomerate of neighbouring normative systems.
- Can the authorisation be "traditional" under several distinct systems of law and custom? It is certainly contrary to all general
understandings of the social anthropology of indigenous Australians that group A and group B members might have a say as to who should
speak for the country of group C, and vice versa. However, if "all the persons" in the native title claim group authorised all the
applicants, this is seemingly what has occurred. It may be that an adopted and agreed authorisation process pursuant to s251B(b)
might have evolved in post-sovereignty times, but it is most unlikely that such a process is traditional.
- Certainly, French J expressed doubt that such a proposition could be commonly entertained of the hybrid claim in Holborow v Western
Australia.[51]
His Honour, dealing directly with the issue of authorisation of the applicants to a hybrid claim comprising two groups, the Yaburara
and the Coastal Mardudhunera, commented as follows:
It may be that traditional decision-making processes relevant to land can be located within the subgroups of the native title claimant
group represented respectively by the Yaburara and the Coastal Mardudhunera people. This, however, is a native title determination
application that covers both groups. That is not an uncommon phenomenon. It is not surprising in such cases that there would not
be traditional decision-making processes embracing all elements of the hybrid claim group.
- It is thus doubtful that any authorisation found to be pursuant to s251B under several laws and customs could be a "traditional" authorisation
under paragraph (a). It may be that, as a matter of fact, groups in a region do authorise collectively as a cultural bloc for mutual
business, particularly for ceremony. This occurs quite commonly across northern Australia but if the requisite authorisation by
the applicants is claimed to be under s251B(a), then it needs be shown to be "traditional" in the sense that the High Court ascribed
that term in Yorta Yorta. This will be no easy task as French J noted on the evidence available to the Court in another matter,
Daniel v Western Australia.[52]
As with Holborow, this was a case concerning the authorisation of replacement applicants.
- The anthropological evidence was that the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi peoples were "separate language groups or tribes", that they have
been closely associated with each other for at least the last 50 years.[53]
For the 100 years post-contact, they had been resident on pastoral stations, then they had resided in and around the Roebourne area
and had become closely associated through co-residence, inter-marriage and the sharing of customs. That closeness was reflected
in their bringing the native title claim jointly.[54]
- His Honour found that the evidence supported the inference that authorisation decisions were made in accordance with a process of
decision-making which was adopted and agreed by the persons in the native title claim group over a period of time, that is, a s251B(b)
authorisation. In arriving at this conclusion, the Court dismissed the possibility of a traditional authorisation under paragraph
(a) saying:[55]
In my opinion the evidence does not disclose a process of decision-making of the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people that could be described
as a process of decision-making under the traditional laws and customs of the native title claim group. Indeed, although there has
been a close association between the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people over the last fifty years or so, the evidence, particularly
that of [anthropologist] Mr Robinson, suggests that they have developed no form of common or joint decision-making applicable to
native title determination applications which could be called decision-making under traditional law and custom. It may well be that
within each group there are internal mechanisms of traditional law and custom which inform the process of joint decision-making in
relation to matters connected with the native title determination application. But, in my opinion there is on the balance of probability
no process of the kind contemplated in s251B(a) of the Native Title Act.
- On this analysis, NTRBs might now be understandably reluctant to issue certificates asserting traditional authorisation of hybrid
claims in the absence of cogent field and desktop research establishing that traditionality.[56]
In the meantime, many such claims remain in Federal Court registries and on the NNTT Register of Native Title Claims with potentially
meaningless certificates and affidavits attached.
- Yet there is a concern, far more substantive than that of registration testing, that of the once-important, now-critical issue of
the proper framing the 'native title claim group'.
- Under s61(1)NTA, a native title determination application may be made by a person or persons authorised by the native title claim
group which includes all the persons "who, according to their traditional laws and customs, hold the common or group rights and interests
comprising the particular native title claimed."
- In Risk v Native Title Registrar,[57]
O'Loughlin J warned that "[a] native title claim group is not established or recognised merely because a group of people (of whatever
number) call themselves a native title claim group."[58]
Similarly, it must be demonstrated that the native title claim group has common or group rights and interests in the claimed area
under traditional laws and customs.[59]
O'Loughlin J in Risk stated that
the acceptance of a small family group (when it is known that it forms part of a larger community) is inconsistent with the philosophy
that is to be found in the table to s61; that section talks of the persons who, as a group, hold "the common or group rights and
interests". The eight members of the Quall family may be part of the group but they are not the group. The applicant (in this case,
Mr Quall) should be seen to be authorised by all persons who relevantly hold the common or group rights and interests.
In light of the above reasoning the conclusion is inescapable that the Applicant is in fact part of a larger claim group and thus
I am unable to find that the claim group is properly constituted.[60]
- This raises the issue of sub-groups within claimant groups, a topic already very familiar to the anthropologists where, in the Australian
discourse, the debate between the 'atomists' and the 'collectivists' has gently simmered for years. The debate centres on whether
one favours casting native title claims on the atomistic 'estate' or 'clan' sub-group model or on the broader, collectivist model,
usually based on the 'language group'.[61]
As Professor Peter Sutton says:
In the end, a line has to be drawn around the claimant group. Where this line is placed is very much driven by the relationship between
the requirements of the relevant legislation and the results brought forward by the anthropological and legal team assisting the
claimants.[62]
- Sutton himself advocates the collectivist model because, he says, in the final analysis he takes the view that
customary possessory relationships, whether couched in terms of small groups or individual interests, have a communal foundation.
The customary-law land entitlements of smaller entities are granted to them by the society of which they form parts.[63]
- Others, particularly those anthropologists and lawyers schooled in the presentation of land claims under the Aboriginal Land Rights
(NT) Act 1976 ("ALRA"), and familiar with concepts of "traditional Aboriginal owners", "local descent groups" and "primary spiritual
responsibility", lean naturally to the local, estate-holding group. The tension has been essentially healthy ensuring that strenuous
research has been the yardstick by which these matters have been resolved. Yet Sutton has warned elsewhere of the dangers of the
framing exercise in the native title context.
Many native title claims have been lodged in the names of language groups, or in the names of families or other collectivities who
also identify as being of a particular Indigenous language in their applications. One occasionally hears criticism if [sic, of]
this on the grounds that the anthropological literature on Aboriginal land relationships has tended to emphasise the small estate-holding
group as the primary or even the exclusive locus of rights and interests in country. Indeed one finds sometimes the statement that
such a group is 'the land owning group'. That only one kind of grouping is given the privilege of being the locus of features that
can be translated into some form of proprietary relationship to country in this way seems contrary to the complexity of the facts.[64]
- This debate came into sharp relief in Ward. The collectivists were represented by the first applicants. They claimed on behalf of
all Miriuwung-Gajerrong persons. The atomists were represented by the second applicants who claimed on behalf of three Miriuwung
estate groups (the Bindjen, Damberal and Nyawamnyawam) on the Northern Territory side of the border. His Honour stated their relative
positions thus:
The first applicants claim native title as a communal title of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community. The second applicants claim
that native title vests in them as persons who "speak for" the "estate groups" of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community in the Territory
area. Whilst the first applicants did not present their claim as the claim of "estate groups", either severally or in combination,
it was accepted by the first applicants that such sub-groups were part of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community having links to particular
parts of the country, being organized on kinship and sub-section systems which were part of the traditional laws and customs of the
community.[65] [...]
The second applicants do not deny the connection of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community with the land of the Territory area but
assert that the common law right of native title, based on occupation and possession, is vested in the sub-groups represented by
the second applicants.[66]
- Lee J found for the first applicants, the collectivists, and echoing Sutton stated:
"Estate groups", however, were not self-contained, or autonomous functioning societies in occupation of the land. They were sub-groups
of the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community from which rights and duties devolved under the traditional laws and customs of that community.
When the anthropologists speak of "ownership" of "estate" country, or of "dawawang" as "owners" of such country, those words do
not bear their legal meaning but are the best description the anthropologist can supply to a relationship that encompasses the rights
and duties acknowledged under traditional laws and customs. (K Maddock, Ex A56 pp 213-215.) [...][67]
How the occupying societies operated is not an element to be proved in a native title claim but it is likely that sub-groups (whether
described as "estates", "families" or "clans") were numerous, more structured, and more engaged in the political and economic affairs
of the community. (R M and C H Berndt, "The World of the First Australians", at 39-45, 97.) Responsibility for control of tracts
of land according to the traditional laws and customs of the society, defined particular areas of country to which members of sub-groups
had close affinity, "belonged" or "spoke for", but the community as a whole occupied the land, and rights in respect of the land,
including usufructuary rights, which arose out of that occupation were exercised in the society according to its laws and customs.
At common law, the native, or aboriginal, title of that community would be a communal title held by the community, not separate and
discrete vestings of native title in sub-groups, notwithstanding that control of, and responsibility for, the country of the sub-group
was an important part of the maintenance of community life.[68].
- However, this debate may become somewhat sterile in future native title claims. This is because the language of s61 and the manner
in which s223(1) has been construed in Yorta Yorta has set the formwork for claimant applications under the NTA. In order to be
successful, it is a vital indigenous society with traditional normative rules that existed at sovereignty that must be proved to
be extant. So, an estate group or clan cannot be successful unless it can demonstrate that it is, or is part of, an extant normative
system.
- Yet if the estate-holding group members claim to be the native title rights-holders, exclusive of the broader membership, immediate
tensions surface. If they are claiming for themselves only, but relying on the normative rules of the broader group to buttress
their claim, the broader society will probably insist, reasonably, that the claim be inclusive of them.
- Indeed, in this situation it may be arguable that if the membership of an estate group is asserting native title without including
the broader membership, the sub-group is forsaking the normative force of the traditional laws and customs of the broader society
within which they source their claimed rights. It is purporting to draw from a new normative well, one sourced in their own sub-group.
It is secessionist and would be post-sovereignty ethnogenetic phenomenon.
- Whatever laws and customs are then possessed by the sub-group, those laws cannot thus be "traditional" within s223(1) as it is now
understood post-Yorta Yorta. Such a claim by a sub-group membership - be it an estate, a clan or a family - must necessarily fail
if the broader society were to contradict the estate group's claim of native title, such as occurred in the Miriuwung-Gajerrong decision.[69]
- It has been argued that, illuminated by the doctrine of intersection of normative systems, the assertion of a "composite community"
in a native title claim has its difficulties, that estate groups, acting independently, are unlikely to be able to successfully prosecute
a contested claim, and that many current hybrid claims are potentially vulnerable in their current form. Yet all may be salvageable,
even the Miriuwung-Gajerrong claim for there appears to be an abundance of references in the transcript and materials to Gajerrong
law and custom and Miriuwung law and custom, perhaps as distinct normative systems.
- Likewise, whilst the cause of the Doolboong is lost - their society has been wholly attenuated - under Miriuwung or Gajerrong law,
transmission rules may permit the expansion of territory to include that of the Doolboong, to 'adopt' the people and their territory.
Paragraph (b) connection issues might need, then, to be reinforced. Speaking of transmission rules in traditional law and custom,
the joint majority judgment said in Yorta Yorta:
That is not to deny that the new legal order recognised then existing rights and interests in land. Nor is it to deny the efficacy
of rules of transmission of rights and interests under traditional laws and traditional customs which existed at sovereignty, where
those native title rights continue to be recognised by the legal order of the new sovereign. The rights and interests in land which
the new sovereign order recognised included the rules of traditional law and custom which dealt with the transmission of those interests.
Nor is it to say that account could never be taken of any alteration to, or development of, that traditional law and custom that
occurred after sovereignty. Account may have to be taken of developments at least of a kind contemplated by that traditional law
and custom. Indeed, in this matter, both the claimants and respondents accepted that there could be "significant adaptations".[70]..
- It is certain that the factual circumstances which will come up for adjudication will be many and varied. In Kinds of Rights in Country,
Professor Sutton provides some examples from Queensland and the Northern Territory:
Under similar catastrophic conditions members of the surviving subgroups of a single language group or other wider regional group
have at times jointly assumed responsibility for all the untenanted estates of their wider group as well as maintaining or amalgamating
their own local estate interests. Details of these processes are not often available but the cases of Malak Malak, Jawoyn, Cape
Melville and Lakefield provide a range of relevant examples.
These are clearly not cases where existing 'normal' succession pathways are engaged in by one or two individuals or a small genealogical
subgroup - whole language groups or similar-sized regional groups may be involved. For this reason I refer to such processes as
instances of conjoint succession. These cases do not involve the extinguishment of pre-colonial rights of surviving groups so much
as their transformation - usually involving considerable simplification - and their generalisation to wider 'tribal' areas.[71]
- Whatever has occurred, the indigenous normative system must be substantially intact for any hope of success to be entertained. Those
indigenous societies that have fused into composites, evincing the same post-contact societal phenomena found in the Miriuwung-Gajerrong
by Lee J, will not have their native title recognised. Those that are hybrid claims, which groups have been joined largely for convenience
sake, such as in Holborow, may face searching questions as to the form of their hybrid native title determination application.
- If their normative systems are distinct and operational, why and how are they joined as a "native title claim group"? and what are
the s.61 "common or group rights" that they jointly claim? Is there, perhaps, a cultural bloc or domain to explain this circumstance?
The Daniel Determination[72]
represents a fascinating struggle between the anthropology, the emergent traditionality principles and the proper framing of a native
title claim group under the NTA.
- The native title claim group (of the first applicants) in Daniel was initially posited on a "composite community", that of the "Ngarluma
and Yindjibarndi peoples", which held the native title.[73]
Their alternate position was that the community comprised two 'groups', the "Ngarluma people" and the "Yindjibarndi people", and
that such native title rights and interests claimed were possessed under the traditional laws and customs of the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi
Peoples respectively.[74] Then, following the High Court decision in Miriuwung-Gajerrong, the first applicants abandoned their primary position and, seemingly
on the available evidence, successfully took the alternate position. However, it remains somewhat confused with the trial judge
stating:
The Ngarluma and the Yindjibarndi peoples each form, or are part of, a society with a body of traditional laws and customs on a range of matters, including ownership and management of land and waters.[75]
[Emphasis added]
- RD Nicholson J opined at [334]:
Sections 223 and 225 do not require the Court to search for an anthropologically identified form of community or group. The NTA makes
clear the Court is to examine the evidence to see who holds native title, if anyone, and so whether there are communal, group or
individual rights and interests. Anthropological theory and research may inform that examination but cannot determine it.
- Certainly, an anthropologically-identified form of community or group is not a legal necessity under the NTA. However, if an anthropological
study (usually on behalf of the claimants) has not established a body of persons who collectively self-identify, the likelihood of
the claimants meeting the definitional requirement of a society united in its acknowledgment and observations of a body of law and
customs, is not prospective. Take the example considered earlier, that of the Doolboong. If, prior to 1991, nobody identified themselves
to researchers as Doolboong, a claim in the name of the Doolboong might simply lack cogency.
- The Daniel Determination, at this point in time, seems best regarded as a poorly framed hybrid claim that was salvaged rather than
as a post-contact "composite" society formed by the compounded laws and customs of two pre-sovereignty indigenous societies. The
native title claim group may have been framed as a composite society, yet, before it was too late, the claim was able to be de-constructed
and re-presented on the evidence before RD Nicholson J as two normative systems, each with a demonstrable ethnogenesis prior to the
assertion of sovereignty. This permitted the findings for the respective native title claim groups, despite the awkward hybrid framing.
- When one moves from the coalesced language groups to consider the issue of sub-groups, it is relatively clear that estate groups,
being sub-groups, will not succeed without the patent support of the broader normative society unless they can establish that they
are a normative system of traditional laws and customs themselves.
- A chain of single judge authorities supports the general proposition that a sub-group of a native title claim group is not entitled
to forward a native title determination application, see Risk v Native Title Registrar,[76]
Tilmouth v Northern Territory[77]
and Landers v South Australia.[78]
However, there appeared to be no correlation of Lee J's finding in relation to estate groups as travelling with these sub-group
authorities until, in Landers, Mansfield J accepted Ward as authority for the principle that the making of a claim by a subgroup
of the native title claim group is not permissible.[79]
- Landers was followed by Wilcox J in Bodney v Western Australia,[80]
his Honour stating that there must be a strict correspondence between the group claimed to hold native title and the group on whose
behalf the claim is made. Wilcox J also introduced the requirements of what is meant by the term "traditional", as illuminated by
the Yorta Yorta decision, into his analysis.[81]
Most recently, in the context of an actual determination of native title, Sundberg J in Neowarra has again iterated that estate
groups, without more, cannot succeed if they are a sub-group lacking a normative force of their own.[82]
- It is important to not under-estimate the consequences of this framing exercise. An excellent example has been presented recently
in the De Rose Hill Station decision of the Full Federal Court.[83]
The appeal decision of 16 December 2003 is effectively a re-framing the native title claim group. The claim at trial was posited
on the nguraritja for De Rose Hill Station, the local holders. The appellate judges, guided by Yorta Yorta, determined that it is
the Western Desert Bloc Anungu which is the normative society that is the source of the laws and customs that entitle the nguraritja.
- The Full Court could go no further on the evidence. Assuming deficits were filled, the holders of native title should be the Anungu,
although the exercise of those rights presently accrue to the benefit of the current nguraritja membership. On the initial framing,
the claim group failed, on the sympathetic re-framing by the Full Court, the claim group is still in the running.
- Likewise, the recent Neowarra determination[84]
succeeded despite being what has been termed a hybrid claim, composed as the native title claim group was, of three language groups,
the Wunambal, the Worrorra and the Ngarinjin. Sundberg J found, in an anthropologically elaborate situation, that the normative
rules were generated in the still-vital Wanjina-Wunggurr cultural domain, which preceded sovereignty, and so could source recognisable
native title rights.[85]
- One other issue deserves some discussion in this context as it is prone to confuse and confound. In some recent native title determinations,
the enquiry 'who are the native title holders?' has seemingly become entangled with the enquiry 'who are the traditional owners?'
In the Northern Territory, for example, the quarter-century history of ALRA claims has been overlaid only recently by NTA claims.
- Under the former legislative regime, in the search for traditional owners, questions of "primary spiritual responsibility" and "local
descent groups" cause an examination of the indigenous legal/property/belief system to be made to determine which member or class
of members 'owns' the estate? It matters only tangentially, if at all, from where the laws and customs which underpin that 'ownership'
emanate.
- Under the NTA, it is the society that generates the traditional laws and customs which is the holder of the communal native title
rights and interests that spring from those laws and customs.[86]
The NTA may require the rights to be identified yet it does not require a combing through the traditional laws and customs to nominate
which members or class of members hold or exercise what rights? That distribution is a matter entirely for the relevant traditional
indigenous laws and customs.
- Justice Lee (quoted fully earlier) perhaps best identified the distinction between the ALRA and NTA claims systems when he stated
in Ward:
Responsibility for control of tracts of land, according to the traditional laws and customs of the society, defined particular areas
of country to which members of sub-groups had close affinity, "belonged" or "spoke for", but the community as a whole occupied the
land, and rights in respect of the land, including usufructuary rights, which arose out of that occupation were exercised in the
society according to its laws and customs.[87]
- There is no requirement in a native title determination application under the NTA to enter upon the traditional normative system of
the native title claim group to seek to identify those within the native title claim group who 'own' particular estates or country.
However, the tendency to conflate the respective NTA and ALRA claims enquiries has resulted in a number of determinations where
native title has been awarded to an estate- or sub-group or groups and which, arguably, may be vulnerable in their current form.
The determinations in Hayes[88]
and Yarmirr[89]
are cases in point.
- In Neowarra v Western Australia [2003] FCA 1402 (Sundberg J, 8 December 2003), both these contested determinations were placed before the Federal Court as upholding the estate/clan determination
model over that of Lee J rejection of it in Ward. However, Justice Sundberg dealt with the submission shortly stating:[90]
The State submits that more apt than Ward are the precedents constituted by Hayes v Northern Territory [1999] FCA 1248; (1999) 97 FCR 32 and Yarmirr v Northern Territory [1998] FCA 771; (1998) 156 ALR 370. Neither case is of assistance. In Hayes the applicants were members of three "estate groups". A composite estate group determination
was made: see [10] and [169(ii)]. In Yarmirr the applicants were the members of five clans. A composite clan based determination
was made: see [4] and [162]. The issue that arose in Ward and that arises in the present case did not arise in Hayes or Yarmirr.
- His Honour surely is sound in his approach as in both cases the point was not taken, and thus the issue remained unargued. Importantly,
these decisions were not illuminated by the doctrine of the intersection of normative systems.
- And it is not only as a matter of statutory construction that this estate group framing of NTA claims fails. There are persuasive
public policy reasons for its rejection, the most compelling being that the recognition of native title to a community empowers a
greater number of indigenous persons than an award to a discrete section of that community, sometimes a mere handful of "traditional
owners" as occurred under ALRA in the celebrated Kenbi claim.[91]
It allows a community to move into the future not only with a recognition of their native title, however great or restricted its
content, but a present acknowledgment of their sense of community.
- This latter recognition may in many instances outweigh the quantum of the rights recognised. On the other hand, the award of rights
to the sub-group, or a cluster of them, allows the general law to insist that the society then fracture into entities (usually, prescribed
bodies corporate, PBCs) to hold that native title. The result is that that a single community or people may then have a plethora
of PBCs to hold its native title. This sub-divides already scant resources, people and skills.[92]
- There is also an argument, best left to the anthropologists to make, that recognition of native title to current estate group members,
and perhaps going further into the indigenous legal system and the acknowledging secondary, and even tertiary, native title rights-holders,
is entrenching 'flexible' customary laws into the future, so serving to ossify the society. These policy reasons are beginning to
be teased out in the case-law and literature. For example, Mansfield J in Landers v South Australia[93]
expressed concern about the claim being with the authority and stewardship of part only of the Dieri People, and of the eventual
determination if successful:
The smaller group is not the group of people who should exclusively enjoy the communal native title if it is granted. Yet that is
the purport of the Edward Landers application. It seeks, and if it is successful will result in, a determination of native title
on behalf of some only of the Dieri People.[94]
- The determination of native title to "some only" also means that the remainder are necessarily denied that native title under that
same determination.[95]
Not only is this a fertile source of internecine conflict, it is argued infra that the determination is made more vulnerable to
revocation or variation.
- What may need to occur in terms of claim modelling is that the native title claim group needs be framed to be co-extensive with the
normative indigenous society from which the claimed native title rights are sourced. The normative indigenous society will generally
coincide with the language group or bloc of groups, not with the estate sub-groups. Specific ethnographic research can inform this
general statement.
- To press the connection of the estate or clan or family sub-group yet not include the broader membership as native title rights-holders
will leave a claim exposed to paragraph 223(1)(a) definitional vulnerabilities. Conversely, to press the broader group claims without
factoring in the individual nexus of the various sub-groups will hazard running short on paragraph 223(1)(b) evidence.
- It may be that a patient, piece-meal 'footprint' claim model may be the most tactically sound. That is, frame the application for
a determination on behalf of a language group or bloc (to establish the continuing normative society in the main) yet limit it, in
the first instance, to a particular estate or clan or family (to make the connection). If successful, move on to claim on behalf
of other estate-holding groups or clans until the patchwork is complete. If unsuccessful, then address the deficiencies where possible
in future proceedings.
- Enormous resource issues, not least for NTRBs and governments, then emerge. Yet, in the longer term, it may in fact conserve the
resources of all potential parties. For as late as 2001, Professor Sutton complained:
Anthropologists frequently have little to do with the initial applications for determinations. That such a crucial document should
be lodged prior to any serious research being carried out in an area concerned seems to me to be not entirely counterproductive but
in fact quite astonishing, given the risks of unnecessary conflict and expense that this amateurish practice has led to repeatedly.[96]
- He urged:
If the clock could be turned back I would be strongly urging potential applicants and those responsible for the bureaucratic generation
of native title applications to lodge none until each manageable region had been researched sufficiently for the picture of the different
bases of claims to emerge more or less clearly. How a legal strategy can be mounted in the absence of some substantial field work
and library study, when the applications themselves are for the recognition of historical and contemporary cultural practices, many
of which are complex, foreign and puzzling to the uneducated, remains a mystery.[97]
- It was perhaps the counsel of perfection when written but, post-Yorta Yorta, it may be of necessity. On the foregoing arguments,
the framing of native title determination applications can be seen to be fraught with complexity, the risk of error high. Errors
of form may be remediable, yet these might also be symptomatic of more fundamental deficits in the native title determination application
itself. The legal strategy and the ethnographic and other research must be very finely tuned.[98]
It is trite that adequate up-front resourcing to the NTRBs for the research and preparation of claims is required. However, it
may be overlooked at times that as much as such funding allows claimants to put their best case forward, it might also potentially
save respondent parties from unsustainable claims being pursued.
- As noted earlier, however, to assert that a native title determination application might be legally fragile is not to say that, as
a matter of policy, a settlement may not be acceptable to a State or Territory. Indeed, most States and Territories now have as
a central policy plank that it is preferable to negotiate than to litigate.[99]
Despite the potential availability of strike-out applications, State and Territory governments may use the occasion of the native
title claim, however tenuous its legal prospects, as a basis for negotiating broader non-native title outcomes that address land
justice concerns. The present Victorian Government appears to be a case in point.[100]
However, there may be difficulties ahead for such a proposed course.
- One further potential impact of the normative system principles in Yorta Yorta is to proposed consent determinations. If a claim
settlement includes a consent determination of native title, one interesting consequence will be how the Federal Court comes to regards
its power in s87 NTA, particularly where the native title might be seen to be vulnerable in definitional terms. This provision relates
to the power of the court if parties reach agreement and provides:
87 (1) If, at any stage of proceedings after the end of the period specified in the notice given under section 66:
(a) agreement is reached between the parties on the terms of an order of the Federal Court in relation to:
(i) the proceedings; or
(ii) a part of the proceedings; or
(iii) a matter arising out of the proceedings; and
(b) the terms of the agreement, in writing signed by or on behalf of the parties, are filed with the Court; and
(c) the Court is satisfied that an order in, or consistent with, those terms would be within the power of the Court;
the Court may, if it appears to it to be appropriate to do so, act in accordance with whichever of subsection (2) or (3) is relevant
in the particular case.[101]
- Will the Federal Court exactingly comb through a proposed consent determination searching for definitional or doctrinal shortcomings?
It has not to date. Yet it is submitted that, in the wake of the Yorta Yorta decision, a judge at first instance will be more cautious,
principally because of ss13(4) and (5) NTA.
- By empowering the Federal Court to make an order effecting a consent determination, the Parliament has granted a powerful but harnessed
discretion. In exercising such a discretion, the Court must act judicially. In Oshlack v Richmond River Council,[102]
Gaudron and Gummow JJ said that the power to exercise a discretion judicially means
not arbitrarily, capriciously or so as to frustrate the legislative intent. However, subject to such considerations, the discretion
conferred is, to adapt the words of Dixon J, unconfined except in so far as 'the subject matter and the scope and purpose' of the
legislation may enable an appellate court to pronounce the reasons given by the primary judge to be 'definitely extraneous to any
objects the legislature could have had in view.'[103]
- Kirby J stated, perhaps more plainly, that "[t]he proper approach to the exercise of a statutory discretion may be illuminated by
the particular language in which it is expressed and the purpose for which it has been provided."[104]
- In reaching any agreed outcome, but particularly in the case of consent determinations, the State or Territory would be accountable
to the public interest. The nature of the responsibility faced by the respondent States and Territories in native title determination
applications was subject to comment by the Federal Court in making orders for a consent determination in favour of the Nharnuwangga,
Wajarri and Ngarla. The Court said:
State Governments are necessarily obliged to subject claims for native title, over land and waters owned and occupied by the State
and State agencies, to scrutiny just as careful[ly] as the community would expect in relation to claims by non-Aborigines to significant
rights over such land. The State is faced with a good many such claims. A deal of proper caution is to be expected.[105]
- Into the future, might the Federal Court baulk at ordering a consent determination of native title, although wholly agreed between
the parties, that does not strictly satisfy the definition of native title in s223(1)? The objects of the NTA are largely beneficial
and it is certainly arguable that a formal doctrinal shortcoming might be sidelined, with the consent of all the parties - the public
interest presumably being satisfied by the consent of the relevant State or Territory - in pursuit of a remedial and historic outcome
for the parties. The Yorta Yorta doctrine, built as it is on the very definition of native title in the NTA, may prevent such an
outcome.
- Having argued this, it must be stated that there has been a very strong signal to the contrary by the Full Federal Court in the Miriuwung-Gajerrong
consent determinations of 9 December 2003.[106]
There a Full Court of the Federal Court, composed of Wilcox, North and Weinberg JJ, endorsed what has been argued here to be doctrinally
unsound positions, but which equally could be said to be remedial and historic outcomes for the parties.
- In Western Australia, native title was recognised to be in the Miriuwung and Gajerrong people. In the Northern Territory, native
title was recognised to be with the members of three estate groups of the Miriuwung, the Damberal, Bindjen and Nyawamnyawam, and
others, including spouses and neighbouring estate group members, these others holding 'secondary' native title rights.
- Under the traditional laws and customs of the Miriuwung Gajerrong in Western Australia, native title rights accrue to all members
of the broader group. Under the same traditional laws and customs, however, native title rights on the Territory side of the border
accrue to the estate group members (and a grab-bag of others as secondary rights-holders). How is that so?
- Mr Pettit SC, leading counsel for Western Australia, made a valiant attempt to persuade the Full Court in argument on the remitter
that such an outcome would be internally inconsistent and would require the Full Court to overturn, in some manner, a trial finding
of Lee J. This finding, which was expressly upheld by the first Full Court and remained untouched by the High Court, is that native
title did not reside in the estate groups, but rather with the members of the broader Miriuwung Gajerrong community.
- The estate group members would not be disentitled by such an outcome: they would be native title holders still, but by virtue of their
Miriuwung Gajerrong societal membership. But the Full Court would have none of this argument. North J said in argument that the
Court, on a consent determination, was "entitled to say that the parties have come to us and agreed that for the Northern Territory
side of the border, this is a solution that they're prepared to engage in."[107]
MR PETTIT: That's the reason that the written submissions by ourselves go to some length to make the point that this is a decision
in rem. It's a decision that operates against the world. It's not inter parties. [sic]
NORTH J: So you say it's quite different to commercial litigation - - -
MR PETTIT: Absolutely.
NORTH J: - - - where all sorts of pretend situations might be agreed to for the sake of commercial accommodation?
MR PETTIT: Absolutely, your Honour.
NORTH J: Here the court must address actual reality?
MR PETTIT: Yes, your Honour, yes, and that's - well - - -
NORTH J: That's hard.[108]
And, later, in dialogue with the Bench on the same issue, Mr Pettit said:
MR PETTIT: Well, can I say one other thing about it? The court fully understands that it will be - the prospect is that it will
be dealing with two different appeals in respect of the same people, the Miriuwung with the same traditional laws and customs. Once
a judicial determination is made in this matter east of the border, then the prospect will be that next year, if we don't reach agreement,
the court will be asked to decide exactly those same issues in its judicial capacity and will be asked by both parties, WA - the
State of WA and the applicants to reach a different conclusion.
WILCOX J: Well, so be it. As far as I'm concerned, that wouldn't trouble me one bit. My only reaction to that would be that
that was made - the order was made by consent, it's not a precedent, it's got no question of res judicata, if you like, it was a
consent agreement, a consent order that was founded on a mistake of the parties, so be it. There's no embarrassment at all.
WEINBERG J: And no curial determination of any contentious issue of that kind.
WILCOX J: No.
WEINBERG J: We have examples, Mr Pettit, of courts having found that on the evidence, A committed adultery with B but B did not
commit adultery with A in the one proceedings. There's nothing unusual or illogical in that sense about what the litigation process
is. It's the way it works.
WILCOX J: Expressed in those terms it sounds funny.[109]
- And funny it remained. The two consent determinations (although some rulings were necessary to determine the Territory appeal) are
of little precedential value, and as unsatisfactory as they might present to purists, they serve admirably to bring the issues and
tensions discussed into relief. The resolution of these issues, however, resides in future contested decisions.
- Imagine that an indigenous society secures a determination of exclusive native title in 2005. Then in 2025, the pressures of its
situation - the increased mobility to regional centres and the capital by the young for education and jobs, the conflicted state
of the title-holding corporation, the new administrative centre at Xanadu, which outside the determination area and has all the modern
amenities, is a magnet drawing people away from customary pursuits - erode the group such that it is no longer cohesive, so that
the native title rights-holders no longer form "a body united by its acknowledgment and observance of the laws and customs".[110]
- What of the 2005 determination of native title: can it endure unchallenged throughout time despite the erosion of the normative system
underpinnings?
- The answer seems to be that it cannot. The traditional laws and customs must continue to be acknowledged and observed by the indigenous
society for the rights and interests to continue to win recognition under the NTA. This was made patent by the joint judgment of
Gleeson CJ, Gaudron, Gummow and Hayne JJ in Ward where it was said that
an order in which the Federal Court makes a determination of native title has an indefinite character which distinguishes it from
a declaration of legal right as ordinarily understood in such authorities as International General Electric Co of New York Ltd v
Commissioners of Customs and Excise. That indefinite character reflects the requirement for the continuing acknowledgment and observance
of traditional laws and customs and continuing connection with land implicit in the definition of "native title" in s 223(1) of the
NTA.[111]
- A determination of native title is indefinite under the NTA, not immutable. Traditionality must remain a constant. But the real
rub may rest in subsections (4) and (5) of s13 NTA, an untested provision. Subsection (4) allows for the making of an application
to the Federal Court for the subsequent variation or revocation of a determination of native title on the grounds stated in sub-section
(5), namely:
a) that events have taken place since the determination was made that have caused the determination no longer to be correct; or
(b) that the interests of justice require the variation or revocation of the determination.
- A determination of native title under the NTA is thus seemingly reviewable on the merits far into the future; it is undo-able.[112]
- It is to be recalled that their Honours jointly said in Yorta Yorta that "[w]hen the society whose laws or customs existed at sovereignty
ceases to exist, the rights and interests in land to which these laws and customs gave rise, cease to exist."[113]
In our imaginary scenario in 2025, a party to the original determination presumably has standing to seek a variation or revocation
of the 2005 order on the grounds that certain "events" have occurred since 2005 which cause the determination no longer to be correct.
Indeed, the relevant State or Territory may be required to act in the broader public interest to formalise the flotsam rights of
such a societal erosion, to redeem the full beneficial title.
- If, as has been asserted here, a determination is un-doable, the Federal Court in the proper exercise of its discretion in s87 may
have to dutifully consider how legally secure a consent determination is before it so orders. It would matter nought that a State
or Territory along with other respondents might propose (perhaps in a spirit of genuine reconciliation) a consent determination to
a small area of land and waters as part of a broader package of otherwise non-native title outcomes in order to settle a claim.
If the proposed determination of native title is not definitionally sound, increasingly the Federal Court may be seen to resist such
a consent order as the law presently stands.
- By narrowing the definitional portal to the Native Title Act 1993 for the vast majority of indigenous Australians, the High Court of Australia in Yorta Yorta has required, in effect, that the issue
of indigenous land rights return to the mainstream political sphere. It has been asserted that for most of eastern and southern
Australia, native title can not ever be a legal reality in light of the Yorta Yorta doctrine.
- In the remaining jurisdictions, great care needs be taken, and substantial research undertaken, in the preparation and framing of
native title determination applications if they are to be successful. The onerous burdens imposed by the native title claim process
on claimants and their NTRBs - the scant funding, the mounting forensic onus, the emotional and other tolls - may now seem to outweigh
the benefits.
- To win recognition, an indigenous society must have remained traditional yet vital. Used in this greater sense of "tradition" now
required by the joint majority judgment in Yorta Yorta, this is an almost impossible dynamic to balance. What the Australian jurisprudence
seemingly seeks is a museum diorama of indigenous Australian society that robotically replays itself over and over again for the
benefit of the increasingly-critical judicial onlooker. Increasingly, this complex thing called native title may prove to be a decade-long
ephemeron.
[1]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, referred to hereinafter as "Yorta Yorta".
[2]
Ibid, 549 (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ). This had been emphasised by the High Court in other recent cases that the judgment
footnotes.
[3]
Ibid, 550.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Mabo v Queensland (No.2) [1992] HCA 23; (1992) 175 CLR 1.
[7]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, 551.
[8]
Ibid, 552.
[9]
Ibid.
[10]
Ibid, 553. Italics are in the original.
[11]
Ibid, 562 (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ).
[12]
Ibid, 563.
[13]
Ibid, 552.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Ibid, 565.
[16]
Ibid, 563.
[17]
Ibid, 553.
[18]
This is not to say that, as a matter of policy, native title settlements may not be achievable in those jurisdictions. The potential
for such outcomes will be addressed below yet these settlements, too, have their difficulties.
[19]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, 561 (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ).
[20]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483.
[21]
Ibid, 504. His Honour's further comment in this paragraph is instructive yet also now unfashionable:
Law in Aboriginal terms is
an aggregation of traditional values, rules, beliefs and practices derived from Aboriginal past. It might correspond to an anthropologist's
description of "aboriginal culture" or "aboriginal lore". (K Maddock, "The Australian Aborigines - A Portrait of their Society"
at 24.) As Brennan J stated in Mabo (No 2) (at 18), the evidence in that case showed the Meriam people to be regulated more by custom
than by law and (at 61) that the customs observed were "traditionally based".
[22]
See Young, supra note 5.
[23]
Graeme Neate, "Turning back the tide? Issues in the legal recognition of continuity and change in traditional laws and customs",
paper delivered at Native Title Conference, Outcomes and Possibilities, 3 September 2002, Geraldton, Western Australia. See also
S. Young, "The Trouble with Tradition: Native Title and the Yorta Yorta Decision" (2001) 30 Western Australian Law Review 28.
[24]
Dr Lisa Strelein, "Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v Victoria - Comment", (2003) 2 Land, Rights, Laws: Issues of
Native Title, Issues Paper No. 21.
[25]
[1996] 2 SCR 507.
[26]
Ibid, [40].
[27]
For a contrary view, that Yorta Yorta does not "raise the bar", that it "echoes and clarifies" propositions in Mabo (No.2), see
John Waters, "Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v Victoria", (2003) 6 (1) Native Title News 6. See also Richard Bartlett, "An Obsession with Traditional Laws and Customs creates Difficulty Establishing Native Title Claims in
the South: Yorta Yorta", 31 (2003) UWA Law Review 35.
[28]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483.
[29]
There is a division of opinion as to the current standing of this determination. On appeal, the Full Court of the Federal Court
substituted its own determination for that of the trial judge's. However, the High Court of Australia allowed all appeals and remitted
it back to the Full Court but did not, in my view, upset the findings of fact of the primary judge. The remitter had some difficulty
finding traction as it was necessary to construct a different Full Court with only North J remaining of the original complement.
It is unlikely that the findings of fact by Lee J that withstood the very robust appellate process will now be disturbed.
[30]
(2000) 99 FCR at 377-8, [222]-[228]. The majority judgment of Beaumont and von Doussa JJ (with which North J separately concurred
at [682]) said (at [226]):
The written submissions of the State challenging factual findings have been answered in great detail in
the written submissions and attached schedules of the applicants. Our own reading of the evidence to which we have been referred,
and the applicants' submissions, satisfy us that there was evidence capable of supporting the findings of fact made by the trial
judge. We are not persuaded that the trial judge fell into error in any of the ways alleged.
With the trial judge and Full Federal
Court against it, WA abandoned these challenges in the High Court and the applicants themselves obviously did not challenge findings
of fact (seemingly) in their favour.
[31]
(2002) 191 ALR 1. Contra Tom Pauling, "Ward v Western Australia: A Brief Territory Perspective", (2002) 5 Native Title News 164. Mr Pauling QC, the Solicitor-General of the Northern Territory, skilfully argues that the reference in the joint majority judgment
in Yorta Yorta to "the right to be asked for permission and to speak for country" as a "core concept in traditional law and custom"
(at [90]) and Lee J's finding of fact that this "core concept" rested with the estate groups (at [92] in the trial opinion), and
not the broader Miriuwung-Gajerrong, inferentially reversed Lee J's finding. However, the High Court did not equate the capacity
to speak for country as being the sum total of native title rights and interests in a particular country, merely describing it as
a central part of same. Additionally, and a fortiori, the joint judgment of Gleeson CJ, Gaudron, Gummow and Hayne JJ had earlier
made the point that this core concept was very likely one of the first casualties of the assertion of sovereignty, stating at [91]:
An important reason to conclude that, before the NTA, native title was inherently fragile is to be found in this core concept of
a right to be asked permission and to speak for country. The assertion of sovereignty marked the imposition of a new source of authority
over the land. Upon that authority being exercised, by the creation or assertion of rights to control access to land, the right
to be asked for permission to use or have access to the land was inevitably confined, if not excluded.
More recently, Sundberg J
in Neowarra v Western Australia ([2003] FCA 1402) rejected similar arguments made by Western Australia stating at [390]:"the Full
Court endorsed Lee J's conclusion that native title resided in the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community, notwithstanding that control
over parts of the area it occupied was exercised by clans belonging to the community. The High Court did not suggest any disapproval."
[32]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483, 544.
[33]
Lee J used the term "community" and "society" interchangeably in Miriuwung-Gajerrong to describe the pre-contact indigenous society.
The Full Federal Court in that case also used both terms but "society" found a resonance in the joint judgment in the High Court
Yorta Yorta decision, which footnoted (at Fn 31) the aside, "[w]e choose the word society rather than "community" to emphasise the
close relationship between the identification of the group and the identification of the laws and customs of that group".
[34]
[2000] FCA 191; (2000) 99 FCR 316, 381.
[35]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483, 541.
[36]
Ibid.
[37]
[2000] FCA 191; (2000) 99 FCR 316, 381 (Beaumont and von Doussa JJ). In the Full Court, Western Australia also criticised his Honour's finding that the Miriuwung-Gajerrong
had "become regarded as a composite community with shared interests" because Lee J had not stated by whom they had so "become regarded".
The Court dismissed this submission stating, "we think it is clear that his Honour meant that the members of each of the communities
so regarded themselves" (at 371).
[38]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483, 538.
[39]
Ibid, 542. The use of "traditional" here is in the ordinary sense of the term.
[40]
The High Court heard argument on the Yorta Yorta appeal over two days in late May 2002. It handed down its decision in Western
Australia v Ward (2002) 191 ALR 1, on 8 August 2002. At page 17, at [18]-[20] of the majority judgment of Gleeson CJ, Gaudron, Gummow and Hayne JJ, significant hints
are given. They say at [20] as to paragraph (c) issues, '[t]o date, the case law does not purport to provide a comprehensive understanding
of what is involved in the notion of "recognition".' In the Yorta Yorta decision of 12 December 2002, the same complement, absent
Gaudron J, move to comprehensively develop this understanding.
[41]
(2002)194 ALR 538, 554 (Gleeson CJ, Gaudron, Gummow and Hayne JJ).
[42]
(2002) 191 ALR 1, 17, [18]. (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ in joint judgment, separately concurred in by Kirby J.) Emphasis is in the original.
See also paragraph [20] of the judgment where it is made patent that the concept of "traditional" is embedded in both paragraphs
(a) and (b) of s.223(1).
[43]
(2002)194 ALR 538, 552.
[44]
In the Daniel Determination, (In the matter of Daniel v Western Australia [2003] FCA 666 (RD Nicholson J, 3 July 2003)), which is discussed below, this same case theorum was advanced at the outset but it was subsequently and
successfully resiled from.
[45]
[2000] FCA 191; (2000) 99 FCR 316, 391 [280].
[46]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, 554.
[47]
At trial, anthropologist Kim Barber was asked about such persons. The transcript of 6 February 1998, at page 7433, reads:
MR BARKER:
Yes, alright. Now, I was asking you about the traditional country of the Gajerrong speaking people, and whether or not it was your
understanding that it lay between the Ord River in the north coast and across the N.T. border, as stated in the second last paragraph
on page 31. In your evidence earlier, you made reference to the Wardanybeng and the Doolboong have also been mentioned in proceedings.
Can I ask you this, whether in the course of your work as of, say, August 1991, you'd met any person or actually identified themselves
as a Doolboong person?
MR BARBER: I'd never had cause to ask the question. People identify in a whole range of ways, but I don't
recall speaking to anyone who'd identified as Doolboong, no.
[48]
(2002)194 ALR 538, 553 (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ).
[49]
It has also been called a "composite claim" but this term is apt to confuse when also discussing the finding of Lee J in Miriuwung-Gajerrong
of a "composite community".
[50]
Section 62(1) NTA.
[51]
[2002] FCA 1428 (20 November 2002).
[52]
[2002] FCA 1147 (13 September 2002).
[53]
Ibid, [41].
[54]
Ibid.
[55]
Ibid, [51].
[56]
The decision in Northern Territory v Doepel [2003] FCA 1384 (28 November 2003) does provide some protection to certificates from NTRBs, but this may only be in the registration-testing phase
by the Native Title Registrar and not seemingly to applications to the court.
[57]
[2000] FCA 1589 (10 November 2000). This decision is sometimes cited as Risk v National Native Title Tribunal.
[58]
Ibid, [60].
[59]
Ward v Western Australia (1998) 1
[59]
ALR 483, 550-552.
[60]
[2000] FCA 1589, [30], [31] and [60] .
[61]
Peter Sutton, "Atomism versus Collectivism: the Problem of Group Definition in Native Title Cases" in J Fingleton and J Finlayson
(Eds), Anthropology in the Native Title Era: Proceedings of a Workshop, AIATSIS, Canberra, 1995, 1. Professor Ken Maddock, anthropologist
and lawyer, anticipated this debate by a decade, see "Owners, Managers and the Choice of Statutory Traditional Owners by Anthropologists
and Lawyers", (Chapter 13), Aborigines, Land and Land Rights, N Peterson and M Langton, (eds.) (Canberra: Australian Institute of
Aboriginal Studies, 1983).
[62]
Ibid, 4.
[63]
Ibid, 8.
[64]
Sutton, "Aboriginal Country Groups and the "Community of Native Title Holders"", National Native Title Tribunal Occasional Papers
Series, No.1/2001, 29. The footnote is omitted.
[65]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483, 539-540.
[66]
Ibid, 542. The Northern Territory joined the second applicants in arguing that the three estate groups were the holders of native
title in the claim area in the Northern Territory, see above, Pauling, "A Brief Territory Perspective", 164.
[67]
Ibid, 529.
[68]
Ibid, 540-541.
[69]
That is, they would not be rights-holders other than as members of the broader society. Even in the situation where the broader
indigenous society did not assert a claim, the Federal Court's hands may be bound; see discussion of the post-determination implications
below.
[70]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, 552 (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ).
[71]
Peter Sutton, "Kinds of Rights in Country: Recognising Customary Rights as Incidents of Native Title", National Native Title Tribunal
Occasional Papers Series, No. 2/2001, 1 at 8. Footnotes are omitted.
[72]
In the matter of Daniel v Western Australia [No.8] [2003] FCA 666 (RD Nicholson J, 3 July 2003).
[73]
Ibid, [58]-[59].
[74]
Ibid.
[75]
Ibid, [63].
[76]
[2000] FCA 1589 (10 November 2000, O'Loughlin J).
[77]
[2001] FCA 820; (2001) 109 FCR 240.
[78]
[2003] FCA 264 (31 March 2003, Mansfield J).
[79]
Ibid, [33].
[80]
[2003] FCA 890 (25 August 2003).
[81]
At [29]-[32] and [36]. Wilcox J did have reservations that he expressed in his judgment at [40]-[41]. They may be readily answerable
on public policy grounds.
[82]
Neowarra v Western Australia [2003] FCA 1402 (Sundberg J, 8 December 2003).
[83]
De Rose v South Australia [2003] FCAFC 286 (Wilcox, Sackville and Merkel JJ, 16 December 2003).
[84]
[2003] FCA 1402 (8 December 2003).
[85]
Ibid, at [323]-[346].
[86]
In R v Powley 2003 SCC 43 (19 September 2003), the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously endorsed the view that aboriginal rights are held communally, see McLachlin
CJ and Gonthier, Iacobucci, Major, Bastarache, Binnie, Arbour, LeBel and Deschamps JJ at [24].
[87]
[1998] FCA 1478; (1998) 159 ALR 483, 541. On appeal, the Full Court (Beaumont and von Doussa JJ, and concurred in by North J) upheld this finding stating:
Those submissions
[from the State of Western Australia] fail to recognise that rights of occupation, use and control of particular areas enjoyed by
the Miriuwung and Gajerrong community, and the estate groups within it, are a consequence of the communal title shared by the composite
community under the traditionally based laws and customs as currently acknowledged and observed by it ((2000) [2000] FCA 191; 99 FCR 316, 372).
[88]
[1999] FCA 1248; (1999) 97 FCR 32.
[89]
[1998] FCA 771; (1998) 156 ALR 370.
[90]
At [397].
[91]
The Kenbi (Cox Peninsula) Land Claim No.37, Report No 59, ATSIC, 2001. This claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 was first lodged on 20 March 1979 and the first hearing resulted in the Commissioner finding no claimants. The second report in
December 2000 found six "traditional Aboriginal owners".
[92]
The immediate problem, recognised by Mr. Basten QC for the claimants in argument on the remitter in Ward, for example, is resources,
see Transcript WAG 6005/98, 1 October 2003, 16.
[93]
[2003] FCA 264 (31 March 2003).
[94]
Ibid, [32].
[95]
Professor Richard Bartlett, in his text, Native Title in Australia, argues the exclusionary effect of a determination to only estate
group members (at [8.49] on 103).
[96]
Peter Sutton, 'Aboriginal Country Groups and the "Community of Native Title Holders"", National Native Title Tribunal Occasional
Papers Series, No.1/2001, 7.
[97]
Ibid, 9. Veth argues that approaching it from a regional model also allows mobility patterns, which may include of leaving estates
fallow for a time - rather like the alleged abandonment in the De Rose Hill Station matter - can be explained as part of longer term
patterns of land use. See Peter Veth, "Abandonment, or Maintenance of Country? A Critical Examination of Mobility Patterns and
Implications for Native Title", Issues Paper No.22, Volume 2, April 2003, Land, Rights Laws: Issues of Native Title, AIATSIS, 3.
[98]
Noel Pearson is reported as stating in a keynote address in Alice Springs in early June 2003: "Many of the claims that are registered
were prepared with about as much planning, strategy, forethought and consultation as went into the European dismembership of colonial
Africa." The Weekend Australian, Inquirer, "Dreaming No More", 7-8 June 2003, 21.
[99]
See, for example, Western Australia's Guidelines for the provision of Evidentiary Material in Support of Applications for a Determination
of Native Title, Department of Premier and Cabinet, Office of Native Title, October 2002, 1.
[100]
Guidelines for Native Title Proof, Department of Justice (Victoria), Native Title Unit, September 2001, 2.
[101]
Sub-sections (2) and (3) go on to provide for agreement as to the terms of an order or to part of proceedings. If the application
involves making a determination of native title, the order would need to comply with s94A NTA (which deals with the requirements
of native title determination orders).
[102]
[1998] HCA 11; (1998) 193 CLR 72.
[103]
Ibid, 80.
[104]
Ibid, 121.
[105]
Smith v Western Australia, [2000] FCA 1249, [38] (29 August 2000, Madgwick J).
[106]
The determinations are reported together as Attorney-General of the Northern Territory v Ward [2003] FCAFC 283 (9 December 2003).
[107]
Transcript, WAG 6005/98, 1 October 2003, 100.
[108]
Ibid, 101.
[109]
Ibid, at 105-06.
[110]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, 563. Emphasis added.
[111]
(2002) 191 ALR 1, 21. Emphasis added.
[112]
There is an ingenious argument that would nullify this line of reasoning. That is, that upon the determination of native title
by a court, the native title is transformed into a statutory title under the NTA. Therefore, it would not have to maintain its traditional
normative underpinnings. The argument has a number of shortcomings and its persuasive presentation is left to others.
[113]
[2002] HCA 58; (2002) 194 ALR 538, 554 (Gleeson CJ, Gummow and Hayne JJ).
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