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September 22, 2006
The decision of Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox to rule in favour of a native title claim over metropolitan Perth puts the cat amongst the pigeons doesn't it. Justice Wilcox, in his landmark finding for the Nyoongar people, found that on the basis of probabilities the Nyoongar people had proved native title existed over the Perth area by continuing to observe traditional customs despite European settlement in 1829 which resulted in their widespread dispossession; that some members of the Nyoongar community were descendants of one or more Nyoongars who had originally lived in the Perth area.
The WA State government immediately rejected the Wilco's ruling that the Noongar indigenous people are the traditional owners of Perth and its surrounds and their native title continues to exist in the area. The government's reason for not accepting the findings was that the Noongar community had experienced too much disruption for them to have maintained a continuous connection to the Metropolitan Area since sovereignty.
Labor leader Kim Beazley supports an appeal against a Federal Court ruling giving Aboriginals native title over Perth. The federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said that more title claims over metropolitan areas could be made after Tuesday's Federal Court decision to recognise native land rights over the city of Perth. Ruddock adopts the scaremongering angle that public access to urban open spaces and national parks could be at risk.
Some good comments can b efound at John Quiggin. Judge Wilcox judge was careful to point out that while native title was important, it was largely symbolic. Wilcox specifically discourages litigation and advocates governments and Aboriginal representatives work together to reach pragmatic, practical agreement about the operation of native title.
Update: 23 September
The reality is quite different from the fear scenario being whipped by the media and politicians.
Geoff Pryor
Noel Pearson, writing in todays Australian, says that:
The bombshell in Noongar is moral and psychological. Just when the whitefellas had come to regard native title benignly, as largely a symbolic form of title that would be found only in the remote and desert parts of central and northern Australia, the Noongar people establish native title over the city that was established on their traditional homelands. The Noongar are shadow dwellers in their own country and these urban-dwelling blackfellas were not supposed to get native title. The Federal Court decision will not result in one square centimetre of land held by the whitefellas being lost. In fact the Noongar specifically did not claim any freehold or leasehold land, which everybody knows extinguishes native title, or indeed any other tenure that extinguishes native title.
Wilcox has ruled on the question of traditional connection to the claimed lands and has found in favour of the Noongar. He has not ruled on a second question: in what lands does native title still survive?
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