Steering into turbulence
with an enormous land mass and a population of only about 17 million, few countries have a better chance of providing the answers for a sustainable economy and a fair society than Australia. But when Eddie Marbo, leader of the Mariyam people, an aboriginal community from Murray Island just off the coast of Australia, moved the Australian high court ( hc ) in 1992, claiming rights on what he said was his ancestral land, the repercussions were vast, which Australian politicians are finding hard to live.
On June 3, 1992, the hc established the existence of "native title rights' to land in what has come to be known as the Marbo decision, overturning the previous legal assumption of terra nullius , which implied that Australia was an empty land when the British arrived. The elders in the aboriginal community said the days of terra nullius were numbered, and Australia was going to have to face the reality of prior ownership of land, or native title. In 1993, the Labour government headed by Paul Keating introduced the Native Title Act ( nta ).
The court ruling and the nta were the beginning of a debate that challenges the very basis of European settlement in Australia, and