Land claim, 1981-1992

Component identifier:

Series 8

Content Summary:

In 1981, at a conference on indigenous land rights in Townsville, a decision was made to pursue a native land title claim for the people of the Murray Islands in the High Court of Australia. In 1982, Mabo and four other Islander plaintiffs instituted proceedings against the State of Queensland, claiming that their islands had been continuously inhabited and exclusively possessed by their people who lived in permanent settled communities. They acknowledged that the British Crown became sovereign of the islands upon annexation, but claimed continuous enjoyment of their land rights which had not been validly extinguished by the sovereign through the granting of freehold title or land leases to others.

The Queensland Government attempted to defeat the claim with the passage of the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act 1985. In 1988, the High Court ruled this Act contrary to the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975. In May 1989, the High Court remitted the land claim to the Queensland Supreme Court for hearing and determination of all issues of fact. In November 1990, Justice Moynihan of the Supreme Court delivered the Court's determination of the issues of fact. The case was argued for four days before the High Court in May 1991. The final decision was handed down in favour of Mabo on 3 June 1992. This decision overturned the 204-year-old legal doctrine of terra nullius, which held that the lands of the Australian continent were 'practically unoccupied' at the time of the proclamation of British sovereignty.

Further reading: The Mabo Decision, and the Full Text of the Decision in Mabo and Others v State of Queensland. Commentary by Richard H. Bartlett. Sydney: Butterworths, 1993. Mabo, a Judicial Revolution: The Aboriginal Land Rights Decision and Its Impact on Australian Law. Edited by M.A. Stephenson and Suri Ratnapala. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993. Mabo Papers. Department of the Parliamentary Library, Parliamentary Research Service. Subject Series no. 1. Canberra: AGPS, 1994.

Immediate source of acquisition:

An initial instalment of papers of Eddie Mabo was acquired by the Library from his widow, Bonita Mabo, in 1994. A further instalment was acquired from the same source in November 2002.

Names:

Mabo, Bonita, Mrs.

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