In 1971 the Lake Tyers reserve in Victoria was handed back to the local Indigenous people. It was the first time ownership of a reserve had been given to its Indigenous residents. It was a significant event, but it did not hail an immediate policy shift by the Victorian government, nor did it prompt any other State government to consider similar action. The land rights question was one that was just beginning to come to the fore of Australian politics.
The Whitlam Labor government era (1972-1975) was a time of great political and social change in Australia. Even though E. G. (Gough) Whitlam was only in power for three years the changes he made and the initiatives he started continued into the next decade. It was the Whitlam government that first used the extra constitutional powers granted by the 1967 Referendum to influence the lives of Australia's Indigenous community.
The government's policy of self-determination also made a huge difference to the lives of Aboriginal peoples in the 1970s. They began to have more say in their affairs and were more involved in the political process. Increased monetary investment was another aspect of the effect the Whitlam government had on Indigenous lives. Spending on Aboriginal Affairs rose from $23 million in 1971 to $145 million in 1975.
One of the major changes instituted by the Whitlam government was that it established a royal commission to investigate the issue of Indigenous land rights. For the first time a federal government was looking seriously at the problem. It was not going to sweep it aside, or automatically uphold the concept of 'terra nullius' - that Australia was empty when Cook arrived in 1770.
Whitlam had outlined his plans to investigate land rights in his policy speech before the 1972 Federal election. In February 1973 the Woodward Royal Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights was established to report on 'the appropriate means to recognise and establish the traditional rights and interests of Aboriginal people in and in relation to land'. The wording of the commission's brief was incredibly significant in light of the history of previous governments' attitude to land rights. This royal commission was not set up to see whether the Indigenous population should be given land rights, but to see how they could be given land rights. There was no longer any question on a federal level as to the Aboriginal people's ownership of some land in Australia; the question now was how to grant it.
Justice Woodward's report was as revolutionary as his brief. It recommended that;
The major restriction on Justice Woodward's findings was that they only related to land rights in the Northern Territory. The federal government was too wary of conflicting with the rights of the States to make laws, to impose the findings on other States. As the Northern Territory was under federal control, it was used almost as a 'test' case. In essence the States could completely ignore the recommendations in the Woodward report and many did. See image 1
In the Northern Territory the Commonwealth government began to implement many of the reports recommendations. By the next year a bill to recognise Aboriginal people as the legal owners of their land in the Northern Territory was passed by the House of Representatives. That bill failed in the Senate, but in 1976 under the Liberal/Country Party government of Malcolm Fraser the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976 (Cth) ('The Act') became law.
The Act allowed Aboriginal people to claim reserves and Crown land that they had traditional ties with. The Act also established land councils, the protection of sacred sites and allowed for Aboriginal people to refuse mining rights. It did not allow Aboriginal people to claim land that was already in use by other people; for example land that had houses or other buildings on it. This also included land that the government had leased out to mining companies or farmers. The Act also prohibited Aboriginal people from claiming land within town or city boundaries. When the Northern Territory gained self government in 1978 it extended the boundaries of some towns like Darwin so that Indigenous land rights in urban areas could be restricted. This was found to be illegal by the High Court in 1985 (Attorney-General (N.T) v Kearney [1985] HCA 60; (1985) 158 CLR 500) and the boundary changes were reversed.
The Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976 (Cth) was not repeated immediately in the other States, but by the end of the 1970s most of the States were looking into similar legislation. In 1981 South Australia passed its own Aboriginal Land Rights Act which granted Indigenous ownership and the right to claim royalties from the mining companies. This one piece of legislation meant that more than ten per cent of South Australia's land was returned to the local Indigenous people. New South Wales followed suit in 1983, and in 1984 Aboriginal peoples in Queensland were able to claim ownership of their reserve lands.
Although this was a huge step forward in the land rights campaign, there are some further points to consider. The 'unoccupied' land that could be claimed by Aboriginal people in some States was often land that was not of good quality - it was unoccupied for a reason. Meanwhile Land Rights legislation was never passed in Tasmania or Western Australia. A bill in Tasmania was abandoned after the State (Labor) government lost power. Successive Western Australian governments have seen land rights as a vote loser and have not pursued it since a bill failed in the upper house in 1985.
In 1986 the Commonwealth government also decided to abandon an attempt at passing a national Land Rights act. Opinion polls at the time showed that many white Australians were against land rights and therefore would not support a government who pursued it as a federal policy.
In 1975 the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam gave Vincent Lingiari a handful of soil to represent the restoration of Gurindji land to its rightful owners. Vincent Lingiari had led the Gurindji people in a strike since they had walked off the Wave Hill Cattle station nine years previously. Their 1966 strike action was one of the first major events of the land rights campaign and now nine years later they had been granted their wish - ownership and control of their land.
In 1975 the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) was passed by the Federal government. It was Australia's first piece of human rights legislation and was part of the recognition of the new multi-cultural society that Gough Whitlam wanted to promote. Australia had signed up to the International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1966, but the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) was the first time that anti-discrimination legislation was laid down in the Federal parliament. The legislation meant that any previous discriminatory laws were automatically overturned and that that no restrictions, exclusions or distinctions could be made in Australian society on the basis of race, colour, descent or nationality. It was not solely aimed at improving the lives of the Aboriginal peoples, but Whitlam saw it as a victory over bigotry and prejudice. Many people have also seen 1975 as another milestone on the road towards equality for Indigenous people.
Uluru, the traditional Aboriginal name for Ayers Rock, is one of the most sacred sites in Australia as well as being one of the most famous tourist destinations. In 1985 the Northern Territory government made a huge step towards reconciliation and recompense when it returned Uluru to the local Indigenous people.
The 1970s and 1980s were a time of great social change in Australia, but land rights for Indigenous people was still not an overly popular policy in Australia. In states like Queensland and Western Australia change was very slow to come. When it did it was often restricted or repealed later. Queensland did pass Land Rights legislation, but at the same time it also changed the status of many Aboriginal reserves so that mining could continue unchecked. The State governments did not want to lose the all-important white vote and land rights were often swept aside for fear of losing power. See image 2 and animation
There was also much scare mongering at the time from many in the white community. They alleged land rights would mean Aboriginal peoples could claim peoples back gardens as sacred sites, or that they could claim land and throw white people off it. The reality was of course much different. All the States that did pass Land Rights legislation passed it under the stipulation that any land claimed must be unoccupied and not in urban areas. However this did not stop many white people who were anti-land rights from using scare tactics to frighten other people into not supporting the rights of the Indigenous people.