Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T22:47:45.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Australian Land Law

from IV - Land and Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2022

Peter Cane
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Lisa Ford
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Mark McMillan
Affiliation:
RMIT University, Melbourne
Get access

Summary

Australian land law can now only be viewed through the prism of Mabo’s reframing of the history of land law to include First Nations’ law within its purview and to bring it and the colonising land law into relation with each other. Thus Mabo (and Wik) provide the framework for this chapter. The arrival of a foreign, colonising power in 1788 disrupted the complex systems of First Nations’ land law that had covered the Australian continent for millenia. The baggage of English land law including the feudal doctrines of tenure and estates became the law of the land and operated to dispossess but could not destroy First Nations’ land law and relationships. By the mid nineteenth-century, unique and significant departures from English land law and feudal doctrines emerged, reflecting the particular social, economic and geographical environment of the colonies: for example, the creation of pastoral leases, development of Crown reserves, the regulation of mining by way of leases and licences distinct from the common law and the creation of the unique title by registration scheme by Robert Torrens. Mabo’s reassessment of this “peculiarly Australian land law freed the law of some of its common law feudal origins, particularly by redefining the nature of Crown title. Paradoxically it also reinstated the prominence of the doctrines of tenure and estates as the land law’s “skeleton of principle” which remains the major impediment to a truly Australian land law.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×