| Queensland continues to lead Australia in native title agreement making, with the State’s 200th indigenous land use agreement now registered with the National Native Title Tribunal.
The Tribunal’s Queensland State Manager, Therese Forde, said more than half of the 369 ILUAs made in Australia were between parties to native title claims in Queensland.
“Native title claimants and groups with interests in claimed areas, such as miners, pastoralists and governments, are choosing to negotiate agreements to settle native title rather than go through litigation in the courts. They recognise that the best outcomes are achieved through agreement about their respective rights to land,” she said.
“Native title agreements deliver a range of economic and social outcomes to Indigenous groups and others, such as employment and training, cooperative management of national parks and economic development opportunities.
“Since the 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act, which introduced ILUAs as a way to reach broader agreements, an understanding of and experience with ILUAs has developed and precedents have been set. We registered the 100th ILUA in Qld in 2005, seven years after ILUAs were introduced and, now, less than four years later we’ve registered the 200th ILUA.”
The 200th ILUA is between the Ewamian People and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia’s Forsayth and district branch, near Forsayth, 300 km south-west of Cairns in far north Queensland.
The ILUA enables the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia to carry out recreational activities on its rifle range with the agreement of the Ewamian People who have a native title claim over the Etheridge Shire.
“ILUAs are legally binding agreements made between a native title claimant group and others about the use and management of land,” Ms Forde said.
“ILUAs vary a great deal – they can be over a small area and involve few parties, like this Ewamian ILUA, or they can be over large tracts of land and require agreement between many groups who have rights and interests in that land. They can be negotiated to sort out how the rights of native title claimants and others will be exercised on the ground when native title rights are recognised through a consent determination, as with the 15 Eastern Kuku Yalanji ILUAs in far north Queensland which were registered in 2007.”
For more about ILUAs visit the Tribunal’s website, www.nntt.gov.au, and go to the indigenous land use agreements page.
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