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Rees, Neil --- "Many, Many More Words" [2006] IndigLawB 47; (2006) 6(21) Indigenous Law Bulletin 10


Many, Many More Words

by Neil Rees

Twenty-five years ago the Aboriginal Law Bulletin (‘ALB’) – now the Indigenous Law Bulletin (‘ILB’) – began life with the aim of being ‘a source of useful practical information’ for people interested in legal issues concerning Indigenous Australians.[1] The fact that a quarter of a century later the ILB is invariably one of the first ports of call for anyone seeking useful practical information about legal issues concerning Indigenous Australians is to the credit of the numerous editors and contributors. People who have continued what fellow founding editor Greg Lyons and I first saw as ‘a very modest publication with some pretensions.’[2]

Upon re-reading the first edition of the ALB it is apparent that in Indigenous legal affairs, as in many aspects of life, some things change over time, whilst others remain the same. In that first edition, I wrote an editorial titled ‘Just More Words?’ in which I referred to the frustrations voiced by a young Indigenous lawyer, Michael Dodson, who had lamented that despite a mountain of well-intentioned scholarship about Indigenous Australians, ‘the continued discussions, conferences and publications appear to offer scant results immediately or in the long term.’[3] As I write today that same Indigenous lawyer, now Professor Mick Dodson of the Australian National University, occupies the front page of the nation’s newspapers with his call to the Prime Minister to seize the challenge and take the next step on the path to reconciliation.[4]

Other things do change. It is useful for readers of the ILB to be reminded that our own Antipodean system of apartheid officially ended at a time which is well within the living memory of many of us and only shortly prior to the birth of the ALB. The first edition of the ALB was produced in the shadows of the 1967 referendum, which finally gave Indigenous Australians full citizenship rights, and the 1966 changes to migration laws which led to the end of the White Australia Policy.

Land rights featured prominently as an issue of the day and as a matter of deep symbolic significance in the fledgling ALB. For people with an interest in the history of the legal issues associated with land rights there are few better contemporaneous sources of commentary, at least since the beginning of the 1980s, than the articles written by Bryan Keon-Cohen, Graeme Neate, Garth Nettheim and many others.[5] It is readily apparent from perusing those articles that the expectations of those with a yearning for land rights were great. It is, perhaps, too early to say whether all of those expectations have been met, but no one would have predicted 25 years ago that every Australian school child in a 21st century classroom would learn about the importance of the High Court’s decision in Mabo.[6]

The inquiry by the Australian Law Reform Commission into customary law excited many contributors to the ALB.[7] The fact that the inquiry led to little of substance after almost a decade of research and writing merely adds to the concerns expressed by Mick Dodson 30 years ago. Nevertheless, the outcome of this inquiry may provide an important political lesson about seizing opportunities for reform when they are presented.

The early editions of the ALB also looked beyond the immediate legal issues of the day. Makarrata was the name given to the movement amongst non-Indigenous Australians for a symbolic, legal gesture of reconciliation with Indigenous Australians; it was intended that there be a treaty of sorts.[8] Despite 25 years of refinement it sometimes appears that we are little closer to realising this goal for a formal compact than we were in 1981. Perhaps the next Prime Minister, regardless of whether he or she leads the ALP or the Liberal Party, will lead the next step in the reconciliation process.

We have yet to devise a model for the formal compact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians which will receive strong support from a majority of Australians. This challenge confronts a new generation of lawyers and political activists.

There is no more fitting place than the pages of the Indigenous Law Bulletin to expend a few more words on innovative proposals concerning the form and content of that formal compact. I look forward to reading them.

Neil Rees is one of the founding Editors of the Aboriginal Law Bulletin (renamed the Indigenous Law Bulletin in 1997).


[1] Neil Rees, ‘Just More Words?’ [1981] AboriginalLawB 1; (1981) 1(1) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 1.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Steve Lewis and Stuart Rintoul, ‘Indigenous Leader Calls on Howard to Seize Solutions’, The Australian (Sydney), 26 July 2006, 1.

[5] See, for example, Bryan Keon-Cohen, ‘Land Rights News’ [1982] AboriginalLawB 11; (1982) 1(3) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 13; Garth Nettheim, ‘Major Test Case’ [1982] AboriginalLawB 20; (1982) 1(4) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 1; Graeme Neate, ‘Land Rights News’ [1984] AboriginalLawB 1; (1984) 1(10) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 1.

[6] Mabo v Queensland (No 2) [1992] HCA 23; (1992) 175 CLR 1.

[7] Australian Law Reform Commission, ‘The Recognition of Aboriginal Customary Law’ (1986), tabled in Federal Parliament 12 June 1986, (inquiry commenced 1977), <http://www.alrc.gov.au/inquiries/title/alrc31/index.htm> at 10 October 2006.

[8] See, for example, Bryan Keon-Cohen, ‘Makarrata Legal Issues’ [1981] AboriginalLawB 2; (1981) 1(1) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 2.

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