The foundation of Australia was untainted by terra nullius
February 10, 2006
Since the Mabo case, it has been widely accepted that terra nullius was the defining doctrine argued by the British both to justify their acquisition of Australia and the dispossession of the Aborigines.
The orthodox view is that the High Court has conclusively demonstrated that the British were in error in determining that Australia was terra nullius, and that accordingly the birth of our nation is legally tainted.
But now Michael Connor argues that all this is nothing more than a judicial fallacy. In his new book, The Invention of Terra Nullius (Macleay Books), Connor claims that terra nullius was surreptitiously introduced into political and legal debate as recently as the 1970s. Its proponents have since used the term with a degree of imprecision worthy of Humpty Dumpty. Terra nullius, at least among its Australian proponents, now means just what the user chooses it to mean, neither more nor less.
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