What did the Wik High Court decision mean?
Again, the Wik decision did not grant any land or special rights to indigenous Australians. What it did was rule that the Federal Court was wrong when it said that the Wik and Thayorre people had no right to claim native title to the land, because a pastoral lease had also been granted on the land. The court ruled that pas- toral leases did not auto- matically extinguish native title. The High Court instead ruled that native title could co-exist with pastoral leases – in other words pastoralists and indigenous people could share the land. However, where there was a conflict the rights of the pastoral leaseholder would prevail over the native title holder. What is Howard’s ten-point plan all about? The ten-point plan is racist. It would extinguish only those property rights held by indigenous people. • Instead of promoting co-existence between native title holders and pastoral lease holders, the ten-point plan would extinguish most native title rights. • The ten-point plan would also ex
