Post and Riposte

We apologise for trying to KEEP our children when you BENIGNLY wanted to take them away and so get rid of US.

We apologise for giving you an INDIGENOUS CULTURE that you can claim as your own on the sides of aeroplanes, on pamphlets promoting the OLYMPICS, and in the centres of high culture in the Europe from which you came.

We apologise for placing our sacred sites on top of your MINERAL deposits.

We apologise for demanding the rights and amenities of health, HAPPINESS, culture and self-determination that you take FOR GRANTED.

We apologise for providing you with the sports stars - Freeman, Long, Rose, Beetson ad infinitum - who you can claim as your own and who enable you to BOAST of your sporting prowess to the rest of the world.

We apologise for the Dodson Brothers, Lowitja O'Donahue, Aiden Ridgeway and all those other individuals of INTELLIGENCE and compassion who have shown you the meaning of DIGNITY and the true heart of the democratic way of life you claim to have invented.

In short, we apologise for breathing YOUR air and taking up your space and your time, forcing you to worry about our problems.

WE HUMBLY BEG FORGIVENESS FOR ALL THESE SINS AND ARE MORE THAN HAPPY TO RETURN EVERYTHING YOU HAVE GIVEN US IF YOU WILL JUST GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM WHENEVER YOU ARE READY??..

Footnotes

1. The Appeal Court majority described this test as requiring a comparison of the legal nature and incidents of the existing native title and of the statutory grant to determine whether the respective incidents are such that the native title rights cannot be exercised without abrogating rights created by the statutory grant (whereupon the native title rights are extinguished). The question is not whether the estate or interest had in fact been exercised in a way that was incompatible with the exercise of native title rights, but whether it was legally capable of being so exercised. See para 71.

2. The Appeal Court majority noted that conflict in actual use is only a material consideration where the grant itself does not extinguish native title, but the later exercise or performance of a power or condition contained in the grant does so (this is termed "operational inconsistency"). This distinction, based on differences in the approaches of the High Court judges in Wik, is not entirely clear.

3. (1998) 159 ALR 483

4. See the qualification in paragraph 5 of the judge’s order to the superficially expansive native title rights and interests recognised in paragraph 3 of that order, and note also the Full Federal Court’s clarification of the terms of Lee J’s order: see Western Australia v Ward [2000] FCA 191 at [40]-[41].

5. [2000] FCA 191; see the draft determination of Beaumont and von Doussa JJ (North J dissenting).

6. Exclusive rights to possession, occupation, use, and enjoyment of some limited areas, apart from certain public works in those areas, are also recognised.