Inconvenient fact: Native title can only exist if Australia was settled, not invaded

Yet we do recognise separate land rights because the historic Mabo Decision in 1992 rested on the correct presumption that Australia was settled, not invaded.

In their ruling, Justices Brennan, Deane, Gaudron, Toohey, Mason and McHugh acknowledged that native title could have been intentionally extinguished by the use of government powers, but wasn't.

They proceeded to reject the 'terra nullius' doctrine without overturning the traditional view that the Australian landmass had in fact been settled.

Had Australia actually been invaded, the descendants of its native population would be classified as a conquered people and their land rights would be abolished under UN Resolution 3314.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale might like to explain to the Australian people why he is attempting to undermine native title by implying that Australia was invaded and conquered.

On 26 January 1788, there was no sovereign state on the landmass we today call Australia. The land was sparsely populated with disparate nomadic tribes without a written language and a central government.

Captain Arthur Phillip's arrival with his group of disease-stricken poorly-fed convicts in their new prison colony, on territory claimed for the British Crown seventeen years earlier by explorer James Cook, does not constitute an "invasion".

Far from the brutal instincts of actual invaders like Napoleon or Hitler, early British settlers built a colony that was surprisingly harmonious and committed to justice.

As the first Governor of New South Wales, Phillip developed a fondness for the native Eora people in his new colony at Port Botany.

He befriended native man Woollarawarre Bennelong who became the first native Australian to be escorted to England to meet King George III.

The federal seat of Bennelong held by former Prime Minister John Howard for 33 years is named after him.

Phillip once forgave a native for stealing his shovel because he understood that in native culture people shared what they had and there was no concept of exclusive personal belongings. Hardly the attitude of an invader.