Professor Garth Nettheim

Emeritus Professor of Law, University of New South Wales Faculty of Law:

“International Human Rights Law: Imperatives for Indigenous Rights”

In the historic Mabo v Queensland case acknowledging native title as part of Australia’s common law heritage, the Australian High Court noted that international human rights law is an appropriate source for the Court to consider when determining contemporary standards for the application of law in Australia. Similarly, when the Commonwealth enacted the Native Title Act in 1994, that act was empowered by the Constitutional provision to enact laws for the people of any race, with reference to the Racial Discrimination Act which implements the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, an international human rights law treaty to which Australia is a signatory. Throughout the debate on the amendment of the Native Title Act in 1998, all sides of the debate considered the impact the amendments would have on Australia’s compliance with a number of international human rights treaties.

The influence of international human rights law on native title specifically, and more generally, on Indigenous policy in Australia has been and continues to be a prominent and sometimes contentious issue. This paper considers the international human rights law bases and imperatives for the development of Indigenous land, social, political, and cultural rights. In particular, the paper considers the impact of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as general human rights instruments on articulating and securing those land, social, political, and cultural rights within existing nation states, and on one means of negotiating those rights in Australia: a Treaty.

BIO:

Professor Garth Nettheim is Australia's preeminent Indigenous legal rights academic. He commenced his career in law teaching in 1963 and joined the UNSW Faculty of Law in its first year of operation, 1971. He served as Dean and Head of School in 1975-1978 and, again, in 1987-1988. Garth retired from full time teaching in 1996 and is Emeritus Professor of Law at UNSW and an Honorary Visiting Professor in the Faculty where he continues to maintain a hectic teaching, research and consulting schedule teaching Indigenous Legal Issues and Human Rights Law in both the LLB and LLM programs. He is the founding director of the UNSW Indigenous Law Centre and the guiding light behind the Australian Indigenous Law Reporter. His major publications include: Indigenous Peoples and Governance Structures: A Comparative Analysis of Land and Resource Management Rights (with GD Meyers and D Craig) forthcoming (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2002); Understanding Law (5th ed, 1997) with R Chisholm; and Indigenous Legal Issues: Commentary and Materials (2nd ed, 1997) (with H McRae and L Beacroft).