Indigenous Land Rights in Australia: Lessons for a Canadian Northern Corridor

When an exploration licence is issued, the ALRA 1976 (Cth) requires the terms and conditions to include provision requiring the third party to pay compensation for damages or disturbance to the land and to the traditional Aboriginal owners, which compensation can include compensation for not only the value of minerals removed but deprivation of use of the land and severance of the land from other. [...] However, the Federal Court has held that the grant of a licence to carry gas many hundreds of kilometres from the gas well to consumers is not the creation of a “right to mine” within the meaning of the NTA 1993 (Cth). [...] Mining Dispositions and the Right to Negotiate The validation of a future act that involves the creation of a “right to mine” under Subdivision M attracts the strongest procedural right available in the future act regime—the right to negotiate.61 The right to negotiate allows registered native title claimants and native title holders the right to negotiate with governments and proponents about the. [...] When the right to negotiate is engaged, all “negotiation parties” must negotiate in good faith with a view to obtaining the agreement of each of the native title parties to either the doing of the act or the doing of the act subject to conditions to be complied with by any of the parties (s 31(1) (b)). [...] In order for the Darwin to Alice Rail Link to proceed, therefore, the Northern Territory Government negotiated long-term leases over the land on terms and conditions determined by the Land Councils at the direction of the traditional Aboriginal owners of the land pursuant to the eleven land trusts.