High Court ruling for WA spells disaster for Adani

Adrian Burragubba, native title holder

Well well well... Some very interesting news from the Aboriginal Wangan & Jagalingou Traditional Owners in Queensland who have been battling against Adani's intention to mine their traditional land.

A shock decision in Western Australia by the High Court of Australia saw the application for a $1.3billion Native Title Agreement there rejected, because some of the Aboriginal representatives refused to sign the agreement. For a Native Title Agreement to be valid, it must be signed by all parties.

"What we managed to do was have the full court of the Federal Court agree with our interpretation that where the legislation says that 'all parties must sign' it means all parties, not some," he said.

"We have run this case and succeeded in at least ensuring for the time being that native title is not stripped from our clients."

The ABC understands the decision could have implications for other agreements worth millions of dollars to Aboriginal groups across the nation, where if one of the named applicants has not signed, they could be open to challenge.

Mr Morgan said the decision was important.

"It should ensure that numerically stronger groups of claimants cannot have their way at the expense of a smaller number of claimants," he said. ABC

This has quickly caught the attention of the Aboriginal native title owners battling Adani, as they themselves haven't signed the agreement that Adani says is legit, even though they are the direct tribal descendants on the land. This from the email:

In April last year, Adani orchestrated a fake land use agreement for the Carmichael mine. They called and bankrolled a meeting that included hundreds of people who aren’t direct descendants of our W&J ancestors to sign up to an ILUA - an Indigenous Land Use Agreement.

They thought they could get away with it. But they failed to get the signatures of our family leaders who have opposed their mine all along.

 Adani’s plan to rob us of our land and water came unstuck last week when an important decision in the Federal Court, for the Noongar people in Western Australia, confirmed that under the law, an ILUA is not real unless it has the signatures of all our representatives on it.

We already told Adani and the Queensland government that their supposed agreement was invalid. And yesterday, our lawyers wrote to Adani Mining demanding they withdraw their application to register their sham ILUA with the National Native Title Tribunal.

And if they don't do it, next week we’ll go to Federal Court to have this ‘agreement’ struck out!

You can sign a petition from the Aboriginal Wangan & Jagalingou Traditional Owners against the Adani coal mine on their land here.