The Ideological Foundations of Arguments About Native Title

Abstract

The political disputes over native title in Australia have generally been interpreted without recourse to ordinary ideological categories. The general failure to engage with ideology has hampered scholarly analysis, stunting the vocabulary and content of debate, as well as giving the content of public deliberation on the issue a curiously free-floating quality. In this article it is contended that arguments about native title are amenable to being understood as a product of the interaction of a range of well-known normative frameworks: liberalism, social democracy, conservatism, nationalism, socialism and transcendentalism. Each of these six ideologies furnishes rationales both for and against native title by focusing on different elements or preoccupations within the respective ideological traditions. A typological framework is proposed which outlines a range of ideal type positions in relation to native title.

Notes

¹ Mabo v Queensland (No 1) (1988) 166 CLR 186.

² Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1.

³ McGlade v Lightfoot[2002] FCA 752.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Ritter

David Ritter was, for many years, one of Australia's leading native title lawyers and commentators. He is currently Head of Biodiversity Campaigns at Greenpeace UK in London, but retains affiliations with both the History Disciplines Group and the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Australia. Research for this article was supported by a grant provided by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.