Planning laws and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights and interests

Abstract

Contemporary Australian planning has for too long ignored its fundamental responsibilities in its relations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in urban and regional Australia. Australian land-use planning and development processes do not have a good track record of taking account of the rights and interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, or of adequately involving them, especially in our capital cities and major regional centres where the larger proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples live and the where the extent of dispossession is perhaps at its greatest. It is a sad indictment of our planning system that more than 30 years after the High Court of Australia’s landmark decision in Mabo (No. 2), that most of the planning statutes around Australia still do not require prior consultation with or the direct involvement of registered native title holders or claimants during plan formulation or decision-making about land uses for an area of land or waters. This paper examines the current state of affairs with respect to how well or otherwise our planning statutes still fail to give adequate recognition to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights and interests in contemporary statutory planning processes.