Published: 2 October 2007

	The Late Honourable Richard Cooper

Indigenous and international human rights law was the focus of the 2007 Richard Cooper Memorial Lecture held at the Brisbane Commonwealth Law Courts last month.

The first of the Memorial Lecture’s to focus on human rights law, Emeritus Professor Garth Nettheim from the University of New South Wales discussed the laws that apply to the evolution of native title in Australia and the rights of indigenous people globally to an audience of judges, scholars, legal professionals and interested parties.

Emeritus Professor Nettheim gave a broad outline of the international laws that have developed wide ranging treaties relating to human rights since the Second World War. 

 “These international laws have attempted to provide some recognition of the laws of Indigenous peoples in relation to lands, territories and resources globally, he said.”

In Australia, these international laws and the 1992 Mabo decision played a critical role in the Native Title Act which was passed in 1993.

However, in 1998 the Native Title Act was amended and criticised by several international treaty committees suggesting that the Australian Government had changed the legislation making it imbalanced and favourable to Governments and third parties.

Later this year the United Nations (UN) General Assembly will vote on the UN’s Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Emeritus Professor Nettheim suggested that Australia may vote against the declaration.

“Although in the development of the draft declaration, Australian Governments have been reasonably supportive, in recent times concerns have been expressed at references to self-determination, provisions relating to land, territories and resources, and provisions that seem to prioritise collective rights over individual rights”, he said.

In his argument against Australia’s vote on the declaration, Emeritus Professor Nettheim suggested that Australia would not have achieved recognition of native title without the support of international law.

The annual Richard Cooper Memorial Lecture was established in 2005 by the TC Beirne School of Law to honour the late Justice Richard Ellard Cooper, a former Judge of the Federal Court of Australia and Supreme Court of Australia.  The lecture series focuses on two of the main areas of law in which he made a significant contribution, both as a lawyers and Judge, namely maritime law and native title law.  The first two annual lectures in the series focused on maritime law.

Emeritus Professor Nettheim’s lecture will be published in The University of Queensland Law Journal due out in December 2008.