It’s back to the Native Title drawing board

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It’s ‘groundhog day’ as Australia’s biggest Native Title settlement is placed back before the National Native Title Tribunal, this time by Western Australia’s new Labor government.

The NNTT is accepting objections to the controversial $1.3 billion plan — originally put on the table by WA’s ousted Barnett coalition government and the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council — until January.

The settlement shook the foundations of Indigenous land use agreements across Australia back in February when the Full Court of the Federal Court ruled that four of the six ILUAs in the package could not be registered because not all Native Title claimant or claimants had signed it.

Mr Morgan and former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel successfully represented Noongar members Mingli Wanjurri McGlade, Mervyn Eades, Naomi Smith and Margaret Culbong, who did not want their Native Title extinguished.