Kangaroos - The 100 Days Project: Day 15 [86]

A Mabo Decision

We need a Mabo decision for Australia’s wild animals, a legal recognition of their special status as original residents of Australia, alongside its original [human] inhabitants. The only ethical approach is one that gives their interests equal consideration alongside similar human interests.

                                  – Peter Singer, ‘Preface’ to Kangaroos: Myths and Realities, ed. Maryland Wilson and David B. Croft     

                                                                                                                                  (Australian Wildlife Protection Council, 2005).

Photo: David Brooks

In the Mabo Decision – Mabo and others v Queensland, 1992, a ten-year case led by Eddie Mabo – the High Court determined that the British has had no right to declare Australia terra nullius at the time of white settlement, thus re-establishing the land rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.