Victory for Aboriginal fishermen

The court's five-to-two decision will allow Aborigines living in coastal communities to reap what are expected to be huge economic benefits.  Anyone wanting to enter their land - including beaches and the sea from the high to low water mark - will have to get permission.

Indigenous elders in Darwin yesterday celebrated what they called a "landmark victory for traditional owners" after a protracted legal battle.

"We are overjoyed by this decision.  We have waited for 30 years for our sea rights to be legally recognised," said Wali Wunungmurra, the chairman of the Northern Land Council, which represents indigenous groups in northern Australia.

The decision will give traditional owners authority under the Northern Territory Land Rights Act to decide how fishing is conducted along 80 per cent of the territory's coast, which offers some of the country's best fishing.

It in effect allows local communities to ban non-indigenous fishermen from recreational angling and commercial fishing.

In the area known as the Top End of the Northern Territory – the last frontier of a macho non-indigenous tradition – few freedoms are regarded as more important than the right to fish. Some fear that the ruling could widen the gulf between white and black communities.

Chris Makepeace, head of the Amateur Fishermen's Association of the Northern Territory, urged the federal government in Canberra to intervene. "We are going to have to arrange some sort of settlement with indigenous interests," he said.

The High Court decision reflects previous legal rulings, including the 1992 Mabo judgment, which recognised that Aborigines enjoyed native title in Australia as result of their traditional occupation of the land.  That ruling declared irrelevant the theory of terra nullius, under which the British argued that the land belonged to no-one.