Mabo v Queensland (No 1) was a significant court case decided in the High Court of Australia on 8 December 1988. It found that the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act 1985, decided in 1992) which was a dispute between the Meriam people (of the Mer Islands in the Torres Strait) and the Government of Queensland, in which several Meriam people, principally Eddie Mabo, contested that they had certain native title rights over the Murray Islands. In 1985, the Queensland Government passed the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act, which was intended to retrospectively abolish any such native title rights, if they existed.
The Meriam people sought a demurrer to prevent the Queensland Government from relying on the Coast Islands Declaratory Act in their defence to the main case. a law passed by the Parliament of Australia. Section 109 of the Constitution of Australia provides that where an Act of a state parliament is inconsistent with an Act of the Parliament of Australia, the state act is invalid to the extent of the inconsistency. As such, the plaintiffs argued that the Queensland Government were not able to rely on the Coast Islands Act as part of their defence in the main case.
The decision
The majority judgment of Justices Brennan, Toohey and Gaudron found that native title rights, if they did exist, should be treated as part of a broader human right to own and inherit property. They said that the effect of the Coast Islands Act was to arbitrarily deprive the Meriam people of their traditional property, by denying their native title rights.