AUSTRALIA

Aboriginal communities in Australia are elated over a new ruling by the Australian High Court: on March 16, the Court declared the federal government's Native Title Act, passed in late 1993, valid. It summarily tossed out a challenge to the Act by Western Australia's conservative government.

The judgement has also declared as unconstitutional the government's Land (Titles and Traditional Usage) Act. Consequently, a huge question now hovers over the validity of the estimated 8,000 land grants made over the past 15 months under the Act.

The ruling is likely to open the floodgates for a tide of native title claims in Western Australia, leaving Australia's mining industry, a lot of it on aborigine land, very jittery. "The decision signals a mass exodus, because now mining is being made to feel very unwelcome in Australia," asserts Ron Manners, chairman of Croesus Mining, who termed the ruling "a very unfortunate circumstance for Australia".