8 - Land tenure: plaything of governments or an effective instrument?

Summary

Introduction

The first land use policies to be used by Europeans in Australia were based on the tenure system. Settlement began with leases, licences and the issue of grants of land to people as rewards for achieving certain goals. The feature which differentiates land tenure from most other systems which seek to influence land use is that it mixes incentives, rewards and penalties all into one. Moreover, the system is specific in the way it issues and withholds property rights. Most other systems work solely by withholding property rights. But, as most rights to use land have already been issued in the form of a freehold title to a landholder, the option to return to a land tenure system to control land use throughout Australia's productive lands has largely been forgone. No government is likely to exercise its powers of eminent domain and legislate to acquire and/or resume all these freehold titles and reintroduce a tenure-based land use control system. Throughout most of the less productive rangelands of Australia, however, this opportunity remains.

Recent developments

Earlier this century a cynical NSW politician bemoaned the fact that the Western Lands Act, which establishes the tenure system for the control of grazing in western New South Wales, had become ‘the plaything of governments’ (King 1957 pl63). Since 1979 there have been inquiries into pastoral land management in Western Australia (‘Jennings Report’, Western Australia 1979); pastoral land tenure in the Northern Territory (‘Martin Report’, Northern Territory 1980); pastoral land administration management and tenure in South Australia (‘Vickery Report’, South Australia 1981) and the Western Division of New South Wales (four reports New South Wales 1983, 1984a,b,c).