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Nulliusgate: the defence of terra nullius

The Invention of Terra Nullius was launched in Sydney at the beginning of December 2005. Several news articles in the Australian held damning criticism. QC Greg Macintyre said my “critique revealed he had misunderstood legal history”. Law professor Greg Craven said, “I don’t think [terra nullius] was an invention. I think it was probably more of a confusion."

 

When these comments were published stock of the book had just been transported from the Sydney printer to the distributor's warehouse in Adelaide. Not a copy had gone into the bookshops. The expert opinion was from experts who had not read my book.  [READ ESSAY]

         

The Invention of Territorium Nullius

Dr Andrew Fitzmaurice of Sydney University had an Australian Research Council grant of over one hundred thousand dollars for a research project dealing with terra nullius. His research was spread over three years.

A year after his project was complete he found references to territorium nullius in my book The Invention of Terra Nullius. Believing the term   gave him a chance to challenge me, and rescue historians from dealing with their errors, he added new confusion to the already confused history of terra nullius in Australia by suggesting that terra nullius and territorium nullius mean different things (they don't) and that they played separate parts in our colonial history.

Bad ideas grow in our wasteland universities as aggressively as prickly pear once colonised the landscape. Fitzmaurice introduced territorium nullius in a newspaper essay in mid-March 2006; in early May Henry Reynolds (without crediting Fitzmaurice) used it in a magazine defence of his history writing; in November a new book used the term in explaining Australia’s foundation. The book was about mistakes in Australian history, and the historian authors credited Henry Reynolds as their source.

This essay responds to Fitzmaurice. When published in the Australian (5 April 2006) it was called ‘Null truth to academic accusations’. It is no longer available on-line and I have republished the original version here, and renamed it ‘The Invention of Territorium Nullius’.  [READ ESSAY]