The true answer is First Nations peoples, whose ownership stems back 60,000 years. The legal answer is more complex. It's a mess of titles – freehold, pastoral leases, crown leases, public land, native title and land held by Aboriginal trusts. And no two jurisdictions store or share that data in the same way.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights and interests in land are formally recognised over around 50 per cent of Australia's land mass.
Australia is home to the oldest continuing living culture in the entire world. The richness and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures in Australia is something we should all take pride in as a nation.
Since the introduction of the Native Title Act, native title has been recognised over more than thirty two per cent of the Australian continent.
native title benefits are now considered non-assessable non-exempt (NANE) income and are therefore not subject to income tax (however, income earned from investing a native title benefit is assessable as income)
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
They conclude that, like most other living Eurasians, Aborigines descend from a single group of modern humans who swept out of Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago and then spread in different directions.
Key findings show foreign ownership of Australian agricultural land is 14.1%, compared with 10.9% the previous year. The majority continues to be in the form of leasehold interests.
China's Luye Medical bought hospital operator Healthe Care and now owns 34 hospitals across Australia, making it the third largest operator in the country.
Using the ABS measure of total agricultural land area in Australia, the estimated proportion of agricultural land with a level of foreign ownership at 30 June 2020 is 13.8%.
In 1803, British colonisation began and in 1876, Truganini died. She was the last full-blood and tribal Tasmanian Aboriginal. Within her one lifetime, a whole society and culture were removed from the face of the earth.
Infrastructure: $316.6 million in 2021-22, including $269.2 million for the Aboriginal Housing Office. Crisis services: $151 million in 2021-22, including $141.1 million for targeted Out of Home Care Services.
The final constitutional ties between the United Kingdom and Australia ended in 1986 with the passing of the Australia Act 1986. Formal economic relations between the two countries declined following Britain's accession to the European Economic Community in 1973.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Total brain volume was significantly smaller for Aborigines (1199 +/- 84 ml) compared to Caucasians (1386 +/- 98 ml). Significantly smaller volumes were also found for cerebellum, prosencephalon-mesencephalon unit, cerebral cortex, frontal cortex, parieto-occipitotemporal cortex, and hippocampus.
Some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, a band of intrepid Southeast Asians became the first humans to reach Australia, and without a single glance at a GPS unit.
For Indigenous Australians, Age Pension: 53%, Total: 53%, JobSeeker Payment: 28%, Youth Allowance (other): 20%, Disability Support Pension: 10%, Youth Allowance (student and apprentice): 1%, Parenting Payment (single): 8%, Carer Payment: 3%, Parenting Payment (partnered): 2%, ABSTUDY (Living Allowance): 2%.
They do not receive “free payments” because they are Indigenous nor are they exempt from doing the work. Specific government programs not “free payments” are available to address the economic and social disadvantage that Indigenous Australians may face.