Dearie me Paul,

You originally thought terra nullius meant the absence of people. Now you claim to be conversant in International Law. I call bullsh!t.

Nowhere did I argue for or against terra nullius as it applied to Australia. Whether it was the basis for the British occupation or not is immaterial these days - a mere historic curiosity. The Brits were coming no matter what. If they used terra nullius as an excuse (and there's some doubt about that, at least in the early days), it was just window dressing to give a veneer of legality to it. In these grand affairs of state, legality runs a very distant last to expediency and power politics.

Might I point out that you've only raised this as a way to change the subject away from the fact that aboriginal women were abysmally treated in what is laughingly called aboriginal culture.

The British only ever deemed Australia as terra nullius due to the absence of buildings & any other missing signs of what they would have called society.
I’m not aware of any other country they either invaded or colonised & which they described as terra nullius.
Even the nomadic tribes & the Bedouins had evidence of some sort of society. The Australian Indigenous did not hence the term terra nullius !

Whether 'Australia' was occupied or not is of no consequence.
The white settlers moved in and occupied land.
Any problem this caused is confined to the people who were alive then.
It is absolutely no concern of ours more than two centuries later.

The fact is that there is a predominantly white population now.
Most of us were born here, and have no intention of moving away.
WE are not responsible for any harm experienced by their distant ancestors,
Those who somehow think they are owed something because of that had better get over it.

The fact is that we owe them nothing.
If they have genuine difficulty adjusting to modern society, then that society should assist them.
But they must make a genuine effort to fit in.
I think most of them do.

I suppose when Cook landed, there was no sovereign government to deal with only illiterate nomadic tribes whose administration was non existent.

SM,

That might have been most fortunate for the locals, given the fact when Cook landed in Aotearoa, on the first day he shot dead one of the natives. Captain James Cook shot the first Aborigine to resist his arrival at Sydney's Botany Bay - before the famed British explorer had even set foot on Australian soil. If you were a local, you wouldn't want to be in the greeting party when Cookie arrives.

"In 1770 Captain James Cook met few Aboriginal people on the Eastern Australian shoreline. Because they did not grow crops and because he assumed there were no inland fishable rivers, he concluded that Australia’s interior was empty. Sir Joseph Banks thought the Aboriginal people would run away and abandon their rights to land. They were both wrong, as the Gadigal and other local Aboriginal people later proved by ambushing the convicts who were often sent to work into the bush."

"The diaries and journals of the First Fleeters provide descriptions of the locals as ‘native’, ‘primitive’, ‘barbaric’ and even ‘stupid’. There was no recognition that the cultures and social structures of Aboriginal people in Sydney were as rich, diverse and complex as other nations around the world today. Ironically, the first Europeans would rely on Aboriginal knowledge of the area for their survival at various times, and the complexity of the Aboriginal languages is often likened to the complexities of Latin."

The First Fleeter have much in common with our resident Trumpster, they think alike.

Paul,

With you have stated that there are no valid records prior to James Cook's landing you quote an opinion piece that claims "There was no recognition that the cultures and social structures of Aboriginal people in Sydney were as rich, diverse and complex as other nations around the world today."

Maybe because there was no evidence of it?

Are you the resident Trumpster? I've heard you sing his praises.