[roenxi]

If Aboriginals have land rights on the basis that they lived there for thousands of years, and are then restricted from changing anything that has thousands of years of history, what have they actually been given? It sounds like a sham ownership of the land.

They are totally ordinary people. They should have the right - indeed the expectation - to change their surroundings in ways that are to their material benefit. The fact that they lived there for thousands of years can't be the starting point of an argument that they have to sit there living with pre-1900s style infrastructure and no money.