Native Title Act 1993

In summary, this Division validates, or allows States and Territories to validate, certain acts that:

took place on or after 1 January 1994 but on or before 23 December 1996; and

would otherwise be invalid to any extent because they fail to pass any of the future act tests in Division 3 of Part 2 or for any other reason because of native title.

The acts are called intermediate period acts; they are defined in section 232A.

For this validation to apply, before the act was done, there must have been:

a grant of a freehold estate or a lease (other than a mining lease); or

a public work;

The Division also sets out the effect of such validation on native title. The effect varies depending on the nature of the act. For this purpose, different categories of intermediate period act are defined by sections 232B to 232E.

The structure of the Division is very similar to that of Division 2 (which deals with validation of past acts).