"Like something out of Kafka": The relationship between the roles of the National Native Title Tribunal and the Federal Court in the development of native title practice

Since the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) amendments, the National Native Title Tribunal continues to perform its core functions, however Native Title applications are now periodically subject to judicial management from beginning to end by the Federal Court of Australia. This paper provides an overview of this transfer of an entire area of developing law and legal practice from a new and specialised tribunal to the Federal Court and identifies some of the areas in which the tension between the two entities is being experienced. Phillips contends that for some commentators the impact of this shift in Native Title practice from an administrative body to a legal body must be read in the context of the political imperatives which drove the amendments of the Native Title Act and the rhetorically declared impulse to deliver “bucketloads of extinguishment”.