‘Our Rights Didn’t Go With the Boat’: Aboriginal Land Council Claims Ownership Over Stranded Yacht

A supplied image shows a yacht, abandoned during the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, washed up at Christmas Beach on truwana/Cape Barren Island, Tasmania, on Jan. 5, 2023. (AAP Image/Supplied by Vica Bayley, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania)

A shipwrecked yacht on a remote Australian island has become the centre of a dispute between the vessel’s owner and the local Aboriginal Land Council, which claimed the yacht belongs to them.

The 40-foot “Huntress” suffered a mishap during its Sydney to Hobart race on Dec. 28, 2022, when it hit an unidentified object which sheared off part of its rudder.

The skipper and seven crew members were rescued, while the vessel was later washed up on Christmas Beach on Cape Barren Island off the northeast coast of Tasmania.

It was salvaged by an insurance company overnight on Jan. 8 before being towed back to mainland Tasmania the following day.

But the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania has claimed the shipwrecked vessel was the property of Aboriginal people and demanded either ownership over the yacht or a third of its value.

Michael Mansell, the council’s chairman who’s also an Indigenous activist, argued the salvage operation should not have been done because it drifted to the shores of Aboriginal land.

“Physically, the boat may have been taken from our land, but our rights didn’t go with the boat,” he told AAP.

“It may well be that the salvage guys, the owner and the insurance people were not aware of the Aboriginal right to ownership of any vessel that gets washed up on the shore.”

The common law of salvage states that an individual who risks himself voluntarily to successfully help recover another person’s ship or cargo in danger at sea is entitled to be rewarded by the owner of the property saved.

But John Kavanagh, a master mariner and principal lawyer at Pacific Maritime Lawyers noted that under the salvage law, “a salvor does not become the owner of a salved vessel.”

“Property (ownership) of ships (or cargo or anything else) does not change just because it has washed up on a beach somewhere, regardless of whose beach it is,” he wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

Kavanagh further argued that “there are some practical issues associated with salvage that make Mr Mansell’s assertions at least unwise.”

“Assuming for a moment that Mr Mansell is correct (and I would be very surprised if he was), then it would mean that an oil tanker that ran aground on the island would also become part-owned by the Land Council, which would mean that the Land Council would be responsible for meeting the costs of salvage and the oil spill clean-up,” he added.

“With ownership of ships comes the responsibility for cleaning up the mess involved across a wide range of maritime laws and conventions, both national and international.”

“With ownership of marine assets comes responsibility and liability, and I don’t understand why the Land Council would want that for a stranded ship.”

The insurance company which carried out the salvage operation, Total Dive Solutions, said in a media statement the salvage “could not have been possible without the support and assistance of the local Indigenous community.”

‘Dystopian Legal World’

The legal dispute comes as the centre-left federal Labor government is pushing for the Indigenous Voice to parliament, which would lead to the establishment of a body made up of Indigenous people to consult all levels of government about policies that impact the Aboriginal community.

A referendum on the Voice is due to be held in the second half of 2023.

Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick said on Thursday that the dispute over the “Huntress” yacht offers a “glimpse into the dystopian legal world following a successful referendum on the Voice.”

“Property rights will be turned upside down,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Concerns about the legal implications of the Indigenous Voice were also recently brought up by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton who said the government hasn’t been able to back up the sweeping constitutional reform that the Voice proposes.

“By starving the Australian people of the basic detail of the Voice, the prime minister is really setting the Voice up for a fail and setting back reconciliation, and that’s something that he has to answer to the Australian public on,” he said in an open letter on Jan. 8.

“People won’t lightly change the constitution—even if they believe in the cause—unless there’s a compelling argument to do so.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese replied to Dutton in a Twitter post, saying, “people are over cheap culture war stunts.”