Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people maintain a distinctive cultural, spiritual, physical and economic relationship with their land and waters.

By 2030, a 15% increase in:

• Australia’s land mass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s legal rights or interests (Target 15A)
• Australia’s sea waters subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s legal rights or interests (Target 15B).

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s owned land and water titles.

Measure 1 is the proportion of all land that is Indigenous owned or controlled and is defined as:

Numerator – land area owned or controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations or is legally owned by government and held exclusively for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander use, at 30 June

Denominator – total land area

and is presented as a percentage.

Measure 2 is the proportion of water owned or controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The specifications for this measure are under development.

National Agreement on Closing the Gap July 2020

13 November 2024

Driver

For both measures, a high or increasing proportion is desirable.

Measure 1

Name (numerator): Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation (ILSC) Indigenous held land dataset 2000.

Frequency: Annual (revised Northern Territory and Australia Indigenous estate data for 2020 and 2021 and in the March 2023 update)

Documentation (links): https://www.ilsc.gov.au/

Measure 1

Provider name (numerator): ILSC

Provider area: Land and water ownership

Measure 1

2020

Measure1

2024

Measure 1

State and territory and Australia.

Measure 1

Numerator divided by Denominator multiplied by 100.

Counting rules

Measure 1

Numerator: Land area is in square kilometres (sq km). Land owned or controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations or is legally owned by government and held exclusively for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander use. This includes the following tenure types: freehold, leasehold, crown, license and Aboriginal Deed of Grant in Trust.

The different forms of land tenure reported can overlap.

Denominator: Total land area is in square kilometres (sq km) and is based on GeoScience Australia's published ‘Area of Australia - States and Territories’ data as calculated from GeoScience Australia's GEODATA Coast 100K 2004 product. Data for the Australian Capital Territory includes Jervis Bay.

Measure 1

In 2000, the ILSC developed a database of Indigenous owned land by querying land title registers using known Indigenous organisation names identified from state and federal Indigenous organisation registers.

Other than information the ILSC has collected to support its legislated acquisition and management functions, this dataset has not been updated to reflect land boundary or tenure changes since 2000.

The data provided represents land parcels identified as legally owned by Indigenous Corporations (corporations registered with a state or federal register of Indigenous corporations, such as the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations) or as legally owned by Government and held exclusively for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander use. The data does not include land parcels owned by individual persons, nor is it a definitive record of legal Indigenous interests (such as Native Title or regional Indigenous Protected Areas).

The ILSC makes no warranties as to the currency or accuracy of land ownership information.

From 2023, the ILSC ceased to maintain data for tenure types.

ILSC regularly review the recorded land holdings on the database of Indigenous owned land. If, at the time of the maintenance review, ILSC cannot confirm land holdings registered on the database are Indigenous held, they may be removed from the database. In 2024, there was a reduction of approximately 3,000 sq km of land from the database of Indigenous owned land.

Measure 1

Future reporting will seek to include the following additional disaggregations:

• disaggregation of ‘owned’ from ‘owned and controlled’ land.