Robertson Land Acts

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The Crown Lands Acts 1861 (NSW) were introduced by the New South Wales Premier, John Robertson, in 1861 to reform land holdings and in particular to break the squatters' domination of land tenure. Under his reforms unsurveyed land could be selected and bought freehold in 40 to 320 acre (130 ha) lots of Crown land, wherever situated at £1 per acre, on a deposit of 5 shillings per acre, the balance to be paid within three years, an interest-free loan of three-quarters of the price. Selectors were required to live on their land for three years and to make improvements worth £1 per acre. ^[1] Speculation was prevented by requiring actual residence on the land.^[2]

Subsequently there were struggles between squatters and selectors, and the laws were circumvented by corruption and the acquisition of land by various schemes, such as the commissioning of selections to be passed eventually to squatters and the selection of key land such as land with access to water by squatters to maintain the viability of their pastoral leases. The Land Acts accelerated the alienation of crown land that had been acquired under the principle of terra nullius, and hence accelerated the dispossession of indigenous Australians.^[3]

The land acts were paralleled the demands for similar legislation amending the United States Preemption Act of 1841, culminating in the Homestead Act of 1862, and was succeeded by similar legislation in other Australian colonies in the 1860s and Canada's Dominion Lands Act of 1872.