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The Australia Act 1986 made Australia completely independent of the United Kingdom. [86] no change to map: 11 May 1989 Jervis Bay Territory was split from the Australian Capital Territory to become its own territory. [87] 7 July 1997 Elizabeth Reef and Middleton Reef were transferred from New South Wales to the Coral Sea Islands Territory. [88]
Aboriginal reserves were used from the nineteenth century to keep Aboriginal people separate from the white Australian population, often ostensibly for their protection. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Protectors of Aborigines had been appointed from as early as 1836 in South Australia (with Matthew Moorhouse as the first permanent appointment as Chief Protector ...
The world's smallest continent, Australia is also the sixth-largest country by land area and sometimes considered the world's largest island. Australia has a mainland coastline of 32,994 kilometres (20,502 mi) [14] and claims an exclusive economic zone of about 8,200,000 square kilometres (3,200,000 sq mi). [15]
Australia has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30% of the population, a higher proportion than in any other nation with a population of over 10 million. [ 63 ] [ 65 ] Most immigrants are skilled, [ 66 ] but the immigration quota includes categories for family members and refugees .
The South Australia Act 1834 described the land as "waste" and "uninhabited", [1] but unlike other colonies in Australia, the British settlement of South Australia did not assume the principle of terra nullius (Latin for nobody's land) when the colonists originally arrived.
In the 2021 census, people who self-identified on the census form as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin totalled 812,728 out of a total of 25,422,788 Australians, equating to 3.2% of Australia's population [51] and an increase of 163,557 people, or 25.2%, since the previous census in 2016. [50]
In 1884, a British protectorate was proclaimed over Papua – the southern coast of New Guinea. The protectorate, called British New Guinea , was annexed outright on 4 September 1888 and possession passed to the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia in 1902 and British New Guinea became the Australian Territory of Papua , with Australian ...
Australia has the third-largest exclusive economic zone of 8,148,250 km 2 (3,146,060 sq mi). This EEZ does not include the Australian Antarctic Territory (an additional 5,896,500 km 2 (2,276,700 sq mi)). Australia has the largest area of ocean jurisdiction of any country on Earth. [5] It has no land borders.