In 1996, the High Court's Wik decision confirmed that native title rights could coexist with pastoral and other leasehold tenures.

However, the Court held that survival of native title depended on the conditions of the particular statute under which a pastoral lease was granted, leaving the finding of native title on other leases a question which would require individual future determination by the courts.

The Court also found that native title could coexist with the rights of the lessee but where the rights of native title holders and those of the lessee were inconsistent, the rights of the lessee would prevail.

Significantly, the Court did not clarify whether inconsistent rights of native title holders would be extinguished or merely suspended for the duration of the lease.

The Wik decision represented a national opportunity to embrace the notion of coexistence and to re-configure land management around facilitating negotiated agreements between pastoralists and native title holders over sharing use of the land.

The Howard Coalition Government responded to Wik in alarmist terms, characterising it not as a victory for coexistence and sharing the land, but as a "crisis in land management".

Amendments to the Native Title Act were eventually passed in 1998, despite strong opposition from indigenous and many non-indigenous Australians.