[1] Premier Don Dunstan established a Parliamentary Committee to investigate the feasibility of a separate lands trust to cover the North-West Reserve.
They wanted something more than the communal title arrangements which had been granted by the Fraser government under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (NT).
After the government proposed major changes to the legislation, over 100 Pitjantjatjara people camped at Victoria Park Racecourse in February 1980 in protest.
In 1984, the High Court of Australia described the Act as: a special measure for the purpose of adjusting the law of the State to grant legal recognition and protection of the claims of the Anunga [sic] Pitjantjatjara to the traditional homelands on which they live and as the legal means by which present and future generations may take up and rebuild their relationship with their country in accordance with tradition, free of disturbance from others[4] In 2001, the ongoing significance of the Act was recognised in a major centenary of Federation project charting the development of Australian democracy through key documents.
[2] The mining township of Mintabie was leased back to the state government, for an initial period of 21 years, as part of the agreement which became the Bill passed in parliament.