The Order-in-Council provided for a governing Council comprising the Governor, the Judge or Chief Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Advocate-General and the Resident Commissioner, with broad legislative and executive powers including the imposition of rates, duties, and taxes.
From the early 21st century, research focused on the potential legal implications of this disregard of the Letters, and the document again became a source of debate.
[7] On 24 April 2007 the Australian Democrats MLC, Sandra Kanck, and Greens MLC, Mark Parnell, on the occasion of the Sesquicentenary (150 years) of Responsible Government in South Australia referred to the Letters Patent when they read a statement authorised by the Aboriginal Alliance Coalition Movement in Parliament, "asking you to acknowledge that your enjoyment, if not the spirit, of your commemorative congratulations, blindly overlooks the denial of our English land rights within our own country in establishing your parliament on the land of the traditional owners and on the country of their unacknowledged descendants".
The 175th anniversary of the Letters Patent was commemorated at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre at Warriparinga on 19 February 2011, as a document which preserves the rights of the Aboriginal inhabitants.
[10][11] On 21 March 2018, a native title agreement between Kaurna elders, the State Government and the Commonwealth was formally accepted in a judgement in the Federal Court, 18 years after the original claim was lodged.
The judgement recognises Kaurna people's native title rights over 17 parcels of undeveloped land not under freehold, and extends from Gulf St Vincent to the Mt Lofty Ranges, from Myponga Beach in the south to Redhill in the north, and includes Adelaide's metropolitan area.