Most of Australia's Aboriginal people live in communities far from urban population centers. 'Bush Court' is the name given to the justice system administered to Australian Aboriginal people by a magistrate who circuits such communities intermittently. As a result of the way Bush Courts currently operate in remote regions of Australia, the excesses of justice administration go unchecked. Many Indigenous Australians are subject to a sub-class, racist legal system in a first-world country. Bush Courts effectively only exercise criminal jurisdiction and these inequities take the form of a total lack of due process.

The treatment of the Aboriginal people by the Bush Court, lack of interpreters, poor judicial education and the constraints under which legal counsel for the Aboriginal people must work are a source of some of these problems and are examined in detail in this article. The paper also reveals deficiencies that still exist despite government declarations that they have now 'fixed the problem'.

The author spent six months field-researching Bush Courts as they operate in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This article details the chasm between justice delivery in Australian town-courts and Bush Courts. This research (being the first to exist on the subject) may answer some questions regarding the hugely disproportionate Indigenous over-representation in the Australian criminal justice system.