Sacred Sites

The NT's sacred sites authority says the "rapid timeframe" and "limited nature" of proposed amendments to the NT Sacred Sites Act "raises many questions about why this is happening".

One of the Northern Territory's biggest land councils has expressed alarm at the government's planned legislative changes, while pastoralists say the current sacred site laws are a "joke".

A judge has handed down the largest fine ever under the NT's sacred site laws after a sensitive men's site was damaged at Gunlom Falls in Kakadu National Park.

The environment minister's protection of the headwaters and a section of the Belubula River where the McPhillamys Gold Project mine's tailings dam was to be constructed has been described as a "dangerous precedent" by the Minerals Council.

The cave has been used by generations of Awabakal women for sacred women's business but for years they had to seek permission to access it from the proponents of a planned housing development.

Traditional owners and custodians have welcomed a High Court decision finding Parks Australia can be held criminally liable for allegedly violating a sacred site in Kakadu, saying it will set a precedent for future cases.

Four years ago Parks Australia violated the wishes of traditional owners of Gunlom Falls, in the Kakadu National Park, and the matter has now reached the highest court.

The High Court will this week hear the final appeal from custodians who want to prosecute the Commonwealth over illegal construction work at a sacred site within Kakadu National Park. What can be expected over the next two days?

Northern Territory traditional owners have used a 13-metre-long painting to petition the Federal Government to protect rivers and springs from new gas and cotton industry developments.

In front of an enormous map they had made back with their communities in the Northern Territory, traditional owners told federal politicians they are deeply concerned about the over extraction of water from their life-blood waterways.

Construction of a multi-billion-dollar estate in South Australia is also the site of one of state's most significant Indigenous burial grounds.

A major assessment of cultural heritage values by Santos, which is planning to build an underwater pipeline through Tiwi sea country, has ignored the concerns of traditional owners, the land council says.

Some of the submerged land in the Tiwi Islands may contain burial grounds from tens of thousands of years ago. 

The ancestral remains of at least 27 people will be re-buried at a location near the $3 billion Riverlea development in Adelaide's north where they were found earlier this year.

The two New South Wales men, who claim to be sovereign citizens, were fined almost $9,000 each for entering and vandalising the prohibited site.

The ABC can reveal a sacred women's site in the Northern Territory has been impacted by government infrastructure at a popular tourist hot spring.

The temporary suspension was not opposed in the Land and Environment Court, where Indigenous elders are attempting to have harvesting in Newry State Forest brought to an end for good.

Djab Wurrung people say they are devastated by the attack to their sacred birthing tree, one of the significant trees they have been campaigning for more than four years to protect from a major road project.

The backflip has prompted the state's Liberal leader to re-examine her position on the Voice Referendum.

The original laws from 1972 will replace the 2021 legislation, with the state's premier saying the regulations were too complicated and unnecessarily burdened land owners.