Tiwi Islanders initially raised no objection to tapping the Barossa gasfield or the pipeline linking it to Darwin. Then the green lawyers rolled in with their academics-for-hire, persuaded a handful of locals to rewrite their creation myths and stopped the project in its tracks. As the Federal Court has found, that campaign was a gigantic and cynical fraud

A pervasive romanticism about Aboriginal culture is now widespread and underwrites an acceptance, even a belief, by many in the broader community of the sacredness of all aspects of what is presented as‘traditional’ Aboriginal culture and, specifically, of ‘sacred sites’. What isn't sacred apparently, is the notion that legal claims and filings have some basis in fact

The legal obstacles and costly delays inflicted on the Barossa gasfield highlights yet again the exploitation of purported Aboriginal culture by activists -- in this instance supported by taxpayer dollars -- to advance anti-development agendas. It is a ploy as simple as it is brazen: tap an Aborigine to serve as plaintiff, assert sacred sites are threatened and then, regardless of expert or community views, count on a sympathetic court to order a halt

The legal challenge to Woodside's geological survey off the WA coast hangs on claims of 'whale songlines' and an island of fecund turtles. The first instinct is to laugh that someone would file such a preposterous claim and, less funny, that a court might take it seriously. That's when the giggling stops because here we have yet another warning of the threat to development and national wealth posed by activists, not least those on the bench

Aboriginal communities, corporations, clans, families and individuals all have their own agendas and, no less than other Australians, seek their own best advantage. One voice doesn’t speak for all, and one Voice won’t speak for all. The ongoing farce halting the development of an offshore WA gasfield is all the proof needed

The push to install the Voice in the Constitution is underpinned by a re-imagining of Aboriginal culture, which now bears little resemblance to the reality of the past, having morphed in the popular imagination into a New Age idyll that is arguably as much Disney as Dreaming

When an oil outfit sought to drill near P Hill in the Kimberley, the rocky hump had been part of local mythology beyond memory. By the time the saga ran its course, it was being hyped as 'supernatural, supreme of God'. There's a lesson here for cynics, who regard all sites as fabrications, and also for those who believe all sites are as sacred as claimed

Inevitably, flawed ideas reveal themselves by their absurdities. If a white Christian Anglo-Celtic person must not paint Aboriginal stories, does this mean Aboriginal people must not paint Christian stories? And what if the Aboriginal is a devout Christian?  Is he still allowed to paint Dreamtime stories and, if he does, will they be sacred? The fantasy here is that a painting by an Aboriginal is sacred in itself and can be priced accordingly for a believing market

Forty-three years ago, the resident Aboriginal community declared that Noonkanbah […]