The Northern Territory has been convicted of carrying out work on a sacred site, causing the destruction of two sacred Aboriginal gum trees.
Since 2010, the NT government has held a 99-year lease on the Judburra/Gregory National Park, about 500km south of Darwin, with the agreement that it would jointly maintain the land as a park with the traditional Aboriginal land owners.
On January 12 last year, a contractor carried out pruning and backburning maintenance work at the Bullita campground near Victoria River, part of which is located within the Jilwin sacred site.
But as a result of the fire, two sacred gum trees were burned to the ground and a third was significantly damaged.
"When you're using fire in an area where you have sacred trees, there's a manifest risk of damaging that sacred site," Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority lawyer Ray Murphy told Darwin's Magistrates Court on Thursday.
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Maintenance of the site was a commercial venture and therefore required an authority certificate to carry out work so close to a sacred site, he said.
"By not making an application for an authority certificate, the defendant has failed to ensure that the sacred site was protected."
In many ways this was a test case of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act, said Magistrate John Neill.
He ruled that a conviction be recorded against the Northern Territory, but with no further penalty to be paid.
"The use of fire in the context of a wild bush setting was particularly foolish, and the real wrongdoing was the failure to exercise the adequate supervision so such foolish behaviour was able to happen by the individuals on the ground," Mr Neill said.
"I do believe that's less likely to happen so easily in the future."
Mr Murphy said the Sacred Sites Act helped landowners and custodians to meet in the middle so owners could pursue their proprietary interest while sacred sites remained protected.
He told AAP he was satisfied with the guilty verdict.
"The government is now on notice for the type of things they need to get an authority certificate for," he said.
