Darwin hotel plans scrapped after Elders lodge complaint
Concerns from Larrakia Traditional Owners has seen plans for an 11-storey $100m hotel on Darwin’s waterfront scrapped by a Singapore-based hotel group.
SH Hotels, and its parent company, SingHaiyi Group, confirmed on Tuesday afternoon the project was dead after two Larrakia traditional owners applied to the Federal government under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act for the site to be safeguarded.
Matt Ryan, chair of the Northern Land Council told the ABC the plans “set a dangerous precedent that put sacred sites in the NT at risk.”
Dreamtime interference
SH Hotels parent company SingHaiyi Group director Robert Lee confirmed the proposal had been abandoned.
“To address the concern, we explored various changes to the development but were unable to come to a result that would make the development feasible,” he said.
The development of the hotel was announced in May last year and the NT government at the time said the project was a major boost for Darwin.
Larrakia elders lodged a concern the hotel would sit opposite a sacred site with a proposed height of 47 metres, and that would interfere with the Dreamtime story of the site.
No consultation
The Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority had expressed serious concerns over how the NT government had amended its Sacred sites Act, saying the changes and the addition of SH Hotels to the original 2004 certificate were rushed and carried out without proper consultation.
Larrakia elder Bill Risk, one of the applicants of the legal action, told the ABC he would “continue to stand against any development that desecrates and damages our sacred sites into the future”.
