But for a High Court decision narrowly favouring the Federal Government, recently discovered 20,000 years old archaeological cave sites near the Franklin River Tasmania, equal in importance to those in the Vesers Valley in France, would have been destroyed, like a United Kingdom Government unable to stop a Wiltshire authority from clearing Stonehenge for a freeway. The constitutional basis for protecting historical and environmental assets remains weak.
To prevent beach and related mining, military and commercial use of uranium; to preserve Heritage Areas, The Great Barrier Reef Region at least as originally defined in the 1975 Act and extended into Torres Strait.