Perth

Gerry Georgatos
Accusations are flying thick and fast at the Western Australian government's proposed overhaul of the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. The Act was intended to protect sacred sites however it appears it will become easier for the mining sector to steamroll sites in pursuit of expansionist projects, said a Greens parliamentarian, anthropologists and rights advocates.

Gerry Georgatos
A renters rights movement is gathering momentum in Western Australia with its first impetus surprisingly from the state's South West, and in particular from the Blackwood Valley.

Gerry Georgatos
We have all heard about mortgage stress however renters' stress has received comparatively little mention according to Lea Keenan, coordinator of the WA Renters Alliance. Ms Keenan said that rising rents are not confined to Perth and the north west however "are just as out of control in the south west."

Gerry Georgatos
Kabi Kabi Elder, and Bundaberg campus coordinator Nulloo Yumbah at Central Queensland University, Cheri Yavu-Kama-Harathunian said she is devastated by the rising disenfranchisement of Aboriginal youth, and the world's highest suicide rates - of Australia's Aboriginal children.

"Across my desk came a study that reported 'the number of completed Indigenous suicides (in the Kimberley) last year exceeded the Australian Defence Force fatalities in Afghanistan'. I cannot comprehend this statement. It is too much," said Mrs Yavu-Kamu-Harathunian.