Ian Campbell (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Unlike the Australian Greens, you do need to be very honest and frank about this and you need to put it into context. The context is that Senator Bob Brown, Senator Siewert’s colleague, was on the radio this morning saying that you could relocate to Maitland. The reality about the Maitland site, for example, is that you would need to develop a new port if you were to put industrial development on the Maitland estate. The site for the new port is on West Intercourse Island, which is a site that has petroglyphs all over it. Wherever you move in this area, you will have an impact on Aboriginal rock art. There is no simple solution.

The Greens solution is to have no development and not to have the environmental benefits of exporting Australian greenhouse-reducing natural gas into China. We want to export gas into China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the world and create a multibillion-dollar industry. We want to do it by minimising the impact on the rock art and we want to do it through a good management process. (Time expired)