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

I want to make it quite clear that the current leader of the Greens, Senator Brown—I believe his position may be under some threat in the party room ballot—has made it quite clear that the alternative site would be at the Maitland Estate. I do not know if Senator Siewert can say where she wants to shift it to, but shifting it to Maitland requires the construction of a new port at West Intercourse Island. What is on West Intercourse Island? Hundreds and hundreds of pieces of rock art. The Greens and Dr Lawrence, a senior member of the Labor opposition, say that they can take this action and it will have no consequences. The consequences of saying, ‘No, you cannot build it there,’ is that the project will not go ahead. It is not a cost-free action. It is not cost free for rock art because rock art extends over 27,000 hectares of the Dampier Archipelago and Burrup. They went to Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney to talk to the elites and pretended that building something in the north-west was going to destroy a lot of rock art. The reality is that, yes, some rock art will have to be shifted and disturbed, but it is 0.02 of one per cent of all the rock art throughout that entire province of 27,000 hectares where there is rock art everywhere. There are in excess of one million pieces of art and the Pluto proposal disturbs 164 pieces of it. They are trying to say that stopping the development from going there will still allow gas exports. All it will do is put up the sovereign risk for the entire industry, extend the approvals process, put another risk in place, put at risk people wanting to come to Australia to develop natural gas resources and put at risk the 80,000 people employed in an industry that creates $10 billion in foreign income.

Labor under Mr Rudd wants to take this sort of action and bring in an emergency listing when there is already a sensible heritage process in place supported by the Western Australian government—a cooperative federalist approach. Mr Rudd says that he wants cooperative federalism. The WA state Labor government and the federal coalition government are working together on an agreed process to handle the Burrup Peninsula to ensure natural gas exports can continue and that the rock art is managed properly in the future. This is something that Dr Lawrence did not come anywhere near to doing when she was premier of the state. She could not have cared less about the Burrup Peninsula when she was premier, but she comes here and wants to appeal to the cafe latte set in the inner suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra and so suddenly takes an interest.

The Labor Party will be condemned as hypocrites on this issue unless Mr Rudd comes out and says, ‘I will have no bar of a federal Labor Party putting yet another spoke in the wheel of natural gas exports.’ You cannot say, ‘I’m in favour of natural gas exports,’ and then try and close down the biggest project that is on the drawing board at the moment. You cannot take yourselves seriously. What you are trying to do is stop that project. It has taken years and years of work by hundreds of people to design this project and you say, ‘We’re just going to try and close it down but we can still have the gas industry.’ You think we can still have investment in the highly risky business of exploring for gas, developing it and trying to get the multibillion dollar investment in it. You say, ‘We still like exporting gas.’ Get serious, please; you cannot be taken seriously.

You are demanding that I take action to say, ‘Halt the development of this project.’ You are saying to me as minister that I have 10 days to decide whether I halt the development of the Pluto project and say, ‘No, you cannot continue.’ That is what Dr Lawrence has signed up for me to do—alongside you, Senator Siewert. You want me to say no to the project going ahead. But then on the other hand you say, ‘No, we like the gas industry.’ It is an absolutely absurd proposition.

I really hope if there is going to be a change between Beazley Labor and Rudd Labor, that Mr Rudd says to Dr Lawrence, ‘Get your name off that application.’ This is what Mr Rudd should say: ‘If I believe in cooperative federalism, if I believe in economic development and the benefits of economic development, you, Dr Lawrence, will withdraw federal Labor’s name from that application.’ That is the challenge for Labor. That is the challenge for Mr Rudd on his first day in the job. Please, for Australia’s sake detach the Labor Party from this idiocy that the Greens are progressing with. There is no need for Rudd Labor to be associated with the idiocy of the Greens in trying to stop the gas industry in Western Australia. It is a big test for Mr Rudd and I hope he meets the challenge; I really do for Australia’s sake.