Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the chamber for leave, and I would also like to thank the government for the spirit in which they have approached this amendment, on behalf of myself, Senator Rachel Siewert and advocates for the extraordinary cultural and heritage values of the Burrup rock art province, known on maps, I suppose, as the Dampier Archipelago and known for a much longer period of time as Murujuga. This is an area that Senator Siewert and I have had quite a long association with. Obviously, it has a vastly longer association with the traditional owners of the area, the north-west Pilbara. There are somewhere between half a million and a million petroglyphs, or rock art engravings, on the Burrup. For senators in this place who may not have given themselves the time to visit, I strongly advocate spending some time on the Burrup.

This motion, by agreement with the government, instructs the Australian Heritage Council to do an emergency review of the outstanding universal values of the Dampier cultural precinct and threats to those values. The threats are real and present. Woodside recently blasted flat more or less a square kilometre of this extraordinary province for the Pluto petrochemical plant on the Burrup. Woodside have also committed extraordinary cultural violations, in my view, in the original siting of the gas plant, and there is other damage, with ongoing vandalism by people coming and going on the Burrup. This emergency review of the heritage values is extremely welcome. It is long overdue. We hope it will end eventually, after not too long, with this precinct being listed for its World Heritage values, which have been acknowledged for a long period of time.

I should also mention my friend and colleague Robin Chapple MLC, who has been a long-time advocate for Murujuga, the Burrup Peninsula, and of course FARA, the Friends of Australian Rock Art. I ask the minister—if you are able to by leave—to just briefly describe for us what an emergency review actually means in the context of heritage laws in Australia. I look forward to this getting underway as rapidly as possible.