Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This report looks at the issues around the Burrup Peninsula, which is in the Dampier Archipelago in the Pilbara in Western Australia, the area known as Murujuga. This is a very important report. You will note that it's in four parts. There's a majority committee report and then three other reports, basically from the Greens, the government senators and the ALP senators. It's quite a controversial report. It looks into the Commonwealth's responsibility under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 to protect the globally significant and National Heritage listed Aboriginal rock art on the Dampier peninsula in Western Australia. There are long terms of reference.

This inquiry was initiated by the Greens to look at some really important issues. We are talking about the highest concentration of rock art in the world. Over a million petroglyphs and images are concentrated in that relatively small space on the Burrup Peninsula. It's a World Heritage valued area—it's not on the World Heritage List yet, and I'll get back to that. Guess what governments have done there over the years? In this relatively small area, with that huge concentration of petroglyphs, over the years governments have located industry there. There's gas processing plants, there's fertiliser plants and there's the TAN plant, which, by the way, is operating under a preparation and building licence rather than the full licence, which I'll also come back to in a minute. There are serious issues there.

If people in chamber haven't seen this world valued rock art I advise you to go up and have a look. It is magnificent. I have visited the area on a number of occasions, and it is truly astounding. I haven't visited the whole lot, of course, because there's a million petroglyphs and I have only visited areas that are suitable for public viewing. Some of the art is regarded as sacred. Some is men's art and men's business and some is women's. It is truly magnificent.

So they've established this industry there. The latest plant on the peninsula, next to the fertiliser plant, is the TAN plant. The conditions of approval for that plant are based on flawed science or flawed interpretation of the science. The issue here is that the emissions from this industry affect the rock art through a very complicated process, which the committee was taken through. Part of what it does is affect the patina on the surface of the rock. Effectively, that undermines the rock art, the carvings and the petroglyphs.

The conditions that were initially set were based on a flawed interpretation by the CSIRO—who, by the way, I hold in very high regard. But, in this instance, I think that they have made very serious errors. They based their interpretation of the impact of the emissions from industry on a study by Cinderby et al on the impact of industry emissions and air pollution on monuments—on monuments! Even the authors of that study say there is an incorrect use of their work in the interpretation by the Gillett 2008 report—the CSIRO report.

So, we have here a set of conditions that are based on flawed interpretation of data. They were written to guide the monitoring of the plant and the conditions that were put on the plant, which has now already been built on the Burrup. Not only that, but the monitoring process that has been undertaken of the previous conditions from the other plants that are on the Burrup has also been found wanting. It was very difficult at the beginning of this process to get some of the information out of the Western Australian government. That significantly changed when the ALP government came in. However, there's still an uphill battle to get them to recognise the full extent of the impact of this plant, particularly its cumulative effect—in other words, the new plant with the existing gas processing plants that are there and the existing fertiliser plants that are there. They will be having a cumulative impact. One of the recommendation in the Greens additional comments is that a study be done of the cumulative impacts.

The Greens, but specifically Senator Whish-Wilson and I, made 15 recommendations in our additional comments. We recommend that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 be amended to require the minister or their delegate to consider the cumulative effects when approving decisions, and that's certainly what needs to be done here. They need to be assessing the cumulative impacts. There also needs to be an acknowledgement by CSIRO that the assessment they did was fundamentally flawed, because it was. We also recommend that the Western Australian government prioritise the development and implementation of a new, fully funded independent monitoring program that meets all of the recommendations of the Data Analysis Australia reviews. The problems here were so intense that they had to have an independent review of the data and of the process, and they made a series of recommendations.

One of the key things that we also recommend is in fact that the plant be moved. What also happened in Western Australia is that, a number of years ago—in fact, it was so long ago I was still a coordinator of the Conservation Council and I remember commenting on this proposal—they set up a new precinct for industry a bit south of the peninsula, in the Pilbara, called the Maitland industrial estate so that industry could locate there. That was an area that there was very little fighting over, once they got the basic approvals for locating industry there. This plant could have gone there, and it should be there, because there are ongoing problems with fugitive emissions and with emissions of nitrate that are way over what should be emitted. We've referred to that in our additional comments. We also recommend that the Commonwealth government, in conjunction with the Western Australian government, establish measurements of existing emissions as a matter of priority. We're not even doing that properly. We also recommend that the Western Australian government implement measures to ensure that the emission load on the Burrup Peninsula is reduced. It is critical, because I for one have absolutely no faith in the monitoring results that we have seen, with the evidence that I have heard, that we understand the impact of the emissions on this world-famous rock art of world importance.

The last comment I'll make in my remaining 30 seconds is that Australia should put this area on the tentative World Heritage List, in consultation with the Western Australian government and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation. We should be putting this on the tentative World Heritage List and then working with the corporation and with the Western Australian government to make sure this is listed on the World Heritage List. This is clearly of World Heritage value. It needs to be listed, and it needs to be listed as soon as possible.