Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I support this urgency motion brought by Senator McKim today. Pulau Dato is actually the traditional Macassan name used by the Indonesians for Scott Reef. Scott Reef makes up two groups of reefs that are 300 kilometres off the Western Australian coast in the Timor Sea. Most people in this place wouldn't have visited a wonderful place like Scott Reef. With an abundance of ocean life, it sits in the middle of the migratory route of the pygmy blue whale.

As a First Nations person I know that there are, in fact, two songlines of whales. One of them goes through my country, and the other goes to the north, around through the Bass Strait and out to the Pacific. We call the whales the elders of the sea. It's our connection between the land, the animals, our lore and sea country, and it's something that we celebrate greatly. But there are 28 other kinds of marine mammals and thousands of other kinds of fish that are out there at Scott Reef, not to mention the abundance of coral.

It is places like Scott Reef that are used for an economic base, so I reject Senator Duniam's conversation around how the Australian Greens are not also concerned about this. This actually represents part of the transnational boundary. Indonesian people go to areas around Scott Reef for the collection of sea cucumber and seaweed—and the protection of seagrass in areas like that. These places are precious, because we currently don't have the protection with any legislation, whether it be the EPBC or the OPGGS legislation—offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas. We see time and time again the state capture of the two majors in this place. And in my home state of Western Australia we also see the destruction of climate change and the impact that has on places like the Kimberley. In the East Kimberley just last year there was a flood, for the first time in 120 years, that destroyed the Fitzroy River Bridge, at Fitzroy Crossing.

And it is projects like the Browse project, not the use of domestic reservation on the North West Shelf, which comes and flows down the west coast all the way to Perth. That's a myth. The parliamentary committee and the state parliament have already done an inquiry into this. They're supposed to give 15 per cent of the gas out of the North West Shelf to the WA people. Do you know how much they give? It's seven per cent. They're not even halfway into 15 per cent. So it's some fantasy that people have. But it's the First Nations people that have connection to this sea country who have said: 'We don't want the Browse project. We don't want the destruction of the abundance of sea life that exists in the Timor Sea.' On top of that, it's going to pump millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

We've been in this fight before in this area, and I want to acknowledge the work of former Greens senators Rachel Siewert and Scott Ludlam, who were at the front line of the James Price Point protests. When the Browse was first introduced, they were at the front of those picket lines and protests, helping out, shouting louder, echoing what the communities of Cape Leveque, north of Broome, were saying. They knew the destruction. They knew the displacement. They knew that people would be forced from country and from doing recreation like fishing at their favourite spots in case there was an oil spill. We know that methane leaks out of some of these wells already, and they're already not being regulated.

The Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority is clear, and we need the federal government to back that in.