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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage (Senator Ian Campbell) to a question without notice asked by Senator Siewert today relating to a rock art site on the Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia.

It looks like the minister has adopted the Western Australian government’s approach to the Burrup, which is to say that unless we develop the Burrup the Australian economy is going to collapse. I wonder if Woodside knows that it is sustaining the whole of the Australian economy through its project—of course, that is utter nonsense.

This area is an extremely important cultural site in Australia and in the world. It is up to 20,000 years old, with a million petroglyphs. From the minister responsible for heritage protection, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, we are hearing that we in Australia need to compromise our cultural heritage at this extremely important site. This is the minister whose job it is to look after our heritage and yet, before the National Heritage List is even considered, he is talking about compromise. He is talking about compromise when there are a number of alternative sites for this proposal.

It is nonsense to say that if this site on the Burrup does not go ahead then the Australian economy will collapse. The gas is not going to go away. It is interesting to note that BHP Billiton are undertaking feasibility studies for the Scarborough gas development in the north-west. BHP have run a pretty good site selection process, and they have decided that the Burrup is not the place for their development; they are going up to look at Onslow. And guess what? So far there is no sign of any economic collapse because they are moving from the Burrup to Onslow.

The minister also ran the fallacious argument that if the development goes down to Maitland then it will compromise other rock art. Well, he is right. West Intercourse Island is an extremely important island for rock art. But the minister need not think that the state government is not going to develop that; it just has it further down the line. However, there have been surveys undertaken for the Shire of Roebourne, by a company called Astron Engineering, that have identified other port sites that can be used by a development at Maitland. So to run the argument that if we do not go to Burrup and instead go to Maitland we are going to trash other rock art is absolute nonsense. I wish the minister would actually look at some of the information that is readily available.

And to argue that the Burrup is just 20 hectares is, again, a load of nonsense. The minister knows full well that there are sites, for example, that have already been developed on the Burrup, and that there have already been up to 10,000 petroglyphs lost. That is a guesstimate. No-one has done a full, proper survey of the Burrup and of what has been lost, so we do not know what has been lost. The minister knows those sites have already been lost—or he should know that, being the minister for heritage. To argue that the Burrup is only 20 hectares and that nobody is ever going to go there is, again, nonsense. This will be, as it has been in the past, development by creep. The minister cannot guarantee, unless he takes action, that the other heritage values will be protected. The minister has been up to the Burrup. He has stood on the Burrup and acknowledged that there is something special there that should not be auctioned off a bit at a time when there are perfectly acceptable development sites nearby.

And then there is this whole concept that it is okay to take a bit. This is death by a thousand cuts. Is it all right to take one of the pyramids for road making? Is it all right to take half of Stonehenge for road making? Did we not express outrage when the Taliban destroyed priceless cultural heritage sites? Yes, we did, but of course that was overseas. Australia appears to still have a cultural cringe. It is all right to look after other cultures and lands, but not when it comes to our own culture, which has a unique, and one of the best, heritages in the world—our Aboriginal heritage. The Burrup rock art, at 20,000 years old, is five times as old as the pyramids. It is okay for us to try to get the international community to protect the pyramids but not our own culture.

And now we come to the old argument, which is always being used nowadays—that is, greenhouse benefits. It is argued that it is okay, that we have to trash the Burrup because we have done nothing about climate change for years and years—that now we have discovered it is a problem we will, yet again, use the straw man that we have to have gas to deal with climate change to explain away the need to develop the Burrup. What an unsavoury argument it is to say, ‘We have to sacrifice 20,000-year-old rock art so that we can have a development on the Burrup.’ It ignores the fact that there are at least three other easily identifiable sites where the gas facility could be built.

The minister has some of the most important decisions to make on some of the most culturally important heritage in the world. He got a report yesterday— (time expired)

Question agreed to.