Scott Ludlam (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 Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Australian Greens (Senator Milne) today relating to a proposed gas hub in the Kimberley, Western Australia.

I will speak at greater length later in the week about the extraordinary demonstration of popular will that occurred in Fremantle only a few days ago. The question put by Senator Milne to Senator Conroy in his capacity representing the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities was very specific. Evidently, somebody in Minister Burke's office, on the third try, must have emailed Senator Conroy a brief, so that we did not have to sit through another couple of minutes of material that was interesting but completely irrelevant to the point of Senator Milne's question.

At the dune system at Walmadany in the West Kimberley, right at the location where Woodside proposes to excise 30 square kilometres for the world's largest gas plant—it would be a colossal industrial estate—there is a set of extremely important heritage sites; sites which I will not pretend to speak for but which are of huge importance to the traditional Aboriginal people of the area. This is a trail that runs north to south between Broome and the top end of the Dampier Peninsula, which contains artefacts, grave sites and other sites of enormous cultural significance to the people who have lived in the area since time immemorial.

Against the direct threat of earthmoving equipment, drilling equipment and bulldozers moving into those dunes, more than 18 months ago a section 9 request for emergency heritage protection was lodged with the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Tony Burke. The question put to Minister Conroy this afternoon was, in essence, will Minister Burke actually respond to the applicants on that emergency heritage protection application before or after the site has been destroyed by earthmoving equipment? That can happen well before the completely separate processes that Minister Conroy was describing, which run under the EPBC Act, would have run their course—while the so-called strategic environmental assessment did not even bother to look at alternative locations for processing the Browse Basin gas. While that is running over here with Minister Burke, on his desk, with his minister for heritage hat on, he has the opportunity to preserve the heritage values of that area when considering whether or not the project should go ahead.

Woodside fully intend, potentially within a matter of weeks—as soon as the weather breaks up there—to put heavy earthmoving equipment to that site, which effectively will violate a graveyard and an area of enormous cultural significance to people who are a long way from this Parliament House and who could not travel here today to deliver these words directly. This is one of those examples where Minister Conroy is finally given a brief that is relevant to the question—which did occur until the third go. But you kind of wish he had not because, in effect, he has told us that the federal government may well stand by and allow this place to be destroyed while it evaluates whether its heritage value should be preserved. That is entirely possible, because I am not aware in recent history of a successful emergency protection nomination for Aboriginal heritage.

Aboriginal heritage legislation in this country, state and federal, is little more than a regime for documenting what we are destroying, drilling and bulldozing. We will not have that occurring at that dune system at Walmadany on our watch.

There are a lot of people who are backing us in this and who are backing the traditional owners and custodians of that area in standing up, drawing a line in the sand at Walmadany Beach and saying, 'You can't come here'. Minister Tony Burke has the opportunity to make a decision on emergency heritage protection before drilling equipment and bulldozers are put to that site—not after. That was the direction of the question that Senator Milne put. That was the direction of the questions that my colleague Senator Siewert put to the environment bureaucrats in estimates the week before last. And that is the question that 20,000 people who assembled at the Esplanade in Fremantle the day before yesterday were very interested to ask. Will the minister protect this site? Will he stand up for that heritage site of enormous cultural significance to those people before it is ruined by earthmoving equipment? Or will he wait until after? On the basis of recent decisions by this minister, I do not have great confidence. But there is still time to bring this confrontation to an end in a way that is much more sane than a Western Australian Barnett government would have it, where sites are signed off to be destroyed.

Question agreed to.