Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A number of Australians recently travelled to Malaysia to work with the growing mass movement in that country protesting against the construction of an Australian toxic rare earth refinery plant located near a city of 600,000 people. The processing plant, being built by the Australian mining company Lynas Corporation, has met with strong resistance from locals, with protests of as many as 15,000 people. The Australians have joined protests organised by the Malaysian movement Himpunan Hijau—meaning green assembly—which is protesting to shut Lynas. On behalf of the Australian Greens, I congratulate all those involved.

A Sydney based international mining campaigner, Nat Lowrey, is one of 16 people who have been jailed in recent days because of protests they have been involved in. Ms Lowrey spoke to me before she left, explaining that she was going because of her deep concern about Lynas's activity and that they have no social licence to undertake these operations. Ms Lowrey was motivated to go because of the danger this plant poses to the locals.

In Australia no company would get approval for this type of project, let alone a refinery of this scale, which risks both human health and the environment. Lynas's environmental impact assessment is deeply flawed. The company has not produced a safe permanent waste plan for its toxic and radioactive waste. The Greens believe that the Australian government, as a signatory of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, should never have allowed an Australian corporation to export such a toxic legacy to Malaysia.

I remain concerned that the people who have been jailed in this protest are, from the last report I have received, still in jail. The Malaysian government would be wise to respect the right of people to protest and to immediately release Ms Lowrey and all those detained.

With regard to the mining operations and the processing plant, the ore to be processed in this controversial refinery will be mined in Western Australia and shipped out through the port of Fremantle to Malaysia. Australia, interestingly, has refused to take back the toxic and radioactive waste produced in the refinery. Every year, at least 106 tonnes of radioactive thorium and a small quantity of uranium will be dumped amongst this waste, along with an unknown cocktail of other hazardous substances. This is what is driving what are becoming international protests.

According to a statement by the Save Malaysia Stop Lynas coalition, the Lynas rare earth refinery plant was constructed without any prior informed consent from local communities, who will be getting the blunt end of the raw deal of permanent pollution risk whilst Lynas will be obviously working hard to make a hefty profit—a tax-free profit, we hear.

Malaysians will be living under the shadow of radiation contamination. This simply is not acceptable. It is certainly not acceptable for this material to be sent from Australia and for the waste to be dumped in another country. To make matters worse, the refinery is situated in a peat swamp area only 3.5 kilometres from the South China Sea, which is an important source of seafood and a tourism area. There are approximately 700,000 people living within 30 kilometres of the Lynas refinery—another fact that underlines how irresponsible the decision to locate this plant is. Malaysian environmental activists believe that Lynas is building the processing plant in Malaysia instead of Australia to cut costs and avoid having to deal with stringent environmental regulations in Australia for containing the waste. If the waste is safe, as the company claims, many of the locals argue that it should be sent back to Australia, where the mining for the rare earth ore occurs. However, when this option was raised in the Parliament of Western Australia on 5 April 2011 by the WA Greens MLC Robin Chapple, the Western Australian Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Norman Moore, firmly rejected the idea. I do congratulate my Greens colleagues in the Parliament of Western Australia, Robin Chapple and Lynn MacLaren, for their work with the Malaysian community on this, and also Senator Scott Ludlam, who has also given a great deal of support on this issue. When Lynas was granted its licence, Robin Chapple said:

… this approval looks like the sanctioning of an Australian mining company making use of lax environmental controls and governance arrangements in a developing country. To my mind it has not gone through a rigorous environmental process and should not have been issued.

That is certainly something that has been highlighted by many of the people who have looked at these plans in detail.

We know that Malaysia has already had a bitter experience with a rare earth refinery. One was built at Bukit Merah in the state of Perak by the Japanese company Mitsubishi. That plant was forced to close down after drawn-out political and legal battles that lasted over a decade. In that case, unfortunately, some locals suffered serious health effects before the plant did eventually close after many protests. Hopefully, the people around the Lynas plant will not have to go through the same experience. The Lynas plant is at least 10 times bigger, with waste potentially hundreds of times more toxic to be handled—a further reminder of why this operation should not go ahead.

I congratulate the large environmental group Himpunan Hijau. It is one of the largest environmental movements in Malaysia. Apart from feeling very strongly about the issue, I also feel very connected because on my first day as a senator the very first group that I met with were representatives of this organisation. On many occasions, their members have travelled to Australia to protest at annual general meetings of Lynas, to address meetings and to organise events in this country to inform Australians about how wrong the plans of Lynas are. Certainly it is an issue that the Greens will continue to give our support to. Again, I congratulate Natalie Lowrey, the young woman who has been jailed for participating in the protest against the refinery, and the other Australians and tens of thousands of Malaysians who have joined her in protesting against the plans of Lynas.

I would like to move on to another issue. I would like to take this opportunity in the Australian Senate to pay tribute to Neville 'Chappy' Williams, an Aboriginal elder from western New South Wales. He has made an enormous contribution to Australia. As a former bantamweight boxer, Chappy knows a thing or two about a tough fight. After knocking out the official Australian bantamweight contender, Billy Booth, at the Golden Gloves in New South Wales, he nearly made it to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. In the end he was not able to travel to Japan, because he was too poor to go, and he did not have the support.

Chappy is an elder of the Wiradjuri people and traditional owner of Lake Cowal and its surrounding land. This is where he has been involved in another tenacious battle, this time against Canadian mining conglomerate Barrick Gold. This is a campaign that has gone on for over a decade. It is in this capacity that I have met Chappy on a number of occasions. It was in 2001 when I first met him, as a Greens New South Wales MP. I remember him talking about mining being the 'death of our dreaming; the death of our law' as he showed me around Lake Cowal during one of my visits to the region to discuss the impacts of mining with him and other representatives of his community.

Chappy's experience with mining operations in his country was not the first time he had seen outsiders impose their values on his community. He spoke very movingly about his early memories of hiding in the long grass when welfare officers came to Lake Cowal. As in other parts of Australia, in this area children were forcibly removed from their families. Chappy felt the pain of the stolen generation and as he relayed the stories you could feel that pain.

Lake Cowal is the largest inland lake in New South Wales and an important wetland for birds who come from all over the world to breed. It is very much valued by the locals. It is also a site of special religious significance for the Wiradjuri people and part of their ancient homeland. You might think that its combined ecological and cultural value would safeguard it from the environmental and social dislocation associated with open-cast mining that Barrick Gold wanted to bring to this area, but you would be wrong. This is what Chappy has devoted so much of his life to stopping and now to dealing with. He has worked so hard to protect this area. For much of the time he has been up against Barrick Gold, a company that describes itself as a disciplined mining multinational. That is its own language: 'disciplined'. This company appears, however, to run rings around state and federal regulators. Maybe that is what they mean by 'disciplined'.

Australia is a signatory to the Ramsar Convention, a global agreement to protect wetlands. Chappy and his colleagues have worked to have the Ramsar Convention respected in Lake Cowal—something which Barrick Gold and the New South Wales government have failed to do. But the 227 species of bird that would be at risk from any cyanide spill at the Barrick Gold mine at Lake Cowal count for little against the profits to be made by a Canadian mining baron. Those are not just my words. From what we have heard about Chappy's meeting with the CEO of Barrick Gold, we understand why those comments are made.

The company itself is happy to advertise its environmental and social credentials. It states:

Our success depends on our ability to develop our resources responsibly and share the benefits of our business with local communities, governments and other stakeholders.

Certainly Chappy said to me many times that they did not see any of this sharing. When pressed on the practical application of that statement, this company is evasive. That is what Chappy has found so frustrating. With members of his community and supporters Chappy has taken on this mining company. This is an inspiring story that takes us from western New South Wales to Canada and beyond.

In 2007 Chappy Williams travelled to Canada for the company's annual general meeting. His intention was to confront Barrick Gold owners and its CEO, Peter Munk. Viewing the YouTube of this work is an instructive illustration of what local communities are up against. You could not imagine two worlds further apart than when you watch what goes on at one of these AGMs compared to a visit to the Aboriginal communities around Lake Cowal. Chappy, a quietly-spoken man, puts his case across simply and succinctly. The response comes straight from the corporate playbook: first, the pleading of ignorance—'I'm only the CEO; I can't possibly know what my company actually does' is a summary of the defence. Peter Munk's actual words were: 'I don't have the knowledge to debate.' Then, 'We're a business; what did you expect?' which is coupled with the 'Don't blame us—we only get away with whatever the government allows us to do.' But then, as the Barrick Gold PR man said: 'We are in for profit, as you know, we are a free enterprise, so please, it's the state authorities that are there to protect you.' In that sentence the corporate responsibility line is exposed for the spin that it is—passing the buck, pushing it back onto the state government—a government that we know is so weak when it comes to dealing with mining companies and enforcing decent standards.

Undeterred, a year after that meeting with the CEO, Chappy took his people's fight to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. That was in 2008. The permanent forum is an interesting body. It was established by the United Nations in response to demands from Indigenous peoples for a high-level permanent body at the UN. The forum provides an opportunity for the world's Indigenous peoples to speak out against the multiple injustices they face and to seek restitution. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was 25 years in the making, bringing Indigenous peoples' organisations and governments together to draw up concrete rights that could be enforced. When it was put to the UN General Assembly in 2007, 144 countries voted in favour, with only four voting against it. Shamefully, Australia was one of those four. Since then a statement has been issued by the Australian government on these issues, and it does go some way to rectifying that quite shameful position when we stood against those 144 countries.

I remember when I was at Lake Cowal Chappy talked to me about the importance of this development at the United Nations, and he was inspired to take the battle of his people at Lake Cowal to this international forum. In 2008 he said:

There is a world of difference between the "free, prior and informed consultation" with communities affected by mining advocated by the World Bank and the "free, prior and informed consent" in the Declaration. Communities are poorly protected by Australian law.

Chappy also said:

As Aboriginal People we have absolutely no power within the colonial legal system to protect [Mother Earth]. We have no right of veto. There is no recognised Aboriginal sovereignty over natural resources. Under the Native Title Act, Traditional Owners can only agree to benefit from the desecration and destruction of our Mother. This is an abuse of our human rights and many of the rights in the Declaration.

That was the theme of many of the speeches that Chappy has given from Lake Cowal to Sydney to Canada and to New York.

Chappy Williams has really been in a David versus Goliath campaign and this has continued, despite Barrick Gold being granted permission to extend the lifetime of the mine to 2024. Chappy describes it as his 'sacred duty to protect Lake Cowal and our ancient cultural heritage'. He says: 'We will never give up. I will fight to the bitter end.' I must say that having been to Lake Cowal, having met with Chappy many times, having heard the stories and having heard him speaking at large and small events, I find it moving, but also very sad, because Barrick Gold at the moment does have the upper hand. Chappy gives beautiful poetic speeches, which are very moving, but it is disturbing when you hear him speak about the destruction of Aboriginal artefacts and about the challenges that he sees when it comes to the freedom of his religion and how he feels the cultural connection with his country is being denied. I do thank Chappy for the enormous work he has done for his communities and all of us—sharing those experiences for the natural environment around Lake Cowal and the lessons we can learn from the way he undertakes his work in a very peaceful and respectful and yet very strong way.

Senate adjourned at 22:05