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

I rise to give a statement about the AUKUS partnership and its effects on my people's land, culture and songlines.

AUKUS is bringing destructive change to Meandup, which some of you may know as Garden Island or, in government speak, HMAS Stirling. It is a narrow strip of land that is rich in Noongar history straddling two important cultural groups—Whadjuk and Gnaarla Karla Boodjar—and it features in stories that explain the land and its features up and down the Western Australian coast.

Academics have been mapping the area and they've discovered evidence of human habitation that stretches under what is now the ocean for hundreds of miles. The ancient shoreline was present before the Ice Age and the seas rose. We may have also found the entrance to the famous Derbarl Yerrigan, which some may know here as the 'Swan River', which runs through the Darling Scarp right the way through the city landscape and out to the Indian Ocean. Its cultural exit point is through the channel of the Derbarl Nara—the Cogburn Sound.

Other areas of this land, which is precious to my people as traditional owners, reveal important living and working places, and we Noongar people connect with ceremonial and camping grounds where artefacts have been found that are clear examples of tangible cultural heritage. These objects are linked to our totemic systems and our creation stories—which are about time, place and the continuing protection of our rich Australian marine biodiversity—through our ancient songlines.

The tangible and intangible cultural heritage associated with Meandup is not only under threat, some of it has already been destroyed by human habitation. Further construction of accommodation for US and Australian forces has already taken place without the appropriate approval from Noongar custodians.

The Chief of the Navy, Mark Hammond, apologised to me in a recent Senate estimates session. But there has been minimal contact since that time and I'm not convinced there won't be further construction without any regard for land, cultural heritage and the deep and profound meaning associated with it.

When magic words like 'defence' and 'threat' get thrown around every other value seems to go out the window. The Greens are not, and have never been, convinced by the language of militarism and threat. We don't believe that we need to hand our land and sovereignty to the US military industrial complex and we certainly don't believe that military imperatives should override everything that is important about land, culture and the natural environment of this area. When Meandup becomes both a nuclear target and a nuclear waste dump, there is no advantage for my people or in fact for any other Western Australian that makes up for what they are potentially losing. Today we learnt that Western Australia's Minister for Defence Industry has cast doubt over the construction and delivery schedule of Australia's locally built nuclear powered submarines. When he was addressing defence contractors last week, Paul Papalia said he expected the navy to receive five US built Virginia class submarines, implying that there would be delays with the future design. So, as suspected all along, the wheels are falling off the AUKUS plan. All of the destruction might in fact be for nothing.