Make or break for Burrup rock art

Interesting developments in the campaign to save prehistoric rock art on the west coast of Australia…

The Pluto Project is the name of a proposal by mining company Woodside Petroleum to expand its onshore gas extraction plant on the Burrup peninsula. This would destroy an already damaged area of outstanding heritage significance, where many thousands of ancient petroglyphs, including representations of humans and animals, are carved into the rock. Most of the sites have not been documented.

The proposed plan caused an uproar, and a campaign to save the Burrup’s heritage began with efforts to list the site on the national heritage register. The movement grew steadily, with heritage and environment groups, local indigenous groups, academics and politicians lobbying for the Burrup to be protected.

All seemed lost when last year the federal government brushed aside calls by the WA state government to give the site a heritage listing, and then environment minister Ian Campbell looked like giving Woodside the go-ahead. He argued that to block the plan would harm Australia’s economy, be bad for the environment, and that a compromise was inevitable. This despite Woodside’s multi-billion annual profits, and the fact that an alternative scheme, either offshore or further down the coast, was perfectly viable.

Now it appears that the Burrup rock art might yet be given heritage protection. In February this year, the new environment minister Malcolm Turnbull issued a statement saying that he would allow full consultation “to ensure the long term protection of the area’s heritage values and national interest.” He indicated the government’s support for heritage listing under the Environment Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and stated:

“I appreciate the strong public interest that exists and I want to emphasise that the Australian Government is continuing to work towards a National Heritage listing for this important place. Establishing an appropriate boundary and coming to an agreement about management arrangements are the crucial steps towards a listing.”

This statement was released the day after campaign group Getup sent a box containing 24,000 messages from members of the public concerned about the Burrup situation. Next week Woodside Petroleum will hold its annual general meeting, and there is pressure on the company to reconsider its plans.

Getup is inviting people to post messages to the minister calling for the Burrup peninsula to be given a national heritage listing at this crucial moment.

UPDATE

As well as protests outside Woodside’s AGM run by Stand Up for the Burrup, inside, Getup were lobbying, and the Uniting Church, a major shareholder in the company, has urged a rethink of the Pluto project. According to an article in the Australian, Robert Watson, moderator of the Uniting Church in Western Australia, spoke at the AGM and “said the Uniting Church, both as a shareholder in the company and as a collection of concerned citizens, questioned the wisdom behind the location of the proposed Pluto LNG plant.”

UPDATE #2

I’ve decided to put these links here and delete my post on the final decision. As expected, on October 16 the Pluto desecration got the go-ahead, after a last minute attempt to invoke the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act was rubbished. A sad outcome, after an extremely spirited and hard-fought campaign. We can now be left in no doubt that in Australia, mining companies ‘wear the trousers’.