Labor sacrifices Indigenous cultural sites, and the climate, for fossil fuel profits—again

The federal Labor government’s extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf Project (NWS) in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, allowing Australia’s largest natural gas facility to operate until 2070, is an environmental disaster.

Over its extended lifetime, the NWS will produce ten times more carbon dioxide emissions than the whole of Australia did in 2024, according to the Climate Council, which describes the extension as a “carbon bomb”. The approval also comes just weeks after Woodside spilt 16,000 litres of petroleum products into the ocean near the Ningaloo reef, as reported by the Guardian.

Environment Minister Murray Watt approved the extension less than 30 days after Labor’s federal election victory—faster than the Coalition had promised to move had it been elected. Watt was not even obliged to consider the climate impact when assessing the proposal, since the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBCA) does not require it.

That is thanks to Labor’s Roger Cook, premier of WA. Cook intervened late last year to prevent the EPBCA from being changed to include climate considerations in the environmental assessment process. In doing so, Cook did the bidding of the state’s mining and resources capitalists, and it’s already paying off.

What did need to be considered by both the federal and state Labor governments was the potential impact of the extension on nearby significant heritage sites. Murujuga, the area encompassing the Burrup Peninsula and surrounding islands on the Pilbara coast, is home to a rich and ancient collection of Indigenous rock art, some of which is estimated to be tens of thousands of years old. It’s also where the NWS natural gas processing facility is located.

An 800-page report on the effects of pollution on the Murujuga rock art was produced for the WA state government last year. It was made public less than a week before the NWS extension decision, along with an eight-page summary document. The summary says “the research indicates that the current levels of the pollutants of most concern for the rock art are lower” than the level that puts the art at risk of continuing damage.

Cook himself told reporters days before Watt’s decision that gas extraction has had no effects on the rock art, and that would continue to be the case.

Leading scientists say this is a lie. Speaking at a press conference on the steps of the state parliament, Benjamin Smith, professor of archaeology at the University of Western Australia, said that the government’s summary document “contradicts directly the findings inside the report”. Smith continued: “This report contains very serious evidence that industrial emissions are currently damaging the rock art at Murujuga”.

An anonymous scientist involved in the rock art monitoring program told the ABC’s 7.30 program: “The claim that we established that no further damage is occurring to the rocks is simply false”.

According to the ABC, Curtin University’s Emeritus Professor Adrian Baddeley, one of the report’s authors, accused the state government of “unacceptable interference” to modify a graph from the report in the summary. The change removed a line showing that “five of the [rock art] monitoring sites were experiencing pollutant levels above” the level that puts the art at risk.

This apparent cover-up would not be the first time the Cook state government has chosen to sacrifice Indigenous cultural sites for the interests of the mining and resources industry. In 2023, his government repealed the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, which had been in effect for just one month, bowing to a racist campaign by farming, mining and pastoral interests.

Instead, the 1972 Aboriginal Heritage Act applies, which allows the state government to override heritage concerns due to “public interest”, with traditional owners given no right to review this decision. It was under this Act that Rio Tinto blew up two sites sacred to the Pinti Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples at Juukan Gorge in 2020.

Despite various gestures and phrases about “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, state and federal Labor governments are clearly committed to the fossil fuel industry. The North West Shelf Project is part of the Burrup Hub, a mega fossil fuel project involving facilities on the Burrup Peninsula for processing liquified natural gas taken from offshore gas fields. If completed, the Conservation Council of WA says the Hub will be the most polluting project ever developed in Australia.

Labor is willing to allow the destruction of priceless Indigenous cultural heritage and the further destabilisation of the planet’s climate so that the capitalists in charge of Woodside and other fossil fuel companies can continue to rake in billions in profit. We have to resist this. The Burrup Hub must be stopped.