Dorinda Cox (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 Families and Social Services and Minister for Women's Safety (Senator Ruston) to a question without notice asked by Senator Cox today relating to the Western Australian gas industry.

The approval of the Woodside Scarborough project is a dark and devastating day for our climate, our planet and our future. As a mother of two daughters I shudder to think what this will mean for us and for our children in 2030. We have projects like this being funded, encouraged and endorsed by governments of this country. The pollution from this Scarborough Pluto project is equal to 15 coal-fired power stations—not over the life of the project but every single year of that project. The emissions from this facility equal around five per cent of the current total emissions every year in WA.

What Woodside have put out is greenwashing. The scientific evidence is pretty clear that this project is actually going to be worse than Adani. It is devastating for our climate. It is devastating for our marine life. This project is going to impact on the coral reefs, the whales and their migration patterns, the turtles and the dugongs in this area. It's devastating for the traditional owners of that country, who are trying to protect country. As a First Nations person who has walked on that country, it is devastating. It is devastating for their water sources and the traditional foods that they rely on in this area.

Scarborough will further destroy the Murujuga area, the world's largest and oldest collection of First Nations rock art. This includes the first-ever recording of a human face. This area is quite significant because it's nowhere else in this country. We have one of the oldest living cultures in the world and still we don't respect and we don't want to protect. I want to make sure that it doesn't get ruined by development and the mining and the resources sectors that our government protects.

It is also being considered for World Heritage listing. Hundreds of these rock carvings have already been destroyed or removed for gas development, so we need to save the ones that are there. The rock art is being eaten away by highly acidic gases being released from the existing Pluto plant that is there. Sadly, this is going to be expanded. It is going to be expanded because it was approved yesterday. What is happening to the Murujuga art is described as Juukan Gorge in slow motion. This rock art lays out in the elements. It is not in caves or rock-shelters, as it was at Juukan. Protecting that environment from those gases is our collective responsibility.

It's not just about the rock art that exists there. This is the site of the seven sisters dreaming story, the songline that goes from the Murujuga area right across Central Australia. It goes across this country. It tells the story of the First Peoples of this country, which no-one in this place respects, clearly. They don't care. They keep approving for it to be destroyed.

If you dig down in that country, you would be able to see the songline. You would be able to help the people of the Murujuga area recover and heal this place. But: 'No, we're not doing that. We have built an agreement.' When they built the agreement with the traditional owners group in this area they said, 'There's going to be train here, just like Hamersley Iron have built.' But, no, this is a gas transport train. It's not an iron ore train. Still we have Woodside say, 'No, there's no direct impact on First Nations cultural heritage there.' They haven't even updated their section 18 approval since 2007. This is cultural genocide in action, people.

This is where we get our native title connection. We can prove our unbroken continuation to culture through cultural heritage. How is it that Woodside are getting away with this? No doubt, it's about their dirty donations and it's contrary to what the minister has said during question time—that these gas policies are being driven by big corporations like Woodside. Their donations are what they rely on and, just like the Northern Endeavour project, they'll abandon them and we will cover the clean-up costs. This has risk, risk, risk written all over it. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.