Bike To Broome: 21 August 2011

A fourth dugong has been found dead in the last 3 months since May this year, washed up on a beach south of the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.  Environmental groups are warning of an ecological disaster in this part of Queensland.  Friends of the Earth spokesman Drew Hutton said we are seeing destruction around Gladstone Harbour with the construction of the LNG plant there.

An LNG plant and port facilities are being built in this part of World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef, which is a dugong sanctuary.

Mr Hutton asked, “How do you develop an environmental management plan that allows you to sensitively dredge your way through sea grass beds, removing 50 million cubic metres of spoil?”.

The Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) reported that six dugongs have died since the start of 2011 in the Gladstone area. This compares to just two in 2010 and one in 2009.

There has also been an increase of sea turtle deaths in the area, from 26 last year to 48 for the same period this year.

While recent floods in Queensland may account for many of these marine animal deaths, the reduction of the natural habitat from dredging is “at least helping to create a situation where they are slowly being forced out of their traditional habitat to die of starvation”, said Mr Hutton.

Meanwhile the Australian Greens are calling on the Federal Government to investigate what impact the James Price Point LNG plant and port facilitie will have on the Kimberley marine environment.

Greens Spokesperson Senator Rachel Siewert said, “According to the Government’s own reports, dredging and blasting of seabeds and reefs for the gas hub would lead to a 50km2 ‘marine deadzone’. This is a huge area to take out of an important international marine sanctuary”.

The Kimberley could be heading down the same path to a marine environment disaster and the WA Government must take the Queensland dugong deaths seriously.

Wouldn’t it be great if all we had to do to be environmentally-friendly was to drive a Toyota Prius and to put up some solar panels on our roofs?

Yes, that would be great.

But the sad truth is that it’s not that easy.

What is also sad is that if something is difficult to fix, then we would rather wish it away or let someone like David Suzuki solve it for us.

Another sad truth is that there are creatures out there that can’t drive a car or put up solar panels.  I’m talking about the creatures out there whose habitats are at the mercy of us humans.

We have the technology.  We have the capability.

We are not saying we don’t want the gas.  We are saying that we don’t want the gas processed at the culturally significant, ecologically sensitive James Price Point.

Shell is soon building the world’s largest floating LNG plant out in the Browse Basin.  Woodside is soon to start its own floating LNG plant at the Sunrise field near Timor-Leste.

So, we have the technology.  We have the capability.  So let’s now use some commonsense shall we, Woodside?

A project like Bike To Broome could never happen without the support of family, friends, work colleagues, etc.

We are so grateful to the people and organisations who are already supporting us.

Please help us raise awareness, stop this gas hub, and protect the Kimberley marine creatures by going to our Donate page and making a donation.

The following is taken from an article as reported in The Sunday Times (17 July 2011).

“WA Premier Colin Barnett is mired in fresh conflict-of-interest claims, after the husband of a senior mining executive was appointed to a senior role in the Environment Minister’s office.”

“The Sunday Times can reveal Liberal Parth ‘fixer’ Colin Edwardes was appointed as the chief of staff to struggling Environment Minister Bill Marmion at the end of June.”  Colin Edwardes is the husband of former Richard Court government minister, Cheryl Edwardes, who is the director of “external affairs, government relations and approvals” at Hancock Prospecting, Gina Rinehart’s company.

The Sunday Times reported that “according to the Environmental Protection Authority, Hancock Prospecting has at least four environmental approvals pending, including several relating to its $7.2 billion Roy Hill iron ore mine in the Pilbara.”

The newspaper article also reported:

• in 2008, Mr Barnett’s had to fend off conflict of interest concerns over his daughter-in-law’s senior lobbying position with Woodside Energy.
• in 2009, Barnett’s chief of staff Diedre Willmot stepped down after her husband’s law firm added the energy sector to its area of practice.
• In 2010, Barnett appointed two ex-Woodside executives as advisors.

Premier Colin Barnett must come clean and reveal his full relationship with Woodside Energy, after all, did he not tell BHP to bugger off when rumours of a take-over made the news a few months ago?

A couple of days ago a brave Woodside employee decided to post some (obviously corporate) information on the PindanPost website using an anonymous email address.

He or she had obviously done this while at work, because a trace of the IP address revealed that it came from Woodside’s offices.

Read the full story here.

If you’re in Perth on Sunday, 24 July, please join in to peacefully promote Save The Kimberley at the Western Derby football game between the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers.

Check out the event details on Facebook.

As a result of the visit to Canberra by noted Kimberley personalities, Federal politicians are now listening.  Last week’s delegation to Canberra led by Broome musician Alan Pigram has achieved a measure of success, at least in getting our Federal members of parliament to listen.  Mr Pigram was accompanied by prominent Kimberley academic Dr Anne Poelina and Kimberley film maker  Mitch Torres.

Dr. Poelina reported that the message was about families, and that they are “not saying no to the gas, but no to the gas at Walmadan”.  She explained that Walmadan (James Price Point) is a sacred place to Aboriginal groups.

Mitch Torres said that Canberra is listening as a result of the blockade, and that politicians want Broome to show them the numbers.

And showing the numbers is exactly what Broome is now preparing to do.  On Sunday 17 July, Broome families are putting on a major community beach event.  Stay tuned for details.

Read more of the story by the ABC’s Lana Read on her blog and download the MP3 audio file of Dr. Poelina, Mitch Torres and Alan Pigram speaking.

Last Saturday morning, the Woodside gas hub threat to the Kimberley was addressed in the Sydney suburb of Redfern.  The event hosted by the Women’s Reconciliation Network, The Wilderness Society and the Filipino Women’s Working Party, brought Kimberley traditional owners Neilo Mackenzie and Kerrianne Cox to share their views and thoughts on what the proposed industrialisation of the Kimberley would mean to Aboriginal culture and social structure.

A passionate but very worried Mr Mackenzie said that ”there are a lot of communities out there that depend on ecotourism and keeping the country the way it is”.

Ms Cox said that while the WA government and Woodside have promised to compensate local Aboriginal communities to the tune of $1.5 billion, the vote wasn’t transparent and the Kimberley Land Council didn’t completely represent the traditional owners.

Neilo Mackenzie is a traditional owner, Aboriginal activist and environmentalist and co-chair of Save The Kimberley.   Kerrianne Cox is an award-winning singer-songwriter and traditional owner from Beagle Bay.

Read the full story in the Australian Geographic website.

Dr Steven Salisbury, prominent paleontologist from the University of Queensland, last week spent several days studying the fossilised dinosaur footprints along the Kimberley coast.

Dr Salisbury’s research suggests that the dinosaur footprints around the James Price Point area appear to be more significant than previously thought, describing them as “quite important ones”.  He said that losing these footprints at James Price Point would devastate the science world.

He also described them as  ”the longest chains of dinosaur sites in the world”, and that it is completely inappropriate to compromise them.

Read the full story from the ABC News website.

Goolarabooloo elder Joseph Roe is determined to register the cultural Aboriginal site in the James Price Point with the Department of Indigenous Affairs.

Mr Roe said that Woodside had “paid a lot of money to the Kimberley Land Council to go do heritage clearance”, and yet the cultural surveys were evidently not sufficiently thorough.  But Premier Colin Barnett defended that “Woodside was not at fault”.

Well Mr Barnett, whose fault is it that a sufficiently thorough investigation and survey wasn’t carried out by the Kimberley Land Council?  Are you saying that this is the fault of the KLC?

Read the story on the ABC website.