The federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has ruled a controversial $4.5bn fertiliser plant near ancient rock art on Western Australia’s Burrup peninsula can go ahead after being told it had the support of a local Aboriginal corporation.
Work on the development had stopped after Save Our Songlines, a separate traditional owners organisation opposed to the project, asked the minister to protect five culturally important sites, including petroglyphs. Three of the five are due to be moved during construction.
Plibersek visited the peninsula, in the Pilbara in the state’s north, earlier this month to meet with the two First Nations groups and representatives of Perdaman, the multinational company behind the development.
Save Our Songlines’ Raelene Cooper, a Mardudhunera woman and former board member of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, has previously compared the potential impact of the fertiliser plant and other industrial developments on the Burrup Hub to the destruction of sacred sites at Juukan Gorge.
Plibersek said she had decided not to grant the request for an emergency pause on the project – made under section 9 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act – because it was not supported by the corporation and its circle of elders. She said the corporation was recognised “as the most representative organisation on cultural knowledge for the five traditional owner groups in the region” and had agreed with Perdaman on the appropriate cultural treatment of the sites.
“Traditional owners, like any group, can sometimes have different views. I am satisfied, however, that the [corporation] is the legally constituted and democratically elected group that safeguards First Nations culture in the Burrup area,” Plibersek said in a statement. “The circle of elders holds the cultural authority for the area.”
A separate cultural heritage assessment of the site is still being carried out under section 10 of the act.
Save Our Songlines, which was created after internal division within the corporation over support for industrial development, declined to comment on Monday night. The corporation could not be reached for its response.
Perdaman has said the plant would create up to 2,000 jobs and produce fertiliser for the agricultural industry.
The Burrup Hub has been described as a testing ground for Australia’s evolving stance on protecting Indigenous cultural heritage and how the climate crisis will be tackled under the Albanese government.
WA authorities are considering a 50-year extension to the life of Woodside’s massive North West Shelf liquified natural gas (LNG) plant, which would allow it to operate until 2070 and the company to process fossil fuels from new gas basins, including the proposed $16bn Scarborough development.
The North West Shelf emits more greenhouse gas each year than any other development in Australia and Scarborough has been described by climate activists as a potential global “carbon bomb” that could add up to 1.37bn tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. More than 750 appeals have been lodged against the extension, which was recommended by the WA Environmental Protection Authority.
Nearly half of the Burrup peninsula is zoned industrial. The other half is national park and heritage listed.
The industrial section is home to a second LNG export facility – known as Pluto – and an ammonia plant. The peninsula and nearby Dampier archipelago are home to more than 1m culturally important sites, including petroglyphs, some of which date back tens of thousands of years. The Murujuga cultural landscape has been submitted for a Unesco world heritage listing.
