The proposed plant – which would process gas from a massive offshore
field – has horrified environmentalists, and sown bitter divisions among
indigenous locals. While traditional owners have agreed to give up
their land in exchange for an A$1.3bn (£814m) package offered by
Australia’s biggest oil and gas company, Woodside Petroleum, the deal
was only struck after they were threatened with compulsory acquisition
by the Western Australian government.
A vocal minority have
denounced the A$30bn refinery, which they say will rupture their
“songlines” – the tracks followed by their ancestors during the
“Dreamtime” creation era – as well as destroying important cultural and
archaeological sites. So inflamed are passions that supporters of the
project have been branded “toxic coconuts…black on the outside, white
on the inside and full of the milk of white man’s money” in an anonymous
newsletter circulating in Broome.
The designated location for the
plant – and an enormous new port complex – is James Price Point, 30
miles north of Broome, on a stretch of coastline so pristine that a 2008
scientific paper ranked it alongside the Arctic and Antarctica in terms
of minimal human impact. The Point also shelters 130 million-year-old
dinosaur footprints, embedded in rocks near the shoreline, and is a
place where humpback whales calve and dolphins, turtles and dugong
(native sea cows) feed.
“It’s like putting a coal terminal on the
Great Barrier Reef,” says Martin Pritchard, executive director of the
Environs Kimberley group. “They’re turning a wilderness into an
industrial zone. If this was happening on the [heavily populated] east
coast, there would be such an outcry it would never be allowed to go
ahead.”
Locals are concerned the project could herald wide-scale
industrialisation of the vast, largely untouched Kimberley region of
which Broome is a main hub. Their anxiety has been fuelled by the state
premier, Colin Barnett, who suggested the area could “learn something
from” Dubai’s success in attracting people to live in a harsh desert
environment.
At James Price Point, which lies at the end of a
corrugated dirt track, rust-red cliffs tumble down to a milk-white beach
lapped by turquoise waters. “This is my country, this is paradise,”
declares Phillip Roe, one of the traditional owners opposed to the
refinery, standing on a dune overlooking the Point. “Now it’s going to
be wrecked, and our songlines will be broken. The people who have sold
out don’t care about [Aboriginal] law and culture.”
Out to sea, a
drilling rig is already at work. The gas project will consume 20 square
miles of seabed and 12 square miles of land. Mr Roe stoops down and
picks up a sliver of flint from the sand. “An old spearhead. This area
is all old campsites and middens.”
At the turn-off to the Point,
posters proclaim: “No Gas on the Kimberley Coast”. Protesters have
camped out here for months, obstructing Woodside workers and security
staff. In July, a blockade was broken up by 80 riot police flown in from
Perth, the state capital.
The plant will produce 50 million
tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year, more than a facility in
Qatar that claims to be the world’s largest. If approved by the federal
government – a decision is expected in the coming months – it will help
Australia achieve its aim of becoming the biggest LNG exporter by 2020.
South
of the Kimberley is the Pilbara region, heartland of the nation’s
mining industry and an object lesson in what many in the Kimberley wish
to avoid. Multinational mining companies have taken over the Pilbara’s
towns; rents and wages have skyrocketed, motels are booked solid and the
tourism industry struggles to survive. The coastline, far from being a
wilderness, has the country’s busiest ports.
Locals fear that
Broome – home to 16,000 people, and a popular visitor destination with a
leisurely pace and a laid-back vibe – could go the same way. They
distrust Mr Barnett. “There’s no mistaking what his intentions are for
Broome, and it’s not what the local population wants,” says Kandy
Curran, a long-time resident, and coordinator of a coastal management
group.
Ms Curran adds: “It takes many years to create a harmonious
town with a strong social fabric, but it doesn’t take long to unravel
it. This gas development will destroy our unique tourism brand and have a
major impact on our town. Colin Barnett thinks he can force it on
Broome; he thinks he’ll get away with it because we’re so remote.”
Ominously, Mr Barnett has predicted the Kimberley will underpin Western
Australia’s development over the next 50 years, just as the Pilbara has
underpinned it since the 1960s. Rich reserves of copper, lead, nickel,
zinc, bauxite and coal are thought to lie beneath the Kimberley’s red
dirt. Only five mines operate at present, but 700 applications for
exploration licences were submitted last year.
The campaign
against the gas plant is backed by a number of Australian celebrities,
including the singer-songwriter Missy Higgins, who donated the royalties
from a 2009 EP, Rob Hirst, the former Midnight Oil drummer, and the
musician John Butler.
Ranged against them are respected Aboriginal
leaders such as Nolan Hunter, chief executive of the Kimberley Land
Council, which represents traditional owners. Mr Hunter believes that
critics of the refinery, many of whom live in the cities, are ignoring
the grim statistics – relating to housing, health, unemployment and
youth suicide – that sum up life for Kimberley indigenous people.
“They’ve
got their homes and their good jobs and everything they need for their
creature comforts,” he says. “They want this place to be pristine, even
if the people here are living in poverty, so they can come in with their
well-earned dollars and admire the pristine environment.”
Mr
Hunter, who has received hate mail, also condemns “the paternalistic
attitude of some people who think Aboriginal people can’t make decisions
in their own right”. Of the landowners’ decision to renounce a
long-standing claim over James Price Point, he says: “It was not made
flippantly or recklessly. There was a three-year consultation process.
They saw it as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring about better
outcomes for themselves.”
The deal with Woodside, the biggest ever
negotiated between a mining company and an Aboriginal group, would see
jobs created, houses built and training programmes and health
initiatives established. It has survived three Federal Court challenges
by dissident landowners. A case brought by Mr Roe against the compulsory
acquisition threat – which Mr Hunter admits “forced the hand” of those
who voted in favour – has yet to be heard.
Mr Pritchard warns that
if the refinery is built, some of the world’s largest ships will visit
the Kimberley to collect LNG and transport it to Asia. Instead of
processing the gas near Broome, he suggests, Woodside should pipe it
down to the Pilbara, where locals have said they would welcome a plant.
The
federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke, recently listed a chunk of
the Kimberley on the National Heritage register, leaving out James Price
Point apart from the dinosaur footprints. However, the listing will not
prevent major industrial developments in the region. Mr Roe travels to
the Point every day to protest. “We’re not giving up,” he says.
