Destruction of Country

The NSW Labor Government sold the iconic The Drip gorge for $2084 in a 2010 lease conversion sale that cost a Chinese coal company less than $3 a hectare. The unpublicised $2084 conversion of more than 700 hectares of Crown land to freehold title in 2010, despite the community raising strong concerns about the possibility of such a conversion at least two years earlier, has shocked and angered groups fighting to protect the area. "They sold it for the price of a clapped-out second-hand car" said Environmentalist Bev Smiles

Yawuru man Micklo Corpus said that Buru Energy had not listened to the Yawuru people and this was a serious breach of their rights, given that 94% of the Yawuru were against the process.
Making matters even worse, dingos, reptiles, birds and various small marsupials have been found trapped in their tailings dams which contain a toxic mixture of chemicals from the fracking process. These dams often include heavy metal traces and hydrocarbons drawn up from deep underground as a part of fluid recovery.

WA government fires have devastated have damaged the world-renowned Bradshaw collection on the Kimberley Plateau. These works are widely regarded as the oldest figurative paintings in the world, was recently damaged by fire, which locals claim was a result of the government's program. There are 8742 known examples of rock art in the Kimberley but their future looks bleak, with damaged sites stretching from Kununurra, along the Mitchell Plateau, across the Bungle Bungles to Faraway Bay.

A Petrolium exploration permit has been granted over The Pinnacles – described by tourism authorities as “world famous” and one of WA’s great natural attractions. - The Pinnacles comprise thousands of striking limestone formations, each up to 5m high, across 190ha in the Nambung National Park 200km north of Perth, attracting 250,000 visitors a year. But the landscape is under threat after a gas fracking exploration permit was granted to Norwest ­Energy by the WA Department of Mines and Petroleum.

Past experiences of forced removal off country have proved disastrous. The result is more fringe dwellers, social problems, suicides and incarceration. Western Australia already has the highest rate of incarceration of Indigenous people, around 20 times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians. In fact Barnett hypocritically admitted that it “will cause great distress to Aboriginal people who will move, it will cause issues in regional towns as Aboriginal people move into them.”

The planned closure of more than 100 of WA's remote communities will have severe consequences, the Premier Colin Barnett said, but added his hands were tied. Barnett said this after a backlash was sparked in some of the First Nations communities, with elders leading a protest outside state parliament over the plans. His talk of high rates of suicide, poor education, poor health, no jobs are references to the economic, social and health issues that he will use as a tool to dump people on the streets.

Be careful what you pray for. By proposing to strip away protection for Aboriginal people's heritage across the board, and throughout the State, the Barnett Government appears to have unwittingly conjured up a strong, united and angry Aboriginal coalition which is now mobilising against the AHA amendments.

Written Dr Stephen Bennetts, who is a consultant anthropologist that has worked with Aboriginal people in Northern Australia since 1994.

Ancient rock paintings, standing stones and scattered artefacts had once been protected by their remote location, but mining activity that ramped up in the early 1960s had triggered "fears for the safety of sites of importance". Today the landscapes of the Pilbara and Kimberley regions are being extensively reconfigured in the era of GPS, aerial exploration and fly-in, fly-out workforces. Evidence of Aboriginal occupation is still scattered across those landscapes, lying in the path of planned roads, railways and mines. One mining tenement can hold thousands of such artefacts. The only plan the gov't has is to water down existing legislation.

The men at the forefront of the Aboriginal tent embassy at Airds are frustrated their site was valdalised on Saturday night. Tents were torn in half and banners were burnt when the site was unattended for just one hour on Saturday when the incident occurred.

The tent embassy was established local indigenous men to highlight their concerns over the protection of land and wildlife in Airds as part of the Airds Bradbury Renewal Project.

Many people in Australia are in the hunt for millions of dollars as the government searches for a place to dump 14 tonnes of nuclear waste, just for starters

The waste the government is 'talking up' will be returned to Australia by the end of next year following treatment in France and the UK.

It has been reported that some First Nations people in the NT are squabbling over hosting the nuclear waste in their land.