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 [node:read-more:link]

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. [node:read-more:link]

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. [node:read-more:link]

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. [node:read-more:link]

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.” [node:read-more:link]