not long now, page-52

Another project gets green light.Surely RWD is next.



Deal must be all right


Tony Barrass | April 18, 2009
Article from: The Australian

DESPITE the heavyweight line-up of celebrities desperate to save the Kimberley, West Australian Premier Colin Barnett this week had a considerable win over not only environmentalists determined to stop a liquefied natural gas hub 60km north of Broome but also local Aborigines holding out for a better deal.

In announcing that indigenous stakeholders had agreed to a $1.5billion compensation deal that would allow a 1400ha industrial proposal at James Price Point to go to the next stage of development, Barnett effectively killed two birds with one stone.

Still smarting from Japanese giant Inpex's decision to take its $15billion LNG business to Darwin after years of frustrating negotiations with the previous Carpenter Labor government, Barnett has been keen to get a quick result, particularly one he claims is favourable to Aborigines, in a bid to get Inpex back to the west.

The Kimberley Land Council, led by the emerging Wayne Bergmann, signed on the dotted line.

And to make things even rosier for the Premier, Bergmann described the deal in glowing terms, saying the $35 million or so that his people would expect every year for the next 30 years will give this and the next generation of Kimberley Aborigines excellent job and training opportunities and access to better health and education.

It's hard not to conclude that the only people who do not want the hub to go ahead are out-of-town celebrities and actors, and a smattering of grassroots green groups in Broome.

In fact, the Save the Kimberley campaign has not caught on in the west, unlike previous popular environmental movements such as the push against a tourism project on Ningaloo Reef and the successful campaign to stop the logging of old growth forests in the state's southwest.

According to its website, the Save the Kimberley movement want to "educate the Australian and international community about the threat to the Kimberley Coast and its inland wilderness areas posed by multibillion-dollar gas and large-scale industrial development proposals".

The idea of one confined industrial hub of just 1400ha in an area of 420,000sqkm that covers a land mass bigger than Britain has, nonetheless, stirred up green passions, particularly those of prominent Australians such as Jack Thompson and Missy Higgins.

Anyone who has travelled throughout the Kimberley knows that towns such as Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing, battered and bruised by decades of grog and hopelessness, are desperate for opportunities for their young.

"We were sick and tired of going on our knees and begging for support," Bergmann told reporters this week.

"This represented the opportunity for us to drive change and that was the compromise of the package being done in a way that allows us to address all those wider issues."

But the final decision on whether the gas hub goes ahead is still some time off.

There still has to be an environmental assessment and a final decision by federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

Garrett's old Midnight Oil mate Rob Hirst was recently in the Kimberley to campaign against the development.

He said he was sure Garrett's love of the area meant he would do his utmost to ensure the gas hub would not be built at James Price Point. But the lead singer turned federal minister is playing it straight.

Yesterday, he said he would make a decision based on the environmental assessment's recommendations and his personal views should have nothing to do with it.