"We have a small window of opportunity to save the Burrup Peninsula from further needless destruction. Please share this campaign with friends and family now to help save Australia's Indigenous culture from needless destruction." https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveOurHeritage.asp?campaign_id=61
Here is my submission:
Dear Senator Ian Campbell, Premier Alan Carpenter, Minister Sheila McHale, and Woodside:
I urge you all to consider seriously your commitments to yesterday's thinking in respect to ‘respect for’ our common heritage and ancient human history. Your assets and long-term profits will not suffer in any significant manner by relocating to the alternative site.
In fact, the only issue is why previous decision makers did not see the huge potential in the Burrup's rock art and develop the other site. For a few measly dollars (assumed saved) a site with obviously significant heritage potential has been compromised by heavy industry development.
The only supporters for further development in this site would have to be those who are trying to protect their past narrowly economic-based decisions. They should accept their past mistakes, swallow their pride and hubris and get on with fixing it up according to today’s and tomorrow’s sustainable (i.e. integrated) thinking.
I look forward to driving up there some day, with my great grandchildren and international visitors and passing a top class industrial estate located on otherwise worthless land before arriving at a beautiful and magical place with profound links to the early stages of our human race.
To all those who are spoiling this classic heritage site: please GetUp!, CleanUp! and GetOut! of the key Burrup areas. Global based business will be just as good from alternative sites. In fact, great PR can be derived from the corporate social responsibility shown by Woodside and others in relocating in due course.
In closing I note the following editorial on good governance and the need for accountability. “Editorial: Government fails test on governance. The public sector should be held to the same high standard as private industry on corporate governance” (Opinion, The Australian, November 30, 2006)*. A key message in this article is:
“And as ASIC commissioner Berna Collier told a corporate governance summit in
2002, there was more at stake than how corporations were directed and
controlled. Corporate governance was also about the mechanisms by which those
who direct and control the corporations are monitored and supervised. It was
about making those in control accountable. On this score, the Howard Government
has failed.”.
I warn Senator Ian Campbell, Premier Alan Carpenter, Minister Sheila McHale, and Woodside that this issue is not one that will wash away in the next week’s newspaper frenzy for headlines.
The scars of what you do or don’t do will be there for 1,000s of years to come. You will all be held accountable for your decisions in matter and be judged by history for a very long time. Do you really feel confident enough to risk going down as the vandals at the turn of the millennium? Perhaps this partly explains why Mr Colin Barnett, former Liberal Premier of WA, has publicly changed his mind about supporting industrial development at Burrup.
In respect to the Murijuga I request you to:
1) Make the Burrup a national heritage site, with boundary lines covering remaining rock carvings so that any further industrial development occurs on other suitable sites.
2) Call for an independent, bi-partisan authority to conduct a complete inventory of rock art on the islands in consultation with Indigenous, heritage and scientific authorities.
3) Develop a management plan to be drawn up in open consultation between all parties, including state and federal governments, Indigenous groups, conservationists and industry.
Yours sincerely
R.....
December 2006
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(* ref: The Australian: Opinion, December 01, 2006 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20844036-7583,00.html)
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