STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator THORPE (Victoria—Independent VIC Whip) (13:05): Last week, the South Australian parliament gave BHP the go-ahead for a $25 billion expansion of Olympic Dam, one of the world's largest copper mines, till 2086—another 60 years of destruction of country and heritage. BHP extracts about 70 million litres of water a day from the Great Artesian Basin. The depletion of water in the basin through BHP is threatening the sacred mound springs on Arabana country, which have sustained life in the desert for thousands of years.
Elders remember the Bubbler spring throwing water high into the air. Today it barely lifts above the ground. For what?
A copper mine. For our people, water is not a resource. Arabana elder Sydney Strangways says: Like blood in your body it keeps you alive, you need water in your country to keep it alive.
Water readings since 1985 show significant reductions of flow and springs drying up. If Borefield A is not shut down immediately, these spring complexes will be lost forever. Yet this expansion allows for extraction until 2036 anyway.
This is like the destruction of Juukan Gorge, only painfully slower. You don't need dynamite to destroy a sacred place. You can do it one litre at a time until the water and the stories that go with it are gone.
This could have been prevented by a World Heritage listing of the Lake Eyre region, but in 1995 then premier Dean Brown advocated for the region not to be considered for listing as it might interfere with radioactive waste storage sites planned for the Woomera region. Kokatha people, the traditional owners of the land Roxby Downs sits on, say the original mining deal authorised the destruction of their land.
The Roxby Downs (Indenture Ratification) Act was passed in 1982, before native title and national environmental and heritage protection laws. Even then, it was set up to override state laws that contradict it so that corporate interests could prevail over everything else. Forty-four years later, there is no excuse for bending 16 separate state acts to the terms of a private agreement, including the environment, water, planning, local government and pastoral land acts.
This one operation gets a legal framework written purely for the largest mining company on earth. BHP has the audacity to publicly commit to free, prior and informed consent with First Peoples, yet the traditional owners of the lands and waters affected were never even consulted. They were handed a finished bill and told the matter was closed.
That is not consent. As Arabana people themselves say, hearing of a decision after it is made is not consultation, and consultation is not consent. Consent means the right to say no and to have that no respected.
The inquiry into the bill was no better, allowing just 10 days for submissions and tabling the report the day after submissions closed. There wasn't even time to read them. Of the concerns raised in submissions from Arabana people, Kokatha people and Dieri people from South Australia's own First Nations Voice and from lawyers, scientists and people who have spent their lives on these springs, none made it into the committee's report.
When the minister was asked why, he said, 'they weren't relevant'. The concerns of the traditional owners of the country this bill decides the fate of for the next 60 years were not relevant. This shows us whose voice counts and who matters, and, of all weeks, they chose to do this during National Reconciliation Week.
There will never be reconciliation until you listen to the true sovereign people of the land. That's us. South Australia and BHP quietly wrote each other an indemnity against native title compensation.
Traditional owners cannot take it to court. The South Australian minister said that the concerns about native title were not part of the indenture because native title is a federal matter. Now the ball is in your court, Labor.
A state law cannot override federal law. The Native Title Act, EPBC Act and the ATSI Act are all federal. What are you going to do to protect this sacred country?