Heritage Listing won’t protect the Kimberley

Media Release
The Wilderness Society Inc.
31 August 2011

The Wilderness Society today said a national heritage listing would not protect the Kimberley if Australia’s largest single industrial development, Woodside’s proposed gas hub north of Broome, is constructed.

The $50 billion James Price Point development would occupy a 25 square-kilometre industrial precinct (the equivalent size of an area 5km by 5km). The port would require a breakwater up to 7km long (14 times the span of the Sydney Harbour Bridge) and dredging that would remove 21 million tonnes of seabed creating a 50 square kilometre marine dead zone.

The proposed plant will pump 30 billion litres of effluent into the pristine Kimberley seas each year. It will wipe out 120 hectares of remnant rainforest and will suck up to 8 billion litres of fresh water a year from an already parched landscape.

The Kimberley coast is a nursery for the world’s largest population of Humpback whales. It is also home to threatened species including snubfin dolphins, dugongs, saw sharks and six of the seven sea turtle species, including Australia’s own flatback turtle. James Price Point also has one of the world’s longest chains of dinosaur footprints of which University of Queensland palaeontologist Steven Salisbury said, “There’s nothing like it in the world.”

“Heritage listing for the Kimberley will be meaningless if James Price Point is approved,” said Wilderness Society National Campaign Director Lyndon Schneiders. “The direct impacts of that development will be significant, but the indirect impacts of this development will be catastrophic for the entire Kimberley and will destroy the social fabric and character of the Broome community.

“Minister Burke will not be remembered for heritage listing the Kimberley if James Price Point proceeds; rather he’ll be remembered as the Minister who handed the Kimberley over to industrialisation.”

For further comment contact
Lyndon Schneiders: 0451 633 200
Glen Klatovsky: 0410 482 243
Peter Robertson: 0409 089 020

For more information contact
Media Adviser Alex Tibbitts on 0416 420 168.