Tjiwarl Country Appeal against Yeelirrie Uranium Mine Approval Fails

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THE FOLLOWING STORY MAY CONTAIN IMAGES

OR NAMES OF DECEASED PERSONS. ################

With respect.


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CCWA has lost the appeal that they were waging against the Yeelirrie uranium mine on behalf of the Tjiwarl Elders and Traditional Owners. Ironically, the appeal was against the present state Labor government, which had nothing to do with the approval.

The case rested on one of the conditions of the Environmental Protection Agency's report on the project, which said that there was a risk the mine could kill off species of stygofauna that are unique to the area.

The appeal challenged the ministerial power of veto over the 2016 recommendations of the Environmental Protection Authority.

Tjiwarl Traditional Owner Vicki Abdullah said despite the loss of this, their second appeal, that the Tjiwarl group's position on the uranium mine's operations was unchanged. She added that they would be making plans for the next step in their long-running battle to preserve the area.

Tjiwarl Traditional Owner Vicki Abdullah outside WA Supreme Court

Last year Ms Abdullah commented that the mining of uranium is especially problematic for the local Aboriginal nations due to its potentially deathly effects. This contrasts their position on an existing local gold mine, and, a new iron ore mine that last month got the go-ahead from surrounding nations.

Western Desert nations were witness to England's nuclear bomb tests in the cross-border region in 1953. A 1980s Royal Commission into the high rates of cancer in those nations and among the Australian service personnel who worked on the tests, found England had told the Australian government that the test would be about a third of the strength of the bomb that they actually tested.

Despite the horrific revelations of culpability from the Royal Commission, England fought and refused reparations. They denied responsibility for the bomb being 3x the strength that the Australian government agreed to and also claimed that victims couldn't prove that their cancers were caused by Maralinga's radiation.

Contrary to popular belief, to the nations local to the project Yeelirrie means place of death. That indicates the cultural sensitivity of the area. For many Australian Aboriginal nations the use of the name or image of a deceased person is prohibited under cultural law. 

To date there has been no sacred site litigation in relation to Yeelirrie's connection to the Seven Sisters Songline, according to pro-country anti-nuclear campaigner, Mia Pepper.

The Seven Sisters Songline - one of the most sacred sites in Australia in multiple nations' cultural beliefs. 

For overseas readers, there's more on Aboriginal Songlines, here...

And here, is an hour's program on the Seven Sisters Songline, 
and it features the moving singing and stories of the NPY ladies:

In 2017 a WA state Liberal party environmental protection minister signed off on an approval for the project, despite it still not countering the potential ill-effects on the unique stygofauna.
(I wonder if this video influenced his decision...)

The punchline was, that he granted that final approval two weeks before the election, when his re-election campaign was at full velocity. He lost, but unfortunately for the little stygofauna, both a Labor win and an immediate ban on new uranium mines was insufficient to protect Yeelirrie from possible harmful effects of uranium mining. 

Labor's instant ban was a great vote winner, but not effective retrospectively.

Evidently, WA's Labor government was also not as gutsy as Kyrgyzstan's; Kyrgyzstan in May this year implemented an immediate ban on uranium mining, including those mines already approved and in production. (Though Kygyzstan has not been sued for shutting their 1 struggling mine down, WA's current Environmental Protection minister said he is too scared that the presently suspended uranium operations would send the state broke if they ever sued for damages about loss of income from the ban.)

WA Labor's uranium ban does not even prohibit uranium exploration that according to uranium exploration comanpies' and ALP monthly spin, is going from strength to strength.

Strangely all this occurred irrespective of 2 out of the 3 uranium miners in WA saying uranium production and processing simply isn't economic right now and that there is no indication it will be in the future.

The crux of the latest court finding suggests that current protections embodied in the environmental protection laws are not absolute. 

The background to the issue is that in the resources sector there has been quite a bit of lobbyist agitprop circulated to empathetic publications about Australia's purported slow approval process, and our 'high level' (cough, cough, inaccuracy) of environmental activism. (about as accurate as the number of WA jobs promised from the project - if uranium ever becomes financially viable again)

The recent national Liberal election campaign saw yet another minister for environmental protection sign off on another approval - a federal one for the very same project. 

So, there was a fuss and amid the press scrimmage her colleague Matthias Cormann plonked Price right in it by revealing in plain words how long ago she had approved the project, which suggested that she had hidden it for a busy news day.

Subsequently, when the Liberal party were re-elected to the federal government, she was quietly slipped into a different portfolio.

This all occurred whilst the Tjiwarl appeal was in process.

The director of CCWA Piers Versteegan complained that the possible extinction of any species, regardless of size or significance, contradicts the guiding principle of the state's Environmental Protection Act. 

His concerns echoed an EPA ruling from 2016 that stressed the unique importance of the subterranean fauna of the Yeelirrie region.  In an interview with news agency AAP at that time, the EPA Chairman Tom Hatton said that the risk to the stygofauna was just too great and not mitigated by the project proposal.

The former WA minister for protecting the environment (whose name probably no one will remember by the time the Stygofauna are extinct) simply said there hasn't been enough research done to find the same subterranean fauna elsewhere in Australia's vast expanse and they probably exist somewhere.###

Below is a recording of Versteegan explaining the case outside the Supreme Court of WA, at the launch of CACV 26/2018 - Conservation Council of Western Australia v Dawson