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Journalism

Terror Nullius

mickdaleyo

TERROR NULLIUS

On October 5 2015, a 17 year-old Sydney student was arrested by police after posting a threat on Facebook to burn down Merrylands police station.

He was from the same school as 15 year-old Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar, who had earlier shot and killed NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng in a terrorism inspired attack. It was evidence that Australian police take terrorist threats on Facebook seriously, in line with counter terrorism laws that state:

“A ‘terrorist’ act is an act, or a threat to commit an act, that is done with the intention to coerce or influence the public … to advance a political, religious or ideological cause, and the act causes; death, serious harm or endangers a person.”

Yet in the twin towns of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the goldfields of Western Australia, a slew of racist threats and provocations on Facebook preceded the killing of 14 year-old Elijah Doughty by a middle aged white man. The teenager had allegedly stolen a motorbike.

His death ignited deadly tension in this baking hot desert town, the seemingly premature charge of manslaughter mirrored by the incipient racism on social media.

On April 28, 2017 the accused is seeking to have his trial held in Kalgoorlie, presumably in the hope that a jury of his peers would be well disposed towards his plight.

The charge of manslaughter indicates police were satisfied that his crime was conducted without malice aforethought – a judgement disputed by Aboriginal inhabitants of Kalgoorlie. They say that the perfunctory police investigation of the crime scene was of a piece with the racist attitudes that are an everyday fact of their lives in these West Australian towns.

It underscored the implicit understanding among indigenous people that there is one rule for white people and another for them.

For months before the killing, individuals and groups from the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area had been regularly posting inflammatory material on Facebook in the form of racist memes, jokes and commentary. These were mostly centred around discussions on the high crime rates in the twin towns, where hard drug use is endemic and transient and town-based Indigenous people drink on the streets. Fights and petty crime are common.

“I’ll run them over for ya buddy if I see them”, had said one Facebook post, in a racist thread, on May 24.

“Need to shoot them, sniper style”, said another on July 31.

A comment on August 27 boasted “There is going to be revenge of some sort very soon.” It had 13 ‘likes’.

On Monday August 29, the day of the killing, a Kalgoorlie resident, in response to a provocative thread asked another individual: “Are you planning a murder?”

The response: “Hardly. But you can bet your bottom dollar somebody is. … My money is on it happening Real Soon Now.” (sic).

After Elijah’s death the racial taunts and vilification continued, with posts that same day reading;

“Good hope the kunt (sic) died” and;

“About time someone took it into their own hands hope it happens again.”

WA Police posted a warning against provocative remarks on their Facebook Page. “We remind everyone that comments made on social media that are considered racially motivated or that incite violence are being monitored by police and will be investigated.”

Two sites were closed down but to date no people responsible for these posts have been arrested or cautioned.

The following day, police announced that the accused in the death of Elijah Doughty had been charged with manslaughter, indicating that the death was to be treated as an accident. A cursory inspection of the crime scene, 120 metres away from a main road, indicates that such a charge deserved at least closer investigation. Aboriginal locals say they have photographs of tyre marks that clearly show where the accused’s speeding vehicle struck the motorbike from behind then ran over it and Elijah, its momentum carrying it another twenty metres further. This on a crime scene that police had not bothered to tape off or guard till late on the afternoon of the killing. (See breakout)

It sparked a spontaneous street march by angry Indigenous people that erupted into violence when riot police armed with shields, batons and dogs began arresting teenagers. The courthouse and police cars were then attacked and mainstream media labeled the incident a ‘riot’.

“It wasn’t a riot,” said Deborah Carmody, manager of the local Tjuma Pulka radio station. “If it was a riot they would have smashed the whole street. It was an expression of grief. An uprising fuelled by frustration and anger. There was a very somber, heavy mood. One of our beautiful young boys had been killed.”

Kalgoorlie-Boulder has a history of simmering racial tension, erupting into full-blown ‘anti-European’ race riots in 1916, 1919 and 1934. People died violently in these events.

May 2017 will be the 50th anniversary of the 1967 national referendum, in which white Australia voted overwhelmingly to include Aboriginals in the census and create laws specifically concerning them. Kalgoorlie was a notable exception, with 28% voting no.

Acting for the family of Elijah Doughty, lawyer Stewart Levitt cited the ‘incendiary atmosphere generated by social media’ as well as a racist undertow that has prevailed in the town since colonial times. Levitt successfully defended the Indigenous community of Palm Island in Queensland in relation to events surrounding the 2004 death of Palm Island’s Mulrinji (aka Cameron Doomadgee) in police custody.

At an earlier hearing in the Doughty matter on April 15, Mr Levitt observed that the Crown’s position was largely based on security issues and appeared to have the view that the indigenous population had a ‘propensity to riot’. He said that the Crown had not taken the social climate prevalent in the white community into account.

“The social media aspect was covered extensively in our affidavits but was not addressed at all by the Crown.

One would argue that the Crown should have put this evidence before the court, but there is not much precedence for this sort of matter and we need the judge to allow us discretion for us to be heard and put these matter before the court,” he said.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor John Bowler says the history of racial problems is irrelevant to Elijah Doughty’s death.

“Those people (in the race riots) were dead two generations ago, so to link it is stupid. It’s a bit like saying in Sydney they used to hang people. The world’s moved on.”

But these problems aren’t historic. In terms of race relations, not a whole lot has changed.

It’s a hardboiled mining town in an arid, waterless region whose white population are conspicuously affluent. Aboriginal populations are divided into ‘townies’ who are usually locally born and transient populations from desert tribes. Though these groups largely keep to themselves a common factor is relative poverty. Few Indigenous people work in the mines. Some transient families live in squalid ‘camps’ in marginalised land under the shadow of the 3.5 km long gold mining ‘superpit’ that’s estimated to be worth up to $US1.4 billion.

Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines claims to donate $46 million to the local community each year, but, like most ‘’trickledown’ economics, this doesn’t seem to make it to the original owners. For many Aboriginal residents, poverty and disadvantage is intergenerational, young children being raised in squalid conditions with poor diets and education.

For others in suburban Kalgoorlie or Boulder, low self-esteem and shame at their family’s low economic status breeds a culture of depression and suicide rates are abnormally high. Nationwide, for Aboriginal people aged between 15-35, suicide is the leading cause of death.

A 1981 report by the WA Commissioner for Community Relations found that racial discrimination was widespread throughout Western Australia and ‘the rights of Aboriginal people are infringed in practically all aspects of their daily lives”.

In February 2008, a Coronial inquest described the living conditions for Aboriginal people in the Fitzroy Crossing area of WA as “a national disaster with no disaster response”.

Amongst a litany of recent deaths in custody, three examples demonstrate the human rights accorded Aboriginal people in WA.

In 2007 a Mr Ward was found dead in a non air-conditioned prison van in Kalgoorlie after having been transported 400km by police through brutal summer temperatures. He was to face a drink driving charge.

In January 2011 a Mr Phillips was found dead in a Kalgoorlie jail cell. He had been picked up on a drunk and disorderly charge but was in good health before the incident.

And in 2014 a 22 year-old Aboriginal woman, Ms Dhu, had died while in police custody in Port Hedland, north of Kalgoorlie. Imprisoned for failing to pay fines, she was filmed being manhandled extremely roughly by police officers, who refused to respond to repeated calls for help even after she had remained immobile for hours.

Any one of these would have engendered national headlines and investigations were their victims to have been white.

Nobody would deny that the Aboriginal community in Kalgoorlie-Boulder has its problems. The streets of Boulder in particular are dangerous at night. Gregarious Aboriginal drinkers congregate in parks and at street corners. Their noisy disputes often end in violence. Whites also drink heavily, but tend to do so in pubs or at home.

There has been a spate of motorcycle thefts in the area over recent years. Young Aboriginal men have been conspicuous in police investigations that engendered much racially charged commentary on Facebook groups.

The methamphetamine epidemic that has engulfed so many rural Australian towns has had an impact here too, with many teenagers said to be taking the drug, despite its expense. Crime statistics are in lockstep with the ravages of drugs and alcohol.

The Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper for March 1, 2017 showed that in the Goldfields crime was up 17% from March last year. A three-month police operation on drugs drew a direct line between rises in burglary and theft and the purchase of drugs. Chief of these were methamphetamines, with over $1million worth seized and 20 people charged over 47 drug-related offences.

Kalgoorlie Police declined to answer any inquiries into operational matters in the district so we are left to speculate on the distribution of crimes amongst the white and black population.

What’s certain is there is a culture of imprisonment for Aboriginals in Western Australia, with incarceration rates at nine times the rate of Apartheid South Africa and five times those of the US – widely regarded as the top dog in jailing its citizens. Aboriginal people are 15 times more likely to be charged for swearing or offensive behaviour than the rest of the community. With victims of the Stolen Generation being twice as likely to be arrested as their peers and formidable cultural barriers to negotiating complex legal processes, it’s little wonder that this heinous legacy is directly impacting Aboriginal kids.

Amnesty International cites figures showing that Indigenous children in Western Australia are 53 times more likely to be jailed than non-indigenous kids. This stacks up when you consider that WA is the only state in Australia where mandatory minimum sentences of detention apply to young people.

Mayor John Bowler estimated that there are over 150 government, non government and community organisations charged with administering Indigenous funding and yet there is little community infrastructure or proper facilities for youth recreation. There is nowhere for these kids to go, nothing for them to do.

A summit called by WA Pemier Colin Barnett in Kalgoorlie in November 2016 has, according to Mayor Bowler, determined to build a Youth Centre at some indeterminate date. The Mayor, while claiming to be an avid proponent of the Centre had prior to the Summit seemed to be more concerned with gaining government funding for the city’s exclusive golf club.

He had earlier been quoted as saying that each generation of Aboriginal children was worse than the last.

Mr Bowler insists Kalgoorlie is no more racist than any other town in Australia. He attributes the Facebook dialogues to harmless gossip.

“The squeaky wheels get on there, there might be a dozen out of 33,000. They like the sound of their own voice a lot, get the feedback, pat each other on the back. I don’t think the events there paint a true picture of what our community’s like.”

But at a white barbeque in Boulder I heard Aboriginals described in virulent racist language. According to some of the people present, Aboriginals were without exception thieves and degenerates. The best place for them, we were told, was buried deep down the many mine shafts surrounding Kalgoorlie.

These were not people we had encountered on Facebook. They were unconnected individuals who were pleasant and helpful to white journalists. The hateful racism these and other white people expressed to me in Kalgoorlie indicated that Facebook commentators there are not merely a frosting on top, but the very tip of the racist iceberg.

 

BREAKOUT

Jacqueline Spurling is an Aboriginal language high school teacher and local candidate for the Greens in the WA elections of March 2017. She believes that the police investigation into Elijah Doughty’s death was poorly executed and inadequate.

After hearing news of Elijah’s death Spurling had been distraught and left work. She decided to go down to Gribble Creek, where Elijah had been killed that morning. The site is some 120 metres from a tar road in suburban Boulder.

“We … pulled in close to 12pm. No police were there, it was completely open. The police had been down there in the morning and had not cordoned the place off. People had put flowers there and we could clearly see where (Elijah) was hit and about ten metres away (where) the body would have landed. You could see skid marks in the ground where the car had gone over the body and wound up over by a tree.

“There were women driving 4WDs over the crime scene. We had parked our car on the road and walked into the site but they were driving right over it.

“Then it became like a touristy thing, other people in a 4WD drove over the whole area where the car skidded. This is before forensics had been there.

“We went back down to place some flowers about 330-4pm. I was with about twenty kids, all good mates of his. The police were there and said ‘you can’t go across there’. There was still no police tape up.

“And then a bloke comes from the other side of the street, walking his dog straight over the crime scene while we’re held back. The police made no move to stop him. We’d just seen all these death threats to Aboriginal kids on Facebook and I was overwrought. I said ‘I couldn’t care less any more, arrest me’, and I walked across.

“The young fellas were saying ‘put some police tape up. We watch CSI, you blokes can’t do your job’.

“So finally they put some tape up at 5.09pm, going from photos on my phone. By this stage it’s raining. The forensic van pulls up, the guy gets out, he’s there five minutes. He walks over the scene, takes no photographs, gets back into the car, says ‘yep, you’re right to go’.”

Spurling says the murder and subsequent racial attacks on Facebook have left the Aboriginal community in fear. Many parents will not let their kids out to play on the streets.

“I feared for my life and my children’s life. I thought, ‘how am I going to protect my children?’”

 

Journalism

Hanson’s Golden Mile

mickdaleyo

KALGOORLIE, MARCH 8, 2017

Pauline emerges from the Kalgoorlie Miner offices, sees the journo wolf pack and visibly shudders. Prim in a close fitting one-piece outfit and heels, she’s looking unnerved but breaks into a gracious smile. There’s whoops and whistles and horn blasts coming from the traffic along Hannan Street. Just around the corner is the Golden Mile, a superpit revealing one of the biggest gold mines in the world.

But Pauline Hanson’s after another form of gold here in Western Australia, where the divide between rich whities and the conspicuously dispossessed Indigenous people is as stark as that in their skin colour.

As she waits at the corner (Kalgoorlie traffic lights taking an inordinately long time to change), a car sidles into the kerb with a small dog hanging out the window and a woman waving and smiling while trying to take a photo at the wheel. Pauline grins back. She’s getting the feel of the place.

A young fella who’s pursued the pack from outside the pub asks her for a photo, tries to put his arm around her, gives the flashing cameras a devil-may-care leer and afterwards tells us his name is Ollie.

“I’ve been drinkin’ in the pub since six this morning. Got a cheque for three and a half grand here.”

But asked whether he’d vote for her he laughs.

“I dunno who I’d vote for. I just wanted to get a photo with her.”

More drive-bys with thumbs up and the cry of “Pauline you rock.”

Across the road and into the shade and it’s handshakes all round, smiles of recognition blooming on the faces of people out doing whatever business keeps them in baking hot Kalgoorlie.

All around us, oblivious to this short-lived hootenanny, Indigenous people are enacting their own long game, the parallel slow-mo existence that Hansonites will never understand.

A short, sturdy woman claims Pauline with arms wide, declaring; “About time you came here. I’ve already voted for you.”

Pauline shakes the hand of a young Indian man who had evidently said something complimentary, the redhead replying, “Thank you. That’s very nice.”

She is beguiling, friendly. As I walk alongside her I try to ask a question but I’m tongue-tied. She leans closer.

“Sorry, I didn’t understand the question?”

Then she’s crossing the road to the courthouse, her two minders trying to brush me aside. They’re a white bearded Scotsman, Robin Scott from the Mining and Pastoral Party and Richard Bolton, the local One Nation candidate who has no posters in town and who, according to everyone I’ve asked is not actually running a campaign. We’ve been here a week and certainly seen no evidence of one. It seems Pauline’s visit is the campaign.

We’re now outside the courthouse, torn apart in August last year in a spontaneous uprising by indigenous people grieving the killing of a 14 year old boy, by a white man who was only charged with manslaughter. Facebook had been alight with vigilante-style groups and vicious racist commentary before and after the boy’s death. On the personal pages of many of the group’s members, One Nation memes and devotion were common.

Pauline spots me again and asks; “I’m sorry I couldn’t hear you before …”

I stand at her side. Cameras are flashing. I ask if she’s aware of the killing of of Elijah Doughty and the ensuing grief and unrest in the town. She looks puzzled and says no, she doesn’t know anything about it.

Robin Scott interrupts, saying, yes he knows and will make comment about it later. He hurries his important charge on.

People are gathering, holding children aloft. It’s a fan club. They’re staring at Hanson like she’s the Pope, about to bless them. A lone black man in hi-viz cast-offs shuffles past, eyes downcast. Couldn’t have been better scripted.

A twenty something girl with platinum and purple hair and a kind of medieval frock vest puts her arm boldly around Pauline, grinning widely. Pauline is aglow. Despite the temptation to depict her as a monster, it’s impossible not to marvel at her magnetism. I have to keep reminding myself of the virulent racist subtext, ignorant policies-on-the-run and insular, overweening world-view.

“More and more people are following you,” says another short, fierce looking woman with pearls and a peach blouse. “And they can’t ignore it, no matter how hard they try.”

‘They’, I suppose, are the mainstream media and their lunch money – Labor and the Coalition. The Pauline fan club, consciously or otherwise, are echoing the Trumpists, seeing Hanson as our own Greatness Maker.

As Pauline talks to more people, the cameras are being arranged for interviews with the ABC and Channel 9 Perth. Guy Rundle is there, Crikey’s roving gonzo. His latest piece spoke of the dysfunction in One Nation’s Western Australia campaign, candidates displaying little concept of the standard apparatus of an election campaign. Internal feuding, litigation and failed candidates are daily news items.

But the cameras are waiting for Ashby, who’s stalking through the courthouse portico, on a succession of calls.

“I’m just the middle man,” he snarls. “Don’t fucken flog me.”

Then: “He wanted to be a candidate. Haven’t seen him. Been here in Kalgoorlie all morning.”

Finally Ashby sets up his own camera. He’s a one man media unit, the trash-texting Angel of Death for the 2011 Parliament’s disgraced Speaker Peter Slipper and Julia Gillard’s short-lived majority.

The ABC journo is being directed out of her light by a very professional Pauline. She speaks crisply about the unfairness of the GST levied on Queensland and Western Australia, the two states where her popularity is greatest.

Two overly protective security guards exceed their remit in attempting to aggressively block photographer Dean Sewell’s camera angles, one of them calling him a bloody idiot.

“You’re the one who’s waving your arms around,” he tells the florid faced woman, who’s very anxious to impress Pauline.

There’s been an attractive young couple hanging around the outskirts of the melee, trying to get a photo. Now the woman, a tall blonde wearing shorts and singlet is facing her partner, who’s trying to get her in shot with Pauline. She’s holding a sign on a piece of A4 paper.

Pauline glides over.

“Would you like a photo?”

“Yes, please,” says the woman, folding the sign up in embarrassment.

“What’s on the sign?” asks Dean.

“Oh, I don’t really want to …”

“Go on,” he yells.

She stands beside Pauline, unfolding the sign. Cameras flash. It says; “You Are The Worst.”

Pauline clocks it and says, “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t support anything you stand for,” the woman says. There’s a brief silence, but nobody’s really shocked. It’s all part of the show.

“Just the general racism,” the woman, who’s from Adelaide, and whose name is Kate Wilson, replies to a question from the ABC.

This minor piece of bravery is mostly noticed by the journalists, who swarm around Ms Wilson, Rundle plying her with questions. It doesn’t seem to bother Pauline at all. She’s happily at the centre of this swirling vortex of fame and emotion. Like Trump, she espouses simple pub politics, withholding the spiteful subtext of racism that’s well understood by her fanbase, the champions of White Australia and rule of thumb politics. They love her for it, the half-baked anti-vaccination theories, the Aboriginal-bashing, the Muslim baiting. She plays it with just the right amount of humility and glamour, giving credence to their rancour and they’re star-struck and grateful.

As Pauline’s entourage sweeps off on her way to do ABC radio, in her wake I overhear an overweight security guard on his phone;

“You’’ll never guess who I just shook hands with,” he says. “Pauline Hanson. Yeah. Had a bit of a yarn. I said ‘you’re doing an awesome job’.”

I can hear horns beeping, see people turning, looking over their shoulders and hear car horns trailing down Hannan Street. At the courthouse, people are still gathered, talking excitedly.

Last week we’d interviewed the Mayor of Kalgoorlie, John Bowler, who’d pooh-poohed Hanson’s chances in the WA elections this Saturday. “A souffle never rises twice,” he’d said, quoting Paul Keating. Like many in the political establishment he doesn’t see her relevance. Mind you, he also denies Kalgoorlie is more racist than anywhere else in Australia and scorns the relevance of social media to the real world.

Just as in Trump’s march to power, pundits have been divided on Pauline’s party’s electoral chances in Western Australia this Saturday, March 11. But, with Queensland predicted to follow suit later in the year, it seems likely they’ll win an unprecedented number of seats. And if Pauline’s popularity in Kalgoorlie is any indication, then it seems she just needs to get out of her own way.

 

CSG and coal mining stories

Article on online mag The Big Smoke on Gomeroi people protesting Shenhua Mine

mickdaleyo

Gomeroi people to join Shenhua Mine blockade

Traditional owners of our land set to join blockade of Shenhua Mine if approvals are met, writes new TBS contributor, Mick Daley.

Gomeroi traditional owner Mitchum Neave says he’s prepared to join the new Liverpool Plains Alliance in a blockade to stop the Shenhua Watermark Mine in NSW. Traditional lands and a rich agricultural sector are soon to be obliterated if final approvals are granted by Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt for a 35km square open cut mine in the heart of the Liverpool Plains.

“I won’t speak for other people, but I’ll join a blockade,” Mitchum said, in disgust at Federal Government inaction over alleged breaches of Shenhua’s Cultural Heritage Management Plan (CHMP).

The Gomeroi of Red Chief Local Aboriginal Land Council in Gunnedah say that Sections 9 and 10 of the CHMP have been sitting on Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s desk for two years. They say that breaches of these two sections will clearly show that mining cannot commence on their traditional lands.

Yet Minister Hunt gave approval for the mine to proceed in June 2015, without consideration of the CHMP breaches.

“We’ve had a gutful of the destruction of our culture; we’ll rally together and march on Canberra,” said Mitchum.

Mitchum is a TO from the Breeza township, who was born and bred in nearby Gunnedah. He’s also a Senior Deputy Captain in the Regional Fire Service. He had been a consultant to the NSW Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) when they ordered Shenhua to conduct cultural heritage surveys of the proposed mine site. The Liverpool Plains hide many relics as well as massacre sites, according to Mitchum. But the Grinding Grooves represent spiritual values unfathomable to white culture – not to mention their patent historical value.

“The Grinding Grooves are a war memorial site. I told them at the Planning Assessment Commission meeting, this is our Gallipoli site,” Mitchum explains.

“You wouldn’t like it if I went to your war memorial and destroyed it. I’d be locked up.”

In their CHMP, Shenhua had recognised 55 Aboriginal archaeological sites, but determined that only 26 of them would be conserved. The Grinding Grooves, despite being identified as having high cultural value, would be moved.

“That’s just ridiculous,” snorts Mitchum. “You can’t move them. Some of those sites are the size of a double decker bus. There’s natural spring water runs through the sandstone. If you take it out of that wet environment it’ll dry out and disintegrate.

“I don’t care what rock doctor they get; as soon as they move it, you can’t put it back together.”

The Grooves are deeply scored into clumps of sandstone rock. They were rallying points for Gomeroi warriors prior to white settlement. Strategically placed along the ridgeline above the plains facing south, they look out to where marauding bands of Wiradjuri or Casuli tribesmen – or for that matter, white settlers – would appear.

These were focal points for the Gomeroi culture – sacred space where life is so close to the veil, where death and the unknown come close to this world. Today they are the last hope for the survivors of the Gomeroi people as they seek to preserve their heritage and the land that is as dear to them as life itself.

But this close to final approvals, it seems that Sections 9 and 10 of the CHMP will most certainly be ignored.

Sue Higginson, Principal Litigator for the Environmental Defender’s Office, is pursuing a case against Shenhua Watermark Mine on behalf of a Landcare Group protecting the large koala population there. But she says she has examined the Gomeroi people’s case and sees little hope for legal action on their behalf.

“Our cultural heritage laws are in bad shape. The tragedy is that there aren’t very many options when it comes to cultural heritage. It’s an absolute disgrace.”

It’s a sorry business indeed.

If Shenhua had conducted more thorough surveys of the sites, Mitchum says, they would have turned up hundreds of artefacts and sites.

Mitchum had accompanied their surveys as a consultant.

“When you do these surveys the transects are supposed to be done on foot. They done it in a four wheel drive, but the grass is three foot high – you can’t see anything.

“One of the criteria for their approvals here was they had to survey 17 percent of the country, but they only ended up doing two percent of it. But the mine people will just shop around ’til they find an archeologist who writes what they want.”

Like the other Gomeroi, Mitchum is utterly disillusioned with this process.

“I was told when I grew up, ‘Keep it to yourself. Two things the white man will do, they’ll sell it or destroy it.’”

Fed up with following normal channels, the Gomeroi people have now joined the Liverpool Plains Alliance. It’s a group that’s uniting farmers, townspeople, Lock The Gate and environmental groups including The Wilderness Society and 350.org.

The Alliance is exerting considerable political pressure on both State and Federal Governments. Legal actions are shortly to commence.

With the price of thermal coal plummeting and pressure mounting against extractive fossil fuel industries to curtail their global warming emissions, new coal mines are increasingly seen as very dangerous propositions.

Australia’s conservative State and Federal Governments are resisting mounting international pressure to dramatically reduce carbon output. Their determination to subsidise and promote coal over renewables has made this mine seem inevitable.

But if all else fails, the farmers of the Liverpool Plains and many members of the Alliance have pledged to blockade the mine site and refuse to allow construction to commence. Mitchum, Aunty Dolly Talbot and the Gomeroi elders are all for it. They’ve had enough of this sorry business.

“We don’t want to break the law, ‘cause they’ll paint you as the bad person, but we were trying to do the right thing and the Government has failed us,” said Mitchum.

“It’s time now to stand up for our culture.”

 

The Liverpool Plains Alliance is holding an awareness and activist training weekend, the Harvest Festival Against Shenhua, on the Liverpool Plains next to the proposed mine site, on November 6 to November 8, 2015.

See the Facebook site for more details.

CSG and coal mining stories

Published 6/8/16 in the Saturday Paper as ‘Uneducated Guess’

mickdaleyo

In October 2015, an unconventional gas mining well head ruptured at Aliso Canyon near Los Angeles. It belched out a massive plume of methane – the most potent greenhouse gas. Overhead, a Hyperion spectrometer aboard a NASA satellite measured the equivalent of the yearly emissions from 572,000 cars surging into the overburdened atmosphere.

It’s no accident the Hyperion was aboard that satellite. Data from it was being crunched by NASA scientists as part of a continuing assessment of “fugitive emissions” from the leak-prone gas mining industry.

America’s Environmental Defence Fund estimates a quarter of anthropogenic global warming is caused by methane emissions. Almost half of that comes from fugitive emissions – leaking wells, pipes and compressors used in coal or gas mining.

The United States has had an enormous, largely unregulated gas extraction industry since the 1950s. Known as shale gas in the US, the industry accounted for 40 per cent of natural gas production as at 2014 and is on the rise, having generated 1.7 million new jobs, while drastically lowering the cost of domestic gas.

“The political sensitivities are real. It would be surprising to me if it had no effect.”

Despite this employment and revenue boom, and in a political climate coming to terms with the realities of climate change, the Obama administration has been bankrolling concerted fugitive emission research projects. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules specifically aimed at curbing gas-mining emissions.

That’s a startling contrast with Australia’s pro-coal seam gas (CSG) Coalition government. The government’s studies of gas fields in Queensland have been funded largely by the Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance (GISERA), a joint project between the federal Department of Industry, Innovation and Science and big mining companies. GISERA provided $14 million for a study that found fugitive emissions to be negligible.

The department declined to comment on the issue.

However, Dr Michael Borgas, formerly a principal research scientist and head of the staff association at CSIRO, has observed how government cuts impair serious research.

“We’re losing some of that capability to be able to do proper measurements and monitoring of those sorts of emissions … and to make sure it’s done in a publicly funded, transparent way, so that the knowledge is better trusted,” Borgas told The Saturday Paper.

The government’s scientific body, the CSIRO, has had 1300 jobs cut in two years by successive federal budgets – 150 of them from climate research, according to Borgas. It is as yet unclear what to make of this week’s announcement by new Science Minister Greg Hunt that the CSIRO should refocus on climate change science.

Borgas has lodged a case with the Fair Work Commission for unfair dismissal from his CSIRO position.

“The reason given in my case was reduction in the need for near-field particle analysis. So … they wanted to remove capabilities related to air quality and the exposure of humans to toxic chemicals.

“There’s a contention about whether the decisions [on job cuts] were made on factors like union membership. That came to the fore on the basis of emails that were released to the senate inquiry.”

Federal subsidies to the fossil fuel industry are estimated to be about $7.7 billion annually. The Coalition and Labor between them have received $3.7 million in donations from fossil fuel companies since the 2012 election.

A Sydney Morning Herald investigation found 24 ministers or advisers moving into high-level industry jobs after careers spent facilitating mining projects. A former adviser of New South Wales Premier Mike Baird is the current CEO of the NSW Minerals Council, and Baird’s draconian protest laws were promised to the mining industry at a pre-election dinner in 2014.

The prevailing message from ministers and lobbyists has been that Australia needs CSG to forestall an energy crisis. Yet The Sydney Morning Herald investigation revealed how Australia is essentially giving away liquefied natural gas (LNG) resources to multinational miners while claiming a shortfall in gas supplies.

The new federal minister for the environment and energy is Josh Frydenberg – a confirmed proponent of CSG as a means of ensuring Australia’s domestic gas supply.

In this political environment independent scientists struggle for funding research of fugitive emissions.

Professor Isaac Santos is a researcher at the National Marine Science Centre in Coffs Harbour. An expert in greenhouse gases, he has worked all over the world, from Antarctica to China.

Since 2008, Santos has been the beneficiary of 14 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants worth $4.5 million. But he says that when it comes to getting funding for CSG studies in Australia, he has hit a brick wall.

“I applied for nine research grants in 2013,” he says. “I got five. The four I failed are CSG related.”

Santos is quick to assert he’s not a coal seam gas activist.

“I just believe in science,” he said.

In 2012, he and a team of Southern Cross University scientists made a submission to the government’s now defunct Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency on fugitive emissions from gas fields in south-west Queensland. Using a cavity ring-down spectrometer, the baby cousin of the Hyperion, they demonstrated hugely elevated leakages.

“It took us one day driving a car to obtain more on methane in Australian CSG fields than has been made available in over 10 years,” Santos said.

That report provoked a savage response from ministers and industry. Santos and his colleagues were pilloried for not having a baseline study with which to compare their findings. That would mean having data on natural methane emissions before gas mining infrastructure was introduced, in order to prove that these elevated emissions were directly caused by industrialised gas fields.

But no gas fields in Australia have baseline studies – energy companies were not required to have these before they were given exploration licences in the late-20th century.

Santos and his team were vindicated when the paper was peer-approved, meaning their methodology and results were found by the scientific community to be impeccable.

However, without adequate funding, he says that research into gas field emissions can never match the findings made by US scientists.

“What you’re really missing in Australia now is the landscape scale. You can do this bottom-up approach of adding up a bunch of wells, or we could fly over and get the gas fields as a point source. But we don’t have that capacity here.

“The Americans have those models but they are flying. We should be flying but it’s a money issue. We’re 10 years behind the Americans in that respect.”

The University of Melbourne’s Professor Peter Rayner, one of Australia’s foremost carbon cycle and climate researchers, says that while the ARC is well insulated against political interference, other funding avenues are more vulnerable.

“The political sensitivities are real. It would be surprising to me if it had no effect, particularly on direct government funding.”

Rayner says that CSIRO scientists in Australia are doing serious research and postulates a midpoint between their findings and those of Santos.

“There’s only one truth out there and at the moment we’re seeing different aspects of it. It’s worth remembering that [fugitive emission] doesn’t have to be very serious before it cancels out much of the climate benefit of the gas [in comparison with coal].”

While acknowledging the integrity of individual scientists, Santos questions the CSIRO findings. He says they are compromised by the nature of their funding body.

“The data that’s come out in the past two or three years is … cherrypicked,” Santos says.

“They’re not measuring the worst wells, because they’re being guided by the industry. There are a thousand wells in the catchment, so they give them a list – can you please choose 50 for me?”

Rayner also says that the inability to conduct proper research means that scientists are missing another crucial contributor to gas field emissions.

“The sleeper issue is the geology in these CSG areas,” he said. “There might be evidence … to be concerned about whether the geology … is conducting methane to the surface.

“There’s evidence of that in the US – hotspots of methane where they’re not extracting anymore. While worrying about the infrastructure we might miss the slow-burning percolation of methane through the soil that could change the overall picture.”

In mid-July Borgas had a hearing over his case for unfair dismissal from the CSIRO. He has been directed to further negotiate with the institution.

“There are up to 30 people, maybe more, that have claims that their redundancies are not valid,” he says.

“The current minister [Christopher Pyne] was an advocate for improving air quality in Australia as a national priority, so whether or not he brings that to the new direction [of research priority] remains to be seen.”

 

CSG and coal mining stories

Cause of Action

mickdaleyo

The morning Sue Higginson invites me to court, she is there to hear the decision on a New South Wales Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) case disputing Chinese coal company Yancoal’s bid to expand operations in the Hunter Valley town of Camberwell.

Higginson is principal litigator and lately chief executive of the defenders office which, in this instance, had represented widowed octogenarian farmer Wendy Bowman’s property against Yancoal.

In the courtroom, a bewigged justice read the verdict.

“I dismiss the appeal,” he uttered dryly, “with costs.” And with that, a landmark case against Big Coal was won.

“We’ve got a political system that has privileged the rights of these multinational corporations over the top of community and environmental rights.”

It was another in a series of astonishing victories for the legal centre. Higginson and her outfit have a formidable record, having been responsible for a series of victories against multinational corporations.

“We’re very small and we punch way above our weight,” Higginson observes. “But change is slow in a system as big as ours.”

The legal centre suffered an enormous blow in December 2013, when then prime minister Tony Abbott pulled vital federal funding. The following year the NSW government also reduced state funding.

But Higginson and the EDO are nothing if not resilient. Since then, they’ve undertaken ambitious fund-raising drives that have helped facilitate recent wins over Japanese whalers, the Indian Adani corporation and its massive Carmichael coal project in Queensland, and now Yancoal at Camberwell.

Higginson’s is an amazing story. In 10 years, she’s risen to become head of an institution that is on the front line of environmental advocacy in Australia.

In an age of potentially disastrous global warming crises, women such as Higginson have formed the vanguard of Australia’s environmental protection. From Indigenous spokeswomen to corporate warriors, they are bringing the fight for survival from the fringe of activism to our mainstream courts and stock exchanges.

With up to 90 per cent of Australia’s landmass under exploration or mining licences, many of these issues directly relate to mining and the extraction of fossil fuels.

Sue Higginson’s story is particularly germane, as her role means she is directly involved in legal battles across the spectrum of environmental issues. It’s a role she relishes, one she’s been working towards since she came to the struggle in her mid-teens, while at school in Melbourne.

“I picked up that in NSW we were logging old-growth forest and that there was very little left. And as an inquisitive young person I kept looking for the sense in that,” she says.

She left home for northern NSW, where she joined the North East Forest Alliance. “It was an organisation that had a plan, and I need a plan,” Higginson says. “I’m not just an emotional operator, I need to operate on the basis of scientific evidence and most importantly within a context.”

Higginson spent years on the remote front line of forestry campaigns, negotiating with loggers and police at often-volatile blockades. After the forest alliance won seven landmark court cases and successfully stopped old-growth logging in NSW, she found herself sitting across from government ministers, helping carve out the deals that created the forest reserve system that stands today.

“I found myself having to master all these skills. I learnt a lot about the legal system, about social movements, and I saw a very clear line in that you do it through science and evidence,” she says.

“So I got myself into university and I could see all the way from day one that the law was going to be the tool to further the actual purpose that I was put on the earth to do, and that was to protect the environment.”

Graduating with first-class honours, Higginson began working in private practice. Three years later, she took a job with the Environmental Defenders Office. After seven years, she became principal solicitor. In 2015, she became chief executive.

“I’ve become an expert in public interest environmental law, and the best vehicle in this country to assist the community is the organisation I work for,” she says. “Becoming CEO means that I can have a seriously committed attempt at keeping this organisation the best it can be.”

That is a very high standard. The office has operated with remarkable success for 30 years, so well that it has made very powerful enemies.

In 2012 the Minerals Council’s chief executive, Stephen Galilee, accused the EDO of a “deliberate campaign of economic sabotage” and the next year lobbied for punitive measures from attorney-general George Brandis and then NSW premier Barry O’Farrell, who later stood down over evidence given to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Indeed, two Labor and 12 Liberal MPs have been dragged before ICAC over corruption allegations related to the approval of coal and coal seam gas mining projects in recent years. Nonetheless, Higginson’s outfit lost most state and federal funding.

Private funding by tax-deductible donations is also endangered, as the Coalition has sought to revoke the office’s charitable status.

“It’s times like that that I have a rare moment of questioning the effectiveness of what we’re doing,” Higginson confides.

“We’ve got a political system that has privileged the rights of these multinational corporations over the top of community and environmental rights.”

In 2013, the office represented the citizens of Bulga, a small town in the Hunter Valley, against the extension of an open-cut mine owned by Rio Tinto. The office won the case, at which point O’Farrell changed legislation so the miners could appeal. After a second loss, and O’Farrell’s disgrace, the Baird government has amended its rules in a third attempt to force the mine expansion.

“So that’s the other thing, you’ve gotta be a fighter in this job,” Higginson says. “The sense of injustice is just horrific when that happens.”

Such injustice has provoked considerable civil unrest as citizens, many of them farmers, are becoming aware of the power that multinational miners hold over their country.

“Now we’re seeing this massive growing movement throughout NSW and Queensland. Farmers who have never protested against anything before are standing up to say, ‘Enough’,” Higginson says. “When I started my foray into environmental protection, there was a lot of polarised conflict. It was loggers versus greenies or farmers versus greenies.

“But in the last five years, traditional National Party voters are seeing reason in what the greener side of politics is speaking.

“You throw in the very serious issue of climate change and you’re getting a very complex alliance of people.”

This first manifested when farmers, assisted by the Environmental Defenders Office, began mobilising against massive coal and CSG projects in Queensland. It came into its own in the Northern Rivers of NSW, where a coalition of farmers and townspeople combined to see off speculative CSG mining company Metgasco.

More recently on the NSW Liverpool Plains, a similar alliance has vowed to stop Shenhua’s planned 35-square-kilometre open-cut mine in some of the finest agricultural land in the country.

In the Pilliga Forest, where mining company Santos seeks to drill more than 800 CSG wells in the recharge area for the Great Artesian Basin, farmers from all over north-western NSW are joining activists to blockade drilling rigs.

“The clients that I work with…” Higginson says. “It’s hard to explain just how dedicated and committed these groups and individuals are and the burden that they carry, in most cases on behalf of all Australians, of generations that haven’t yet come.”

This workload takes a heavy toll on Higginson, as she commutes between work in Sydney and family in Lismore. But she is resolute that the sacrifices she makes are more than compensated for by the importance of her work and of the law centre.

“I know this office really well. When I say this office, I’m talking about an institution that has developed over 30 years and needs to be here, not just in the next 30 years but as long as we have a civil society that is governed by a legal system. This office is fundamental.

“Some nights, when it’s hard to sleep because I’ve got a massive case the next day, I long for the day when somebody taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘My turn,’” says Higginson.

“But at the end of the day I know that seeking environmental justice is not about one case. This is a lifetime engagement and it will go beyond my years.”