Tiwi Islanders initially raised no objection to tapping the Barossa gasfield or the pipeline linking it to Darwin. Then the green lawyers rolled in with their academics-for-hire, persuaded a hanful of locals to rewrite their creation myths and stopped the project in its tracks. As the Federal Court has found, that campaign was a gigantic and cynical fraud
The legal obstacles and costly delays inflicted on the Barossa gasfield highlights yet again the exploitation of purported Aboriginal culture by activists in this instance supported by taxpayer dollars to advance anti-development agendas. It is a ploy as simple as it is brazen: tap an Aborigine to serve as plaintiff, assert sacred sites are threatened and then, regardless of expert or community views, count on a sympathetic court to order a halt
The legal challenge to Woodside's geological survey off the WA coast hangs on claims of 'whale songlines' and an island of fecund turtles. The first instinct is to laugh that someone would file such a preposterous claim and, less funny, that a court might take it seriously. That's when the giggling stops because here we have yet another warning of the threat to development and national wealth posed by activists, not least those on the bench
Aboriginal communities, corporations, clans, families and individuals all have their own agendas and, no less than other Australians, seek their own best advantage. One voice doesn’t speak for all, and one Voice won’t speak for all. The ongoing farce halting the development of an offshore WA gasfield is all the proof needed