The time it has taken for the federal environment minister to consider an application to protect Indigenous rock art has “grossly exceeded” what is reasonable, a court has been told.
Mardathoonera woman Raelene Cooper submitted an application under Section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act in February 2022, in a bid to protect her Country in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
The area, known as the Burrup Peninsula, or Murujuga, contains some of the world’s oldest and largest petroglyphs.
Ms Cooper has long opposed Woodside’s North West Shelf extension, and other industrial developments in the area, fearing for the future of this unique collection of rock art.
In May, Ms Cooper launched action in the Federal Court to compel Environment Minister Murray Watt to consider her Section 10 application.
The action came a week before Mr Watt granted interim approval of the North West Shelf extension until 2070, which was met with opposition from environmental groups and Traditional Owners.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Ms Cooper told the Federal Court in Sydney there has still not been a decision made on Ms Cooper’s application, more than three years after it was first lodged.
“It is plain, almost beyond argument that three-and-half years grossly exceeds a reasonable for the making of that decision,” they said.
Ms Cooper’s lawyers said a report prepared for then-federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was met with a period of “outwardly facing inactivity”.
While the report found there was no conclusive evidence that industrial emissions were harming the ancient petroglyphs at Murujuga, it did make a number of recommendations to protect Indigenous heritage in the area.
One of the recommendations was fertiliser developer Perdaman should drop plans for a causeway across the site of its urea plant in the area.
Ms Cooper’s lawyers said while the environment minister had this report, the Western Australian government had given the green light for the construction of this causeway and construction was underway.
“At a bare minimum … it was unreasonable not to have made a decision for so long that the very thing that was presenting a threat, identified quite clearly by the reporter, was able to occur and largely be completed,” they said.
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