Max O.
Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett ordered 250 police officers to Broome in the middle of May, to crush community opposition to the proposed gas industrial complex at James Price Point.
The Wilderness Society’s National Director, Lyndon Schneiders stated (May 14): “This could be the biggest police deployment to crush a regional community protest since the Eureka Stockade.”
The Broome community, particularly the indigenous people, the Greens and the Wilderness Society, are against the project being situated at James Price Point and have repeatedly called for Browse Basin gas to be piped south to Woodside's existing North West Shelf facilities in the Pilbara region. They oppose Australia’s biggest industrial development being built on their doorstep. This project has no environmental approvals or social licence.
The Broome community had already been traumatised by last year’s heavy-handed use of police and Woodside’s own private security force. Many local protesters, including elderly indigenous people, were last year hauled away by police and locked up.
However, the Premier of Western Australia and the Browse joint venture partners — Woodside, BP, BHP Billiton, Shell, Chevron, Mitsubishi and Mitsui — are intent on using the fascist measures of a police state to push ahead with the James Price gas project.
More than 600 people gathered outside Broome police station in Western Australia’s Kimberley in a showdown with authorities over the proposed gas hub. An estimated 250 police with riot gear carried out a pre-emptive clearing operation against the protesters from the controversial James Price Point gas hub site 60 km north of the town.
“The community is feeling like they’re in lock-down here,” a Broome resident said.
“We’re expecting a showdown … because the Shire has instructed one of the protest camps to be removed ...”
This person pointed out that the heavy police presence was “unprecedented since the Noonkanbah dispute”, referring to the confrontations of the 1970s and 80s between WA police and protesters near Fitzroy Crossing, when oil company AMAX was given state approval to drill on an Aboriginal sacred site.
The James Price Point dispute is comparable to the past Noonkanbah struggle, with the WA government similarly locked in a fight with conservationists, local Aborigines and other Kimberley residents over plans to compulsorily acquire the site for a $30 billion liquid natural gas (LNG) processing plant.
The Browse joint venture partners demonstrated their malevolent skill of splitting indigenous communities during April, by getting those Aboriginal families who had signed over the rights to the use Aboriginal land, to perform a traditional ceremony for Woodside to open their new office. However, roughly 30 protesters expressed their hostility, as two Aboriginal women held a traditional smoking ceremony. They shouted out, “Don't sell out. How can you stand there and do a ceremony when you’re not the traditional owners?”
These classic tactics of divide and rule and fascist strong-arm force are used to guarantee that the industrial complex at James Price Point, the biggest industrial precinct in the world, is built on time. As the Broome community points out, this gas hub will have largely a detrimental impact on local families and the environment!
The Browse Gas Hub struggle is a salutary reminder of the role played by the capitalist state in such disputes. It is never neutral! The state is there to implement the will and orders of monopoly capital, in this instance the mining corporations. Their intention is to exploit Australia’s sovereign mineral resources and extract surplus value from those workers involved in the construction and running of the LNG processing plant. The state apparatus really belongs to the likes of Woodside, BP, BHP Billiton, Shell, Chevron, Mitsubishi and Mitsui!
No comments:
Post a Comment