First published September 2009
A mining registrar in Western Australia has a hard decision to make. The Martu Idja Banjima Native Title claimants — the Martidja Manyjima people of the Pilbara — want him to hear their challenge to BHP Billiton's claim for more mining leases on 200 square kilometres of their traditional land. BHP Billiton doesn't.
The Martidja Manyjima people have decided the damage to their responsibilities to the land of water degradation and destruction of sacred sites by the owners of the nearby massive Hope Downs mine is just too great. They don't want money, they want to limit the endless expansion of mining on their country.
The power differential couldn't be greater. Potentially, the country may have ore worth $25 billion in exports next year alone, which both State and Federal governments desire, as do the owners and shareholders of the four big mines already in the area, which have ambitious expansion plans.
The Martidja Manyjima people are just 200 extended families. They want to tell the registrar that the cumulative impact of mining on their country's water resources (already pumping billions of gallons from the aquifer to expose the ore), as well as irreversible damage to their culture, has been and will be catastrophic.
They have approached the registrar, who recommends to the minister whether more leases should be granted, to present the evidence of enormous human rights violations, in the public interest. The mining companies have opposed even this, claiming that the Martidja Manyjima people have enough protections under WA's Environmental and Aboriginal Heritage protection laws.
Here's where it gets interesting.
There is a precedent for their request: a WA Supreme Court ruling that a mining registrar could and should consider the publicly-funded Environmental Defender's Office arguments because environmental issues are a public interest issue when deciding on mining in Perth's lovely hill suburbs. Not a lot of Aboriginal householders live there.
The solicitors for the Martidja Manyjima people want their client to have similar rights. They say neither an environmental impact assessment nor a comprehensive heritage survey has been carried out, even though 35,000-year-old artefacts have been found on the site. They say the cumulative effect of mining on their human rights has not been and should be properly considered.
The solicitors invited the Australian Human Rights Commission to intervene. In her letter of reply, AHRC President Hon Catherine Branson QC said it would not 'at this point',