Friday 5^th October

So…today’s blog is going to be totally serious and preachy.

Last night Pete and I went to the Richard Jones Memorial lecture at Tas Uni.  (The last one I went to was in 1987…David Suzuki, full of passion re sustainability and exponential growth.  What have I been doing in the years between then and now???)

Bob Brown gave a very sensible but alarming talk and showed us a bit of film about the beautiful Kimberley region, and then told us what is proposed… I have cut out a few bits from various news sites and I think we should all send an email to Tony Burke asking him to reconsider his support this particular site.  The positive point he made was that there is an alternative site which will be cheaper for the gas company and much less disruptive to the environment.  The only reason they are proposing the Kimberly site is that it is considered to be a vote winner in Western Australia…

The alternative option – piping the gas south to the existing North West Shelf industrial site – offers lower capital costs and fewer risks

Australia's meant to be hosting the biggest liquefied natural gas project in the world, worth $30 billion. But will it ever go ahead, with a massive row over its future?

James Price Point, the proposed site of a vast gas processing factory in Western Australia's remote Kimberley region, is now the focus of Brown's energy. The joint venture, led by Woodside Petroleum, will cost upwards of $30 billion to build and threatens to despoil Aboriginal sacred sites, the offbeat culture of Broome, and the world's longest trail of fossilised dinosaur footprints.

It's the whales, though, that Brown particularly wants to save.

''We have our place, the whales deserve to have theirs,'' he says simply. The gas factory plan calls for a lengthy breakwater that would cut through a whale migration route that leads to what is thought to be the world's largest nursery for humpback calves.

''We were in the inflatable boat, about two kilometres off the point, and a baby whale calf came up right in front of us and let out a great, melodious sigh,'' Brown says of his recent voyage to the gas factory site aboard a Sea Shepherd vessel.

''Then, further along, another calf came up out of the ocean and splashed back in, and it was followed by its mother, which sent up a huge fountain of water beside us. That's going to be with me for the rest of my life.''

The main concern of the Wilderness Society and other groups throwing resources into the campaign is that the large-scale dredging required for the gas port will create a ''dead zone'' across the whales' traditional migration route. They also warn that it could damage and disrupt turtle and dugong populations.

So… send an email to: Tony.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au