Traditional owners have told a parliamentary hearing for a controversial mining and manufacturing project that white ‘idiot’ activists are blocking their economic development opportunities.
Top End Aboriginal Coastal Alliance Chair Julius Kernan says Indigenous Territorians face many ‘hurdles’ and siding with interstate environmentalists had previously caused them to ‘miss out’ on the benefits projects bring.
‘It is time for our people to be recognised or identified as people to engage with in a culturally appropriate manner and have space to have a say without interruption from non-Indigenous idiots,’ he told a Senate inquiry examining the Middle Arm development in the Northern Territory on Monday.
It was a response to NT Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s question about the detrimental effect of interstate environmental activists blocking projects that could bring economic development to Aboriginal people.
Mr Kernan said the group from the Top End coastal and sea country areas wants economic development to help improve education outcomes and create jobs for future generations of Indigenous Territorians.
‘We want them to fill the roles our people have been missing out on,’ he said.
Renewable energy company, Suncable, denied helping to greenwash the project, known as the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct by the NT government.
It is already home to the Santos Darwin LNG and the INPEX Ichthys LNG processing facilities, with plans for gas-fracking company Tamboran Resources Limited to take a parcel of land at the site near Darwin.
Suncable Managing Director Cameron Garnsworthy said the company was in talks with the other four ‘green and forward-facing’ future tenants, including prospective hydrogen producer Fortescue Future Industries.
‘We don’t see ourselves as greenwashing at all,’ he said.
‘We’re looking to supply low-cost electrons to those customers and we’ve entered into a number of (letters of intent) to that effect, which supports that basis of our business going forward.’
Outside of the Canberra hearing, committee chair South Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the $1.5billion project, that has Commonwealth backing, would contribute to climate change.
‘No wonder the local community, the tourism industry, the fishing industry, the schools, the nurses, the doctors, and the local traditional owners don’t want this project,’ she said.
‘It’s time that the local Darwin community were listened to by representatives here in Canberra.’
The hearing continues.