Development, governance and Indigenous people : foregrounding the LNG precinct case in the Kimberley

Abstract

After four and a half years evaluating the viability of the establishment of the Browse LNG Precinct onshore at James Price Point in the Kimberley, Woodside and its Joint Venture Partners decided to abandon the project in April 2013. How Indigenous people in the Kimberley made their voices manifest in resource development discussions through their own internal governance system and through their interactions with the institutions of Government and transnational companies is the subject of my thesis. The Browse LNG Precinct proposal was contentious and caused deep divisions within family members, friends and employers in Broome. It became the site of a struggle for recognition of the many voices representing the competing interests of economic development, Aboriginal cultural heritage protection, and environmental conservation. My particular focus is the notion of development by Indigenous people and by the Western Australian government particularly when Traditional Law intersects with Australian mainstream law over land held in common. I examine how notions of development and related values were manifested in practice at mining sites that overlapped with Indigenous sacred sites at Noonkanbah, Argyle and James Price Point. I have found that essentially, the Indigenous people's voices are represented through the recognition space of state institutional apparatus. The design and operation of legislative acts enabled a system of control over how Aboriginal interests are to be governed within the framework of Australia's governance of mineral and natural resources. Co-existence between Aboriginal and Western cosmology constitutes dynamic processes and the interplay for mutual recognition. In practice, the dominant system of control filters the Indigenous voice by its translation within the institutional practices of the Australian state and legal system.

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English