Thread by @EDOLawyers

BREAKING: Six Tiwi elders have submitted an urgent application to Minister Tanya Plibersek to make a declaration to protect sacred Tiwi cultural heritage, which they say is at immediate risk of desecration from the construction of a pipeline for Santos’s Barossa Gas Project.

Santos has announced that it intends to begin work on the pipeline as soon as this Wednesday, despite being aware of Tiwi concerns that it will traverse an area of significant underwater cultural heritage.

📸: Tymunna Clements
edo.org.au/2023/10/24/tiw…

The application to Minister Tanya Plibersek under the ATSIHP Act requests the Minister to make a special declaration to prevent serious and immediate harm to significant underwater cultural sites in the Timor Sea, where Santos is intending to develop the Barossa Gas Project.

Over the last few months, Tiwi people have made their concerns known to Santos as part of a separate process overseen by the offshore regulator NOPSEMA, which, in Jan. 2023, required work on the pipeline to stop until Santos completed an underwater cultural heritage assessment.

Last week, Tiwi people learned that Santos was preparing to commence works on the pipeline. The pipeline route will cross an area of the sea floor where Tiwi people say it will cause significant harm to ancient Tiwi burial grounds, songlines and other sacred ancestral sites.

Tiwi people have now appealed to Minister Plibersek to exercise her powers to grant urgent protection over the area. Tiwi people have taken this step to try to ensure that their sacred areas, and the spiritual beliefs and ways of life associated with them, are protected.

If the Minister makes a declaration under the ATSIHP Act, Santos would be prevented from taking any steps that would contravene that declaration.

📸: Tymunna Clements
edo.org.au/2023/10/24/tiw…

“If Santos puts that pipeline where it has said, it will destroy our sacred sites and our ancient burial grounds. This will impact our spirituality and destroy our health, our home + our lives.” - Senior Jikilaruwu elder Molly Munkara

📸: Tymunna Clements edo.org.au/2023/10/24/tiw…