Opinion
Twenty years after Save Ningaloo, WA’s next cultural reckoning is here
Paul Gamblin
Director, Protect NingalooTwenty years ago this week, then-premier Dr Geoff Gallop stood on the beach at Coral Bay, Ningaloo surrounded by TV crews and announced that the government had ruled against a controversial marina resort.
The crowd of locals erupted in cheers and someone held a phone aloft so we could hear it all live from our cramped campaign office in Perth, where the nerves ran raw. The Premier said the government had drawn a line in the sand to protect that fragile coastline.
Dennis Jack Beros gives the thumbs up to fellow Save Ningaloo campaigners in Perth listening to then-premier Gallop’s announcement.
Governments often get the jitters saying no to development. But of course, it’s one of the reasons we have government: to determine on our collective behalf what’s appropriate and what isn’t.
A no to the wrong kind of development or activity, is also a yes to protecting something many would see as more important. In this case, a coral reef that isn’t overdeveloped also delivers economic dividends.
The marina proposal and growing concern that Ningaloo wasn’t getting the protection it deserved had catalysed one of the biggest community movements in recent WA history.
Months earlier, 15,000 people had gathered to support the reef, and the huge crowd was goodnatured but resolved to be seen and to be heard, and it was distinctively diverse, impossible to pigeonhole. It was a cross-section of the community by any measure.
Our Save Ningaloo bumper stickers were everywhere: on utes and bikes, BMWs and kombis. It felt like something profound was happening – because it was, and the political class felt it.
Twenty years on and the environment and climate change are emphatically mainstream, and consistently rate in the top considerations for voters, in the same basket of concerns as the economy, health and housing.
Younger voters could well become rusted-on environment voters. Generations of lifers-for-nature because it’s just so bleedingly obvious that our life support system is tired and teetering, and needs our rather urgent attention.
That said, Save Ningaloo was known as a “mums and dads” campaign too. It takes a village. And we’re back at it, by necessity.
Fifteen thousand people marched on Fremantle to save Ningaloo from overdevelopment. Credit: Roel Loopers
The pointy end of the work to protect nature before it’s too late comes in many forms, and one that is persistent is determining carefully what kind of activities should be permitted in places where nature still records a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, the system tends to be reactive: threats appear (often out of the blue) … the community and scientists react … overdue policy responses are wedged in. Sometimes.
Surely we can do better.
What’s clear is that the pace of conservation action lags far behind that of development interests. The hare is still way out in front of the tortoise.
In the case of Exmouth Gulf, shortly after Gallop’s widely, even wildly, popular decision to set a positive direction for Ningaloo and support the ultimately successful World Heritage bid for the area, an independent committee recommended that Exmouth Gulf be included within those boundaries.
This was reiterated by the United Nations on the best available scientific advice but sadly, the big end of town helped quash that sensible, prescient proposal back in the day. That listing would have helped confirm the direction of travel for Exmouth Gulf, as it has for the ever-popular Ningaloo.
Which helps explain why battle lines are being drawn all over again at Ningaloo.
Proponents of two of big industrial development proposals for the Gulf are still hawking their wares, seemingly in a parallel universe: first, Gascoyne Gateway’s industrial port and dredging proposal adjacent to one of the world’s major humpback whale resting and nursing areas; second, the K+S salt project, 52 times bigger than Kings Park, in a nationally listed, significant wetland.
It took this for the current government, albeit to its credit, to have the EPA undertake a long overdue, broad assessment of the Gulf; the kind of big-picture, strategic approach that should be the norm, not the exception.
The EPA confirmed Exmouth Gulf’s global importance, its fragility, and its circumstances: that it’s under pressure and needs protection. No scientist, nor anyone who knows the area was surprised by this, but many were reassured.
Exmouth Gulf’s environmental significance is becoming more widely understood. Credit: Alex Kydd
The government backed the EPA’s advice, committed to an initial set of new protected areas, to be jointly designed with Traditional Owners, and set up a taskforce to take the work further, acknowledging and recognising that much more needed to be done.
The mangroves, seagrass meadows, wetlands, corals and increasingly rare wildlife like dugongs and sawfish and turtles, are what help sustain our natural life support system.
Places like Exmouth Gulf are like organs we don’t think about much until they stop working. We are fortunate, in ways we are mostly yet to fathom, to have such precious places under our stewardship in Australia.
As we face our moment of reckoning as a planet, much of our effort must also focus on what’s happening in our own backyard, where we have direct responsibility. Places like Exmouth Gulf.
Saying no to the wrong things is saying yes to what is right for these places; embracing what is right for our world.
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