By Graham Matthews
TOWNSVILLE — "Boong bashing with a giant bludgeon" was how Carpentaria Lands Council coordinator Murrandoo Yanner described mining multinational Rio Tinto's attempts to secure agreement for the Century Zinc mine in Carpentaria gulf country.
Addressing more than 500 people attending the Students and Sustainability Conference, Yanner detailed the process leading to the agreement, by native title claimants earlier this year, to allow the mine to go ahead.
Yanner likened Rio Tinto's tactics in the project to those it employed on Bougainville. In the latter case, CRA (now Rio Tinto) precipitated a war; with Century Zinc it had "sowed the seeds of violence within our community".
Yanner said that CRA "offered bribes, land cruisers and such" to win over significant individuals.
CRA also sent its previous head of public relations on Bougainville to oversee the Century Zinc project, 250 kilometres north-west of Mt Isa. "He starts a war over there, so they send him to us."
CRA "brought that same attitude to our country", Yanner said. In the first year of the site's exploration, the bulk sample contractor did irreparable damage, destroying an aquifer containing 1 billion litres of fresh water.
The key demand of the native title claimants in negotiations with CRA was to stop the proposed 300 kilometre slurry pipeline from the mine to the Karumba port on the Gulf, Yanner explained. The Carpentaria Lands Council opposed the pipeline on environmental, spiritual and economic grounds.
Yanner likened the situation of the Domagee people of the Gulf country to that of blacks in South Africa under apartheid. "We are 95% of the population, but own less than 5% of the business."
"[Our] economic argument appealed to the white working-class community", he said. "For all those little white communities between Townsville and Mt Isa, the rail option [freighting the ore between the two cities] would have been a great boon."
"In 1994, we did a big sit-in at Lawn Hill National Park", Yanner said. "We went over to Century and cut all their fences down." It was at this stage that ATSIC became involved in the negotiations, despite the fact that it had an 8% interest in the mining contractor which had carried out the exploratory excavations.
Yanner condemned the roles of ATSIC national chairperson Gatjil Djerrkura and former Governor-General Bill Hayden in negotiations with the traditional owners, saying that they had also attempted to bully and cajole the traditional owners into agreement.
While an agreement was signed — "mostly under duress" — the fight against the mine is not over, Yanner said.
Yanner said he took great heart from the alliance of "greenies, Aboriginal people and unionists" which stood up against "this enemy government" at Parliament House last August 19. He also expressed support for the growing anti-racist movement in opposition to Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.