44 boriginal people may be forgiven for respondng less than ecstatically to such assurances. If you are a traditional owner of a part of this country, a place you have known intimately and lived in all your life, as your ancestors have done before you, how are you going to feel about giving up your rights to that place, seeing it laid waste, and then being offered a job on it with the industry that has destroyed it? A cattle station lessee whose family has lived on the land for a number of years, decades or generations (though never as many generations as the families of Indigenous people), would be outraged at such an offer. And so, with much greater reason, are traditional owners. In any event, offers of employment seldom come to much. Western Agricultural Industries asserted strongly that they would employ Indigenous people in their cotton fields. Yet the tiny workforce they employed on their trial crops was drawn, not from Bidyadanga just down the road, but from backpackers’ hostels in Broome. Argyle Diamonds may have done a better job of recruiting Aboriginal people to its workforce, but Barramundi Gap, a site sacred to women, is gone forever. Money alone does not solve social problems. It does not solve poverty. Big business does not solve poverty. Charity does not solve poverty. Welfare does not solve poverty. What solves poverty is personal enterprise and initiative, pride and independence, belief in the future, and a society that fosters these things. Environs <strong>Kimberley</strong> has helped to drive this forum because we have faith in the future. We have a vision for the <strong>Kimberley</strong> that can be realised, if only people take the time and make the sustained effort needed to achieve it. Our vision is of a region in which nature and culture are valued, protected, and given priority in decisions about development; in which small-scale, environmentally friendly industries and enterprises are encouraged, and large-scale developments are viewed with scepticism rather than greeted with the naïve, unreflecting excitement shown by our politicians. In saying this, I risk exposing Environs <strong>Kimberley</strong> to accusations of being anti-development. If we were anti-development we would not be participating in this forum. As a group advocating change we accept the challenge to actively promote better ways of doing business. The scepticism that we propose as an appropriate response to large-scale development proposals is well founded. Broadscale irrigated agriculture has been an environmental and even an economic disaster for other parts of Australia: why then would we want to see it here, where it has failed so catastrophically in the past? Mining is even more destructive, albeit over much smaller areas than agriculture. In the past, mining companies were able to plunder the country and then walk away, as I have seen myself at Koolan and Cockatoo Islands, but today, largely because of the lobbying of environmentalists, efforts are made to rehabilitate the land when the mine closes. Some people stand to make a fortune out of these mega-industries. Others lose their land. And few developers would be making a fortune if the full costs of their activities were factored in: if mining companies were obliged to fill in the holes they have dug in the landscape and eradicate the weeds they have introduced; if sugar growers had to pay for the elimination of the Cane Toad, if farmers in the wheat belt were forced to rehabilitate the ever-expanding salty land. And what price can anyone put on the extinction of a species? My work with Environs <strong>Kimberley</strong> has made me very conscious that, while developers reap the short-term rewards of exploiting the land, it is so often taxpayers and volunteer groups who meet the costs of cleaning up after them. We at EK prefer to protect the region from the sort of damage we have seen inflicted on it elsewhere. So, what sort of enterprises are we looking for in the <strong>Kimberley</strong>? Do we have any idea? Well, yes, we have some great ideas, but it is not EK that will put them into effect. Some of the participants in this conference are already engaged in environmentally friendly enterprises, and with a commitment motivated by far more than just the income. We are going to hear about them over the next two days. There are Aboriginal pastoral stations, but few other Aboriginal communities have any economic base of their own. They are dependent on government and therefore subject to the whims of the party in power. Amongst other things, especially art production, Indigenous people are setting up small tourist enterprises and working out ways of doing tourism that suit them and their communities, whether as independent or joint ventures. I understand that, in the United States, there is a large and growing demand from people wanting to learn bush survival and Indigenous tracking skills: something that could easily and appropriately be developed here. But take heed: all such Indigenous enterprises require traditional lands and the species that live on them to remain intact.
In recent years, Aboriginal people have been active in fire control, and there is scope for other community environmental projects on country: for rehabilitation, control of feral animals and the like. It is time for such important activities to be properly valued and underwritten by our society. Does all this mean that we are asking nothing of the government? On the contrary, we are asking it to listen carefully to the messages coming out of this forum. We are asking it to share our vision, to support those initiatives that enhance the nature and culture of our region, the way of life here, and the aspirations of its people. I expect that many proposals worthy of government support will be discussed here today. So, on behalf of Environs <strong>Kimberley</strong> I welcome everyone here today and look forward with you to an interesting and exciting Roundtable. 45
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