Woodside carbon bomb approved in Labor betrayal
Extinction Rebellion Australia, 16 June 2025
Protests continue around the country after Labor's approval of a 40-year extension to the Woodside North West Shelf gas project in WA.
Protests in WA included a sit-in at the Fremantle office of the assistant minister for climate change, Josh Wilson, and a rally organised by CCWA/Go Beyond Gas. The rally featured drummers, a climate choir and street theatre highlighting the dangers to Scott Reef.
At a demonstration outside the Canberra Department of the Environment, John Wurcker, spokesperson for Rising Tide said:
“The North West Shelf extension is a legacy no climate conscious Labor politician should want any part of. It will be the most polluting project in Australia, far bigger than any project approved under the Scott Morrison government. It will destroy Murujuga. The Labor Government is failing First Nations communities, everyday Australians, and the environment.“
On 10th June more than a hundred community members arrived at Murray Watt's office on the Gold Coast to call for rejection of Woodside's disastrous gas plans.
Snap rallies were held in Melbourne and Bendigo. One of the organisers, Jane Morton from Extinction Rebellion, said:
“As NSW mops up after devastating 'once in 500 year' floods and South Australian farmers struggle with crippling drought, our new Minster for the Environment's first act has been to grant provisional approval to a massive carbon bomb - a 45 year extension to the massively polluting North West Shelf gas processing hub. This decision threatens our children's future and the habitability of the planet. It also poses a completely unacceptable risk to the First Nations' rock art at Murujuka. The peninsula contains more than a million petroglyphs, dating back tens of thousands of years, making it one of the world’s most precious rock art sites.
"We are in the climate endgame, hurtling past the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit and towards the point of no return. We are already seeing climate-related food and water shortages, conflict and mass migration. We are risking societal collapse. As Sir David King, former advisor to the UK government, has recently stated, 'On our current path, civilisation as we know it will disappear. If we meet current commitments only – net zero by 2050 – perhaps some form of humanity will survive, managing the challenges of continued extreme weather events, ice loss, and sea-level and temperature rises.'
"Some people like to say that what we do in Australia is too small to make a difference, but that is not true. Australia is the third largest exporter of fossil fuels after Russia and Saudi Arabia, and these exports, under current government policies, are going up, not down. Unless we take action at emergency speed, we are on a 'highway to hell', to quote UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres."
This Monday, for the second week in a row, XR Vic blocked traffic with a tent on a hay bale in Melbourne CBD (see main image). The hay bale referenced the droughts that are caused by global warming and the tent, the destruction of homes in climate breakdown events.
Alan Cuthbertson, one of the XR protesters locked onto the hay bale said: “We have lost 800 homes in the 2025 NSW floods, 20,000 homes in the 2022 QLD floods, 28,000 homes in the 2011 QLD floods, 2,000 homes in the 2009 bushfires and another 2,000 homes in the 2020 bushfires. Many of these families are still homeless years after the event. Insurance won't pay, but the companies that have profited off the destruction should pay. Woodside should pay. Instead fossil fuel industries get over $28,000 a minute in subsidies from the government, and are allowed to continue to profit while we foot the bill twice over."
State capture by the fossil fuel industry and political cowardice are at the root of approving this project that will release up to six billion tonnes of greenhouse gases and continue to damage sacred rock art at Murujuga. This will make the Woodside project the most polluting project in the southern hemisphere and in the top ten most polluting projects in the world.
Since early 2022, Mardudhunera woman Raelene Cooper has fought tirelessly against industrial expansions threatening Murujuga's sacred rock art. The Woodside decision completely disregards Indigenous cultural heritage and rights.
Support Raelene v Woodside:
https://chuffed.org/project/jmxbaav6vbak