Fairweather quits government ranks

SUMKAR MP Ken Fairweather has quit the government in protest over environmental law changes that protect a controversial Chinese-run nickel mine.
Fairweather left government ranks on Wednesday and criticised the recent amendments that prevented landowners challenging approved resource pro-jects, saying it would cause irreversible damage to his electorate.
“I do not want my people in later years to say I did not safeguard their rights when I was in the seat,” he said.
“It is a controversial law. Procedures were not followed in the passage of the bill. I am not against mining. I am against environmental damage that might affect the people in the future,” he said.
Environment Minister Benny Allan and other government members have defended the changes as “in the national interest” and protecting the industry from delays caused by court challenges.
The Environmental Act amendments now see the department director’s decision as “final and might not be challenged or reviewed in any court or tribunal”.
This move has outraged the opposition, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and landowner groups who are locked in an ongoing court challenge with China’s state-owned Metallurgical Construction Corp (MCC), the developer of the A$1.5 billion Ramu nickel mine.
Lawyer Tiffany Nonggorr has spearheaded the fight to stop MCC building an offshore deepsea tailing dam that would, over 20 years, pump 100 million tonnes of mine waste into Madang’s Basamuk Bay.
The government made the legal changes after Nonggorr had a “David and Goliath win” in the National Court that granted an interim injunction to stop the project building its tailings pipe.
“The director of the environment department can now make allowances for companies that cannot be challenged; the problem is we cannot rely on the director to make the right decision,” Nonggorr said.
He said the government had sold out to China, equating the potential damage to Madang, and other parts of PNG, with the BP oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“BP is what happens when you remove checks and balances from legislation. Even the Chinese have banned this particular type of tailings due to the environmental destruction they cause,” she added.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare lambasted the media for biasness in their reporting on the matter.
“The amendments did not mean we have lowered our standards of environmental protection,” he had said. – AAP

National Newspaper, June 18, 2010