UNESCO rejects World Heritage listing bid for ancient Aboriginal rock art site

Australia’s bid to put the Burrup Peninsula on the World Heritage List has been knocked back by UNESCO, a draft decision has revealed.

The peninsula in WA’s north is home to between one and two million pieces of Aboriginal rock art believed to be up to 50,000 years old.

The draft decision released overnight said “degrading acidic emissions” were “impacting upon the petroglyphs”.

It said UNESCO referred the application back to Australia to “prevent any further industrial development adjacent to, and within, the Murujuga Cultural Landscape” and “develop an appropriate decommissioning and rehabilitation plan for existing industrial activities”.

The peninsula is next to Karratha, which is home to Woodside’s North West Shelf’s gas plant – one of the world’s largest LNG processing facilities and the biggest in Australia.

Environment Minister Murray Watt is poised to make a decision on extending operations at the site this week after months of delay.

It will be Senator Watt’s first major decision in his new portfolio.

He has been tipped to approve the extension despite protests from Indigenous campaigners and conservationists and vowed to deliver a decision by the May 31 deadline.

Anthony Albanese earlier this week defended the North West Shelf project, saying it was essential to keeping lights on while Australia transitions to renewables.

“You can’t have renewables unless you have firming capacity, simple as that,” the Prime Minister said.

“You don’t change a transition through warm thoughts, you do it through a concrete proposal, which is the expansion of renewables, up to 82 per cent of the grid.

“But the way that occurs is it needs firming capacity to occur.”