Was there ever anything more predictable, and more shameful than the detached and independent — and, of course, apolitical — decision by federal Environment Minister Murray Watt that damage caused to Aboriginal Australian heritage values could not weigh as heavily as the economic interest of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf project, worth billions of dollars, potentially trillions?

How could some mere rock art — even if it is crumbling from the existing chemical pollution already caused by Woodside — compete in importance with the public interest in the thousands of jobs, the hundreds of millions of mining royalties going to the Western Australian Government, and the potential company tax available to the federal government if, and when, Woodside’s accountants find themselves unable to avoid making a profit?

WA Premier Roger Cook provided several settings for Watt’s decision in the days leading up to the decision. First, he announced that a comparatively small sum of money was to be allocated to some elderly Indigenous sandgropers as compensation for having been Stolen Children before about 1970. (Though nothing for the many more Indigenous children put in institutions over the past 50 years.) So, we cannot but know that he has, as always, the interests of Aboriginal people close to his heart.

Second, he made some comments for Watt and the public’s edification about the completely independent and scientific nature of the findings of commissioned research into the heritage values of the rock art at risk. These scientific findings were not emotional or matters of the heart, but objective and scientific, he said. It might suit some grandstanders to emote or make a fuss out of their subjective feelings, but politicians such as himself (and Watt) had to make decisions based only on the science, he said. He dismissed claims made by some of those involved in preparing the reports that their findings had been misinterpreted, and, in some cases, amended to suit the case for overriding Aboriginal views. Whether such trivial point-scoring was true or not, he seemed to imply, the base metal of the experts’ report had now transmuted into gold, and it was not for non-politicians to second guess it. If they did, these activists were appealing to emotions, not facts.

Strictly, I am not so sentimental, foolish or unscientific as to think that the value of Aboriginal heritage art, even of this antiquity, must always override competing calls on the public interest. Indeed, I can conceive of circumstances where priceless cultural heritage could be reasonably regarded as inferior in value, perhaps in the case of an imminent danger to human life.

Is it relevant that Woodside’s pollution may make climate change significantly worse?

In this sense, it is possible that Watt’s decision was the right thing “in the circumstances”. And Watt, after all, has laid down some conditions focused on protecting the art, which he has claimed to be stringent, and which he has insisted will be enforced. That would set a great precedent, particularly for WA, where state governments, mining companies and other land developers routinely ride roughshod over Aboriginal heritage material without suffering any consequences.

The rock-art-doesn’t-matter-decision was only one of a sequence of decisions which Commonwealth ministers must make about the Northwest Shelf project. Only when all the hurdles are crossed can the project proceed. But one could be forgiven, from the jubilation shown by the premier, Woodside’s chief executive Meg O’Neill, and the WA media, for thinking that it was now all over bar the shouting. But then again, it is probable that this is exactly what the Albanese Government would like the public to think.

Among the further decisions which the Albanese Government must make, whether from its executive power and external affairs power, or from existing environmental protection legislation, is whether the whole project, and its impact upon the environment will be such as not to be in the public interest. The ground of public interest is the amount of carbon pollutants put into the Australian environment, and, for that matter, the world’s atmosphere. Put simply, the discharge of such pollutants will blow Australia’s climate change targets sky high and represent such an additional burden on the world as to make overall targets for 2030 and 2050 almost impossible.

There are several ways that people will attempt to explain why this environmental imperative against approval should be dismissed. It is said, first, that Woodside will be able to make offsets to the millions of tonnes of pollutants. In practice, it won’t be able to do this, even in effective carbon capture schemes, if any. There are next to none now. Or even if we were to overlook the fact that tax-dodging schemes to grow trees in the outback are fundamentally dodgy – indeed largely a fraud on the taxpayer. It would be rather as if Australia could deal with a further rising of sea levels by piping the excess water to Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre and to the open-cut coal mines of NSW and Queensland.

The second sophism is that assisting a gas project recognises that the path towards sustainable energy and net-zero emissions necessarily involves an interim transition to gas. Even if this were true, there is the inconvenient fact that the gas which will be produced by this project will be overseas-bound and not going into Australian energy markets. The argument holds as much water as another of Albanese’s apparent convictions – that desirable as it might be to get out of the coal-fired electricity market, now is not the time. It would be better, he seems to think, if we kept opening new ones indefinitely. Particularly if it annoys the Greens.

Thinking like this is hailed by the pro-mining press as engaging in economic and political reality and avoiding pandering to the inner-city vote. Whether the UN and other nations will see it the same way is yet to be seen.

The national interest in Woodside’s health differs from WA’s interest. And from Woodside’s interests

In one sense, Watt was not, in making his heritage decision, called upon to make any sort of final judgment upon the viability of the Northwest Shelf project from the national (as opposed to Woodside’s) point of view. Heritage and economic, social and cultural values can stand apart, even if they obviously also intersect.

But in weighing the damage caused to Aboriginal and national interests by damage and destruction to the rock art, it is surely a relevant consideration that the project is, of itself, dangerously injurious to the environment. In the wider sense, it may have negative economic or social value. It is, of course, quite possible for a venture to be potentially a goldmine for the proponent, and useful to the economic life of the state, but still to be a net burden on the national economy. Imagine, say, that the only viable industries in a significant part of Queensland were the growing of tobacco, marijuana and illegal processed opium. These might be providing valuable employment, sustaining some northern towns, and even some fine revenue to the state of Queensland. Whether that was a good thing for the state or not, there would be public detriment to the nation, caused by flooding markets with these drugs.

Watt might also consider, in judging national interest considerations, the unseemly spectacle of the Australian Government’s prostitution of our external intelligence agencies in the servicing of Woodside’s economic interests. Woodside is only notionally an Australian company, and most of its real profits disappear overseas, untaxed as profits. Yet the Australian Government, at the direction of the then minister for foreign affairs (Alexander Downer, later to be a consultant to Woodside, along with the former head of his department) ordered ASIS to bug the Cabinet rooms of the East Timor Government to keep Woodside informed of East Timor’s negotiating position. It also prosecuted two people who blew the whistle on the shameful and unconscionable act of hostility against one of our near neighbours. The sway this company seems to hold on Canberra politicians seems to be bipartisan. It almost deserves an inquiry by itself. It has similar sway on both sides of politics in WA. It has no national security justification whatsoever. It is rather more akin to Donald Trump’s soft spot (in the past at least) for Elon Musk’s Tesla. It invites questions about whether there is more to the relationships between Woodside and Australian politicians than the public knows.

Forty years after WA Inc and Fitzgerald, we need to take the corruption temperature again

It should be a matter of an open royal commission-style inquiry with a wide, not a confined, ambit. I am not sure that I would trust the National Anti-Corruption Commission to do it. They don’t seem to know, or want to know, how to do such things. I use a wide definition of corrupt. I have no evidence that money, apart from the normal influence-mongering and political donation money, is being handed out, whether to Canberra or WA politicians.

But Woodside has created an unhealthy climate of thought whereby public officials have come to think that the interests of Woodside are the interests of the people of WA, and the interests of the people of Australia. I could imagine some corporations of whom that might be said (I once, but no longer, would have instanced Qantas), but it would not include Woodside, for all the jobs it is said to provide. The day will come indeed — it may already have come — when Woodside is a net drag on the whole economy, for environmental costs to all taxpayers. Those costs extend well beyond WA, even if only WA gets the benefit of royalties. Woodside makes little contribution to the wider economic and social cost. Not even as great a contribution as O’Neill, who, unlike Woodside, must surely pay at least some tax on her fabulous income.

I think that corruption of the spirit has already infected Cook and many in his Cabinet. The interests of Woodside are routinely put ahead of the interests of the people of the state. Witness how, before Christmas, Cook was able to stand over an all-too-pliant Albanese to force him to withdraw environmental protection legislation. He boasted of his power to stand over Canberra. Albanese, implicitly, boasted of his power to humiliate Tanya Plibersek.

I suspect too that a good many Albanese ministers are corrupted in much the same way. No doubt it’s because they are thinking of export income and jobs, and because they think that these over-balance less easily measurable things such as a clean environment, a healthy community and an economy focused on common welfare and jobs, not skewed to protect the interests of billionaires.

It’s not just WA which deserves another inquiry along the lines of WA Inc of 40 years ago. That was during the 1980s when there were serious inquiries in most of the states after a major breakdown in proper government. It also followed the development of the heresy that states should get actively involved in being partners with business in creating economic opportunities for their citizens. Most of their enterprises went broke and not a few people, even politicians, went to jail. Generally, the spivs and the relentless entrepreneurial buccaneers were too smart for the politicians. That was because they kept pissing in their pocket assuring them that they were the smartest people they knew. Much like the modern wide boys telling Albanese that he has been a genius in developing jobs made in Australia. Or another mob of much the same people who were cheering as Scott Morrison and his merry crew, and the Department of Finance, opened the taxpayers’ ATMs to the private sector during COVID.

The businesses these create are strictly cash and carry. No offer too small. No cheques. No reasonable deal refused. No reasonable offer, no matter how low, refused. Government is there to facilitate loans, access to land and tax-free deals if the business seems a goer. Friends, cronies, party hacks and relations get a hand. Not, of course, corruptly. Oh, no. But because they are doing the right thing. With mates vouching for them as a cheque and a balance.

No-one would dare suggest that these cosy relationships are or were corrupt. The NACC would be puzzled that anyone could ever suggest it. The businessmen and women are in it for profit. This is not a dirty or dishonest thing. Many are personable and have OAs or ACs, proof they can be touched up for a bit of philanthropy. A sort of social tax most otherwise haven’t paid. It is in their commercial interest, not for nefarious purposes, to cultivate decision-makers, in politics and the bureaucracy. Likewise with their employment of armies of lobbyists, urgers, door-openers and former politicians. It’s all to make sure that politicians understand the arduous problems they are encountering in a tough marketplace. And the need for help. Some of the difficulties, whether with foreign customers, skilled workers, worker shortages, supply chains and time and environmental requirements are such that some are sorely tempted to get out of their industries and raise cattle.

And, of course, there’s the problem of advocates. People recognised even by the Labor Government as sinister enemies of progress and economic development. Pressing their concerns about the environment. About climate change. About Palestinians. About homeless Australians. Having a lively interest in immigration, and in international education. It’s more than nation-builders should have to bear.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.