Scientist expresses concern WA government department interfered with rock art report linked to North West Shelf approval process
A leading scientist has expressed "grave concern" about "unacceptable interference" in a major study of the impacts of industrial emissions on ancient Aboriginal rock carvings in a complaint obtained by the ABC.
On Friday, the West Australian government released the long-awaited results from its ongoing Rock Art Monitoring Program, which is studying petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula, or Murujuga, near Karratha in WA's north.
The five-year study is trying to determine whether industrial pollution has degraded Indigenous rock carvings thought to be 40,000 years old.
The $27 million rock art monitoring project is being led by the WA government in collaboration with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, using experts from Curtin University.
The latest results have been considered by federal Environment Minister Murray Watt, as part of his soon-to-be-released ruling on whether to approve a 45-year licence extension of Woodside's North West Shelf LNG facilities on the Burrup Peninsula.
The 800-page second-year monitoring report was completed last year but was not made public until Friday afternoon, alongside a summary document that highlighted some key findings.
In an email obtained by the ABC, the report's chief statistician, Emeritus Professor Adrian Baddeley, wrote to staff from WA's Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) on Tuesday afternoon to outline his concerns about the way one of the graphs in the scientific paper had been handled.
The goal of the five-year study is to establish acceptable and unacceptable emissions standards to help protect the rock art, so the WA government can set air quality monitoring standards to regulate industry.
Professor Baddeley, one of the report's lead authors, is a member of the Australian Academy of Science, which represents the nation's most distinguished scientists.
His complaint email focused specifically on a graph that he claimed DWER had asked to be altered for its summary report, against his wishes.
The graph in question included benchmarks for acceptable levels of pollution, with two lower guideline levels serving as "early warning" indicators, and a higher standard level that is the "threshold at which there is a risk of unacceptable change in rock art condition".
In his complaint letter, Professor Baddeley said the graph prepared by Curtin University scientists had included two early warning indicator lines, but one of them — a green line, which presented a lower threshold — had been deleted from the summary document.
"In early April, in preparation for these publications, DWER requested that Curtin provide a version of the figure with the green dashed line removed," Professor Baddeley wrote in his email.
"I formally declined this request as chief statistician, with reasons given, in a message relayed to DWER by the statistical team.
"It appears that, sometime after this correspondence, in my absence, Curtin staff were prevailed upon to delete the green line, in direct contravention of my decision.
In his email, Professor Baddeley said the summary document had incorrectly stated that: "The research indicates that the current levels of the pollutants of most concern for the rock art are lower than the interim guideline levels".
"If the green-aqua dashed line were reinstated, it would show that five of the monitoring sites were experiencing pollutant levels above the interim guideline, and again these are the five sites closest to industry," he wrote.
On Tuesday afternoon, WA Greens MLC Jess Beckerling used Question Time in parliament to ask the WA government to explain the discrepancy between the two graphs.
"Who made the decision to remove the [green] line from the […] summary document," Ms Beckerling asked.
Environment Minister Matthew Swinbourn responded by saying the research summary document was drafted by DWER with input from Curtin University and Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.
"The graph in the summary document was simplified to focus on the interim guideline Environmental Quality Criteria (EQC) that was recommended by Curtin in its Interim EQC Report," he said.
One of the report's key findings was that the upper layer of the most common rock in the area had elevated porosity — or degradation — in samples taken from areas closer to Dampier, which has been home to industrial operations since the 1960s.
The paper stated that it appeared that historic emissions from the former Dampier Power Station, which retired in the 1980s, were likely to be the major contributor to elevated porosity.
Speaking to 7.30 on the condition of anonymity, a senior scientist involved in the ongoing monitoring program said that there was disappointment among the research team about how the report's findings had been spun.
"It's annoying that there are a lot of euphemisms being rolled out to kind of relativise or minimise the conclusions," they said.
On Monday, WA Premier Roger Cook said the second year Rock Art Monitoring Report should provide the community with confidence that current industrial processes on the Burrup have "not had an impact in relation to the rock art".
"What it did point to was some industrial processing, I think it was a power generator that was placed there in the 1970s, which may have had an impact in relation to the porosity of some of the rock arts," Mr Cook said.
"But it's very pleasing that no ongoing impact as a result of that industrial activity."
The scientist said they were "dismayed" at the WA premier's comments.
"I completely disagreed with every sentence," they said.
On Monday, 7.30 wrote an email to Curtin University's Professor Ben Mullins, the program research lead, asking him to clarify if the premier's comments stating that the report had found "no ongoing impact as a result of industrial activity" were accurate.
He did not respond in time for this story's publication.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Cook doubled down on his previous remarks.
"The science has said that modern industrial developments do not have a long-term impact in terms of the quality of the rock art," he said.
The scientist who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report's most important findings were that rocks closest to industry had elevated porosity.
"That's not a demonstration that pollution is observed to be harming rocks in the field but we cannot find any other explanation," they said.
They said some of the scientists were "pretty upset" that the message coming from the government was "almost the opposite of that".
"We're talking about what is probably the cumulative effect of decades of pollution," they said.
"There is this, terminological or verbal gymnastics about whether it all happened in the past and is no longer happening.
"It may not be happening at the same rate. The general amount of pollution could now be less than it was, and the rate of degradation could be lower.
"But there's no reason to conclude that it has stopped."
They said the scientists were not allowed to speak to media as a condition of their contracts but told 7.30 they felt compelled to speak out.
"We have instincts about academic freedom, about the need to protect the truth," they said.
"If you're a scientist, you make a lifelong commitment to the truth, to finding the truth [and] respecting the truth.
On Tuesday afternoon, Mr Swinbourn told parliament the Rock Art Monitoring Program was "the most comprehensive and robust scientific study of its kind in the world".
"The monitoring program has not observed damage to rock art," Mr Swinbourn said.
"However, higher levels of porosity — which are microscopic gaps in the rock surface — have been observed in granophyre rocks near Dampier.
"Increased porosity would make the rock art more prone to change over time.
"The report finds this is likely due to emissions in the 1970s and 80s, which were two to three times higher than today.
"Further work will be undertaken to investigate this finding."
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