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When Rio Tinto blasted a sacred rock shelter to pieces in the Pilbara region of Western Australia in May 2020, it set off multiple protests from Aboriginal groups.

This, as well as anger and grief from across the globe, forced government agencies to pledge that nothing like this would ever happen again.

Rio Tinto went ahead with its blast despite an archaeological report showing the cave’s significance to First Nations heritage: it contained cultural features dating back 40,000 years.

Despite this, a 2023 report on WA’s environmental approvals process indicates that Aboriginal sites could still be under threat from the corporate sector.

The Streamline WA: Independent Review of WA Environmental Approvals Processes and Procedure indicates that the Western Australian government intends to pass the buck to the federal government on assessing greenhouse gas emissions for major projects.

The was announced by WA Premier Roger Cook with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA in October 2023.

Cook said it had been commissioned in response to the Chamber of Commerce’s study the same month, in which it argued that “green tape” was threatening investment in the mining projects.

However, the report was only released more broadly after more than a year and only after the Conservation Council of WA (CCWA) and the Environmental Defenders Office obtained it via Freedom of Information in February.

The review, which contains generational reforms to the process of environmental approvals, has been criticised for mainly consulting industry and government not community and environmental groups.

WA Greens MLC Brad Pettitt said it fell well below the standard expected. “If the Vogel-McFerran Review were a university assignment, it would get a fail for being poorly referenced and for plagiarising the interests of big business,” Pettitt said.

He said Cook used this review, without any consultation, “as the basis for the worst attack on the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] we’ve ever seen from any government”.

“Now that we’ve finally seen the review, it is outrageous that the Cook Labor government gutted our EPA without any real data or information.”

Pettitt added that the CCWA should not have had to spend 13 months pressuring the government to release the review publicly: it should have been public from the start.

Josh Last, who standing for Socialist Alliance in Fremantle, told �鶹��ý that the review’s “consultation” and the government’s attempt to keep it under wraps showed “transparency is Labor’s enemy”.

“This government is acting in the best interest of its donors: the multi-national mining corporations.”

The 43-page report acknowledged the likelihood of ancient rock art being significantly affected by liquid natural gas plants in the Pilbara. Last said this was a “risk the government needed to take seriously”.

“The report’s revelation is not a surprise,” Last said. “Cook was responsible for unwinding laws designed to protect world heritage Indigenous historical sites, like Juukan Gorge, and the intention to remove cultural heritage from consideration from the EPA is because Cook wants to remove all barriers to corporate interests.

“Tens of thousands of years of history are being wiped from the earth in our lifetime. It is time to be angry.”

The heritage in question includes 1 million ancient petroglyphs located on the Burrup Peninsula, which the report said could be under threat from nitrous oxide emissions associated with a planned extension of Woodside Energy’s mega North West Shelf project.

In addition, the report revealed that Environment Minister Reece Whitby intended to transfer responsibility for scrutinising greenhouse gas emissions from major projects to the federal government.

Pettitt said WA Labor is unwilling to take environmental issues seriously.

“The Vogel-McFerran Review was predicated on the assumption that new nature positive laws would be implemented to replace the federal EPBC Act; legislation that Premier Roger Cook also intervened in November to kill off under pressure from corporate mining interests.”

Pettitt said Labor’s interference in the nature positive bills at a state and federal level and at the behest of corporate interests “is an affront to democracy”.