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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7am.

Here’s a question for you - can you place a value on lost cultural heritage, on separation from land and ancestors, and on families divided?

It’s not just a moral quandary - it’s a question of cold hard cash. An Australian court is right now trying to work out how much compensation is owed to a group of traditional owners in WA’s Pilbara region.

Yindjibarndi traditional owners have been locked in a long-running legal battle with Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group and the WA Government, over what the Federal Court ruled was illegal mining on their land.

Today contributor to The Saturday Paper Ben Abbatangelo, on the one billion dollar battle and the very personal toll it’s taken on those fighting it.

It’s Monday, May 27

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ASHLYNNE:

Ben, tell me a bit about Yindjibarndi country and this small community of Ngurrawaana and the man you met there, Michael Woodley.

BEN:

So Yindjibarndi country is located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It is a very humble town with a big heart. It has majestic hills and escarpments that are rich red colours. It's incredibly vast, like the whole of Western Australia but the Pilbara region itself is, you know, it's quite an expansive space. And in my mind, it gets to the heart of the Australian story. It is a region that archives some of the earliest human thoughts. There is countless sites that map human occupation back 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years but at the same time, what's interfacing with that is everything that we understand to be contemporary. It is the epicentre of resource extraction, it is where, you know, the majority of the world's iron ore is extracted from, there is offshore gas being plundered out of the waterways. And it gets to, I suppose, the heart of that ancient eternity clashing with the contemporary realities of modernity.

Audio Excerpt – Michael speaking Yinjibarndi.

BEN:

So I first met Michael Woodley towards the end of 2020. He’s a senior Yindjibarndi lawman and he's the CEO of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, which is the prescribed body corporate to represent the interests of the Yindjibarndi people.

Audio Excerpt – Ben Abbatangelo:

“Mate. It's so good to reconnect. And it's just been a privilege to, yeah, you're just a remarkable man.”

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“Thank you so much for your time.”

BEN:

I was fortunate enough to speak to Michael, he was zig zagging around town, was fortunate enough to hear about his reflections and I say this because for most Australians that are aware of who he is, he's known because he's been the person that stood up to Andrew Forrest.

ASHLYNNE:

Ok, and so how did Michael Woodley become this guy who’s known for battling Andrew Forrest and his enormous mining interests?

BEN:

So Andrew Forrest is, I think he's held up in the Australian imagination as, you know, a great Australian bloke.

Audio Excerpt – News Reader

“With a 20 billion dollar fortune, Andrew Forrest is one of Australia’s richest people. And as the founder of the mining giant Fortescue, he’s been a key business figure for decades.”

BEN:

But that wealth that Andrew Forrest accrued that has transformed him into Australia's richest man, the bedrock of that is the exploitation of Aboriginal peoples' country and specifically the Yindjibarndi peoples' country.

Audio Excerpt – Andrew Forrest:

“I've had one message I give and I've been giving this to ever since I became a businessman. The more you know Aboriginal people, the more you love them.”

BEN:

The crux of the story is that Andrew Forrest and Fortescue Metals Group, in the early 2000’s, wanted to develop Yindjibarndi people's Country. The problem for them was that the Yindjibarndi had already received native title status. So, for Fortescue to legally start developing in their country, under native title laws they had to broker an agreement.

So Michael Woodley and Andrew Forrest met in a small Roebourne youth centre, where Andrew Forest marched in seeking to broker that agreement with Michael Woodley. Now, what Andrew Forrest came to the table with was, essentially, a fixed payment of roughly 0.057% of the mine's income. And for context, we're talking about a development that would last decades, that would churn out tens of billions of dollars. So when Michael Woodley refused to sign on to that agreement…

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“We read your agreement. We understand your agreement. And to be frank with you, it is crap.”

BEN:

…which he would also, if he was to do so, would be signing away, you know, scores of sacred sites, would be signing away, you know, really integral, important pieces of Yindjibarndi country that are central, you know, to their mythology, to their existence, to their sustainment.

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“But there's a big issue here, Andrew. And the issue comes with, you know, Yindjibarndi people looking after ourselves, on the country that makes you rich, and your shareholders and investors...“

BEN:

So Michael Woodley was seeking a 5% uncapped rate. And when those talks broke down, it triggered a sprawling legal battle that has gone on for now close to 15 years.

ASHLYNNE:

Ben, how did it even become a legal battle? How did Fortescue Metals come to push ahead without approval from the native title holders?

BEN:

Yeah. An important thing for this conversation is that a lot of people have an understanding that native title is Land Rights. It's not. Native title doesn't give traditional owner groups a right of veto. It doesn't enable them to say no to those that want to develop their country. It just gives them a statutory timeline to negotiate with those companies and forces them into coming to an agreement.

So I suppose a really key point here is that not only did they proceed with the operations without authority, without that agreement, they also looked to finance a breakaway group.

Audio Excerpt – News Raeder:

“This meeting, held in March last year, revealed the bitter divide between Michael Woodley's group, which opposes the project, and a breakaway group of landowners.”

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“We're going to take a vote on this motion. Can I see the hands of those that support this motion? Big, up high. We're going to count the hands.”

Audio Excerpt – News Raeder:

“The meeting was ugly and physical. The breakaway group claimed to have won a vote by the show of hands, enabling them to negotiate directly with Fortescue. It was a big win for Twiggy Forrest.”

BEN:

And Fortescue just pushed ahead with their plans. In 2013, Fortescue opened its first Solomon mine Firetail, on the Yindjibarndi peoples country, without an agreement, without their consent. That's bending reality and fundamentally, in my mind, that's what's enabled Fortescue Metals Group to churn out close to $50 billion of profit, without ever paying a cent to the people whose land they're mining. But interestingly in the courts, in 2017, the Federal Court reaffirmed that the Yindjibarndi people had exclusive possession over that country. So, that sprawling battle has culminated now in this compensation claim being lodged, in which the Federal Court will continue to commence hearings and likely hand down its verdict at the end of 2025.

ASHLYNNE:

I think one way of describing this is a, sort of, David and Goliath battle, which is a bit of a lazy comparison. But I just wonder how Michael Woodley sees this, this fight.

BEN:

Yeah I asked Michael that question when I first met him, and he took a very long pause. He had a relatively cheeky smile that washed over his face after he gathered his thoughts, and then he leant in and just said, look, Andrew might be the richest man in the country. He might have access to the best lawyers and mix it with the top end of town. But, so what? That's not power. And then he, again, took another breath and leant in a little bit closer with his eyebrows raised, and just basically said, you say I'm a Yindjibarndi man. I know my law. I speak my language, and I walk the same lands that my ancestors have for tens of thousands of years.

So if you want to talk about power, well, that's power. And I suppose, in my mind, that's what has encapsulated, you know, this story and how one incredibly proud, stoic man, with the support of his tiny community, has battled and beat a mining tycoon on a shoestring budget.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break, why a huge cash payout won’t come close to healing the wounds.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

ASHLYNNE:

Ben, tell me about where the legal battle is up to now. What's happening in the courts as we speak?

BEN:

So the courts are listening to preliminary hearings for the compensation claim that the Yindjibarndi have lodged after 2020, when the High Court dismissed Fortescue's application to appeal its judgement. So after multiple court battles that have spanned multiple years, the court is now hearing this compensation claim. And it needs to put, I suppose, a numerical value on a whole lot of different things. It needs to consider what the financial value of, you know, close to 250 sacred sites that have been destroyed, including rock art shelters that prove human habitation for more than 35,000 years. It needs to put a numerical value on the cultural and familial ties that have been broken, many of which that are beyond repair. They also have to decide how much of the $50 billion of iron ore profits that Fortescue has churned out of the Yindjibarndi people's lands belong to them, and then probably additionally start to consider how much of the profits belong to the Yindjibarndi people over the years ahead, knowing that Fortescue's Solomon Mines still has plenty of great days of extracting iron ore ahead of it. So, you know, are the courts best placed to determine what is the just and right and moral outcome? Or can they purely just engage with this through a legal lens and try to come to a determination there? But I know either way, when I speak to Michael Woodley, yes, there is some solace in the sense that they are getting towards an outcome and they will receive compensation.

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“They need to be compensated, you know. Our land was taken from us. We didn’t give it, we didn’t sell it.”

BEN:

But if everyone had their time over again, you know, Michael has said that he and many others in the community wish this just never happened in the first place.

ASHLYNNE:

Is that because it's caused such huge divisions in the community?

BEN:

Well the communities... Yeah, in other hearings, you know, the courts have heard, you know, how family members no longer talk to one another. They avoid each other in the streets. There's enduring, lasting pain that, you know, may never heal. It might take a generation to heal. It's the destruction of really significant, sacred sites that get to the heart of a people's belief system, that gets to the heart of who they are. So, in that context, I don't know how you can put, yeah, a numerical, monetary value on stripping people from the things that sustain them.

ASHLYNNE:

How's Michael Woodley doing now?

BEN:

Michael is someone that just appears to defy gravity. He is always smiling, he is always calm, he has always got a really deep sense of presence. You know, when I speak to him, despite the busyness of his life and, you know, the challenges that he, you know, has to confront, it always just feels like you're the only person that matters in that moment. But you know, when I asked him about the journey and what he's learnt about himself, of course he told me that he’s learnt to just let things be the way that they are

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“I'm a serious man. But, you know, I've... I've learned to be mellow as well, right”

BEN:

…and that he's not necessarily going to change a rock into a flower and that it's better to just let a rock be a rock.

Audio Excerpt – Michael Woodley:

“Of course you can’t… You can't enforce something that is not willing to change, so...”

BEN:

So Michael is moving back out onto his home lands, which is around 100 K's out of Roebourne. So it is, you know, 25 to 30 people there, I think, at the best of times. But for him, you know, it's a spiritual reconnecting. So, you know, he's really optimistic about the future. I think he's, you know, really pleased that this is coming towards, or there's going to be a sense of closure, you know, in the wake of these federal hearings and, I think he's just really, you know, optimistic about turning, you know, Roeburne, and the Yindjibarndi people into a thriving place and a thriving peoples. And I think, you know, this is happening at a really important time when, you know, extractivism in Australia is going to double, triple, quadruple down, in the wake of the energy transition and the need to extract, you know, volumes of critical minerals to support that. So, yeah, there's going to be a lot of eyes watching this and, it'll be really interesting to see, you know, what that judge hands down towards the end of 2025.

ASHLYNNE:

Ben, thanks so much for your time today

BEN:

Appreciate it. Thank you.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today…

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus has revealed he is moving forward with drafting new hate-speech laws.

The laws will reportedly impose federal criminal penalties against hate speech about peoples race, gender, sexuality or disability.

And,

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has taken a break just three days into the election campaign in what’s widely being seen as an attempt to “regroup”.

Sunak announced on Saturday night that he’ll bring back mandatory national service for Britons when they turn 18, forcing them to commit to a full-time military commission or spend one weekend a month volunteering in areas like the national health service or aged care.

I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7am. Thanks for your company today, we'll see you again tomorrow.

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