Banjima traditional owners launch $1.5b claim over Wittenoom asbestos disaster

Wittenoom’s traditional owners have launched a $1.5 billion legal claim against the WA Government over asbestos contamination across tens of thousands of hectares of land surrounding the former townsite.

The Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation filed the proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia against the State of Western Australia on Wednesday.

The corporation has asked the Federal Court to split the case in two stages, with the first to focus on securing orders requiring the clean-up of contaminated land, the second to address damages for the contamination and the State’s alleged “knowing participation in the dispossession and marginalisation of the Banjima people”.

Wittenoom was closed in 1978 amid health concerns over the waste tailings from three mines close by that operated during the 1930s until 1966.

But millions of tonnes of blue asbestos waste — enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground twice — still surround those abandoned mines today, leaving a total of 46,000ha of Banjima native title land quarantined as part of the Wittenoom Asbestos Management Area.

Exposure to asbestos fibres — which remain on the ground and air and cannot always be seen by the naked eye —may result in contracting fatal diseases including mesothelioma, asbestosis or lung cancer.

The management area includes the former Wittenoom townsite, airfield, cemetery, mining areas, Wittenoom Gorge, Yampire Gorge and Joffre Floodplain and has been declared, by DWER and the Department of Health, as “not suitable for any form of human occupation or land use”.

It is considered the biggest waste site of its kind in the southern hemisphere and the danger continues to spread, with the State acknowledging thousands of miners, residents and visitors to the region have already died from illnesses relating to asbestos from the area.

But BNTAC deputy chair and Banjima traditional owner Johnnell Parker said the community would continue to fight for the restoration of their land.

“We Banjima people belong to one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and our connection to Banjima Country runs deep,” he said.

“Despite the damage, our elders have raised us to be strong and resilient. We carry in our hearts their strength as we continue the fight, to heal our Country, to protect it, and to ensure future generations can stand on healthy land and remain connected to who they are.”

BNTAC argues successive governments have failed to act despite the State collecting more than $70 billion in Pilbara mining royalties since 2016.

Gordon Legal is acting on BNTAC’s behalf. Senior partner Peter Gordon said the mine’s impacts would endure for generations.

“The relocation, dispossession, exploitation, and erosion of the cultural integrity of the Banjima nation will take generations to repair,” he said.

“But the longest journey to clean up the largest contaminated site in the southern hemisphere begins with a single step.”