11th May, 2012

Does Woodside need a 100 police to protect them from  these people?

Social Networks, Blogs and feeds have been buzzing with rumours of over a hundred police, being moved to Broome indefinitely to make sure that the Broome Community do not interfere with Woodside’s destruction of country. Wilderness Society Kimberley Campaign Manager, Glen Klatovsky, said it was a waste of police resources and taxpayer money to send police “to crush the Broome community”, which had already been traumatised by last year’s heavy-handed use of police and Woodside’s own private security force.

Many local protesters, including elderly indigenous people, were last year hauled away by police and locked up, Mr Klatovsky said.

Following Woodside’s announcement yesterday that they were resuming work on the gas hub, two drill rigs were moved from the Port at Broome to JPP, as part of its FEED (front-end engineering and design phase).

Former Broome Shire Councillor, Nik Wevers said, in the past few days, police vehicles had been “cruising up and down Manari Road” and checking people’s car registrations and issuing infringement stickers. Many residents have been complaining about being hassled by police on Manari Road in the past couple of days, with one resident stating that, “it felt like living in East Germany”.

Communication specialists in surveillance, Pacific Communications have fitted out the police with the latest in spyware and police cameras and communications have been established just up from Black Tank. Black Tank information bay has been told to move by the Shire by Wednesday. Community members have repeatedly reported non-compliance issues that Woodside have committed with construction of fences, and communication towers all without proper approval and yet a sign put up by the traditional owners is being reportedly pulled down for non-compliance.

Many residents of Broome are angered by what they see as an appalling waste of tax payers money when drunkeness, domestic violence, vandalism and disturbing the peace are committed in Broome on a daily basis and are not being attended to for lack of police resources. Residents of Broome see the actions of “protesters” as non-violent defenders of country battling against a dictatorship type government and multinational companies with the police force in their pockets.