Several hundred people rallied outside WA Parliament in Boorloo on Tuesday with Traditional Owners, demanding the Cook government permanently ban fracking in the state's Kimberley region.
The community is also calling on the WA government to urgently reject Texan company Black Mountain Energy's twenty-well "Valhalla" fracking project in the West Kimberley near Derby, which is undergoing state and federal environmental assessment.
Valhalla is the most progressed of any fracking proposal in the state and would involve the drilling of 20 test wells in the heart of the Kimberley's Martuwarra Fitzroy River catchment.
Black Mountain Energy has stated they want to send fracked gas from the Kimberley to the Pilbara. Opponents say this would lead to thousands of oil and gas wells across the globally famed natural landscapes of the region.
The WA Environmental Protection Authority has decided on its recommendation to the Minister for the Environment, Matthew Swinbourn, and is currently preparing its advice to send to him.
Tuesday's rally was the most significant show of opposition to fracking since 2018, when the McGowan Government permanently banned fracking in the Perth, Peel, Southwest, and Dampier Peninsula areas of the state, but not the rest of the Kimberley.
Mangala Martu Traditional Owner Nuriah Jadai said Traditional Owners "have a responsibility to look after our Country in the Kimberley".
"When the Country is alive, our culture is alive. The land means so much more to us than money," she said.
"Fracking for oil and gas threatens everything that's important to us. We do not want to risk our springs and waterways with toxic chemicals and radioactive wastewater, and we don't want to see our Country cut up and industrialised.
"The Labor Government keeps saying there's a veto for Traditional Owners, this is not true. There is no veto for test fracking, and the government hasn't put any legislation in place for a veto."
Ms Jadai said Traditional Owners are calling on Premier Roger Cook "to ban fracking on our Country in the Kimberley, like his government has done in the southwest of WA".
"Are we not as important as the people of the southwest?" she asked.
Environs Kimberley Executive Director Martin Pritchard said there has "never been an opportunity like this for Premier Roger Cook and his Labor Government to ban fracking in the Kimberley".
"The community doesn't want it, the vast majority of Traditional Owners don't want it, and with fracking banned in the southwest of the state, it would be easy to extend the ban to the Kimberley," he said.
Mr Pritchard said fracking is a "polluting and highly destructive" industry which would threaten the $500 million tourism industry, which supports hundreds of jobs in the remote region.
Black Mountain Energy's 20-well Valhalla project proposal would be the first fracking operation anywhere in WA since the WA government lifted the moratorium on fracking in 2018. Black Mountain Energy is comparing the Kimberley's Canning Basin to the USA's Permian Gas Basin - which has more than 190,000 oil and gas wells.
Tuesday's rally outside Parliament House was organised by Environs Kimberley and Lock the Gate Alliance, in partnership with Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Conservation Council of WA, and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
