Rally – Shane Mortimer

Today we can start progressively sharing with you some video footage of the speakers at The National Wind Farm Rally, held at Parliament House, Canberra on June 18, 2013.

The first speaker was Shane Mortimer, who as a Ngambri elder, welcomed us to country and performed an Ochre ceremony. He also reads a letter from the Chairman of the World Council for Nature, before outlining the lack of due diligence in relation to Native Title in regard to the installation of industrial wind turbines in Australia.

This is a transcript of the video

Thank you very much. I represent over 400 members of my Ngambri people, the people for whom Canberra is named.

My first Anglo ancestor in this land, is the man that that Mountain behind you, if you have a look there behind you, is named after, James Ainsley, who came here in 1825, and fathered a daughter to a Ngambri woman. Her daughter is Junamingo, which means born by the grass tree. Junamingo had a daughter, who was Sarah. Sarah had a daughter who was Florence. Florence had a daughter who was Adelaide. Adelaide had a daughter who was Lesley, my Mother. My Mother had a daughter who is Lisa. Lisa has two daughters, Kelly and Deanna. Kelly and Deanna have three daughters. Nine generations in a consecutive line of Ngambri women. And that is very important in Ngambri as in Ngambri country, your totem is handed down down the matriarchal line. But more importantly, you can prove your birth mother, but not necessarily your father. Which means nobody can deny my connection to this country, nobody.

It is my great pleasure to do what my ancestors have done for tens of thousands of years, in making you welcome here today, in giving you an Ochre Ceremony. This is a very special thing to do. When people would come to this country from other lands, they would wait on our borders, which are rivers. They would light a fire. Our people would see the smoke, and they would go down and would make them welcome to country with an Ochre Ceremony. And it is a very simple ceremony. The Ochre rises and it drifts and it falls. And the symbolism of this is to honour our land, and our ancestors, and to make people welcome to understand that the rising of the ochre and the drifting, and as it falls, so too do our differences, and we are united as one.

A very special welcome to Ngambri country to you Alan. And to Pat and Andy Gabb, a very, very special welcome for organising this event and for coming all the way from Victoria to be here today. And to the people that I have met from Western Australia, from Far North Queensland from Victoria and all over New South Wales, Welcome to Country in my language.

Join me here in the spirit of reconciliation, and the care of this country, and in the stopping of these turbines.

As I drove past the Capital wind farm this morning from Collector, not a single blade was turning, not an ounce of power was being generated, not a damn thing – worthless, useless things. Pass that flag around and enjoy that flag.

I have a message to you here this morning from Madrid. This is from the World Council of Nature, The World Council for Nature. From their Chairman Mark Duchamp [WCFN Letter – CANBERRA RALLY].

Ladies and Gentleman, present and future victims of so called Green policies. I regret not being able to attend your National Rally, but please rest assured that I am present here today in thought if not physicality. The World Council for Nature, contrary to Greenpeace, WWF, and other politically-motivated NGOs, does not condone the destruction of nature in order to supposedly save the planet. 

If indeed the planet is at risk, it is from the corrupt alliance of Green charlatans, subsidy-sucking speculators, and politicians. Together they have created a monster, which is causing more devastation worldwide than there has been in 5000 years of civilisation.

[Civilisation for my people, goes back in this country, 80 thousand years]

Biomass and wind farms are destroying wildlife habitats at great speed, yet do not produce any environmental benefit at all. They are remedies that are worse than the illness and should be abandoned immediately. 

The plight of Australians is particularly poignant as your wildlife is unique, just your government is condemning rare species to disappear. [Look at Parliament House and look at the emblem of this country – the kangaroo and the emu – the emu is extinct from this land. The emu that was on this land no longer exists in Canberra.] The Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle will be the first to go, condemned, as it is by hundreds of lethal wind turbines invading its habitat. The brolga and the orange-bellied parrot are also threatened, as are many other species.

In Spain alone, wind farm are killing between 6,000 and 18,000 (sic*) birds every year. The figures are official, coming from 136 monitoring studies obtained by the Spanish Ornithological Society under Freedom of Information legislation. Yet bird societies, like the British RSPB and Birds Australia, keep this information secret, as they do with other wind farm mortality statistics around the world.

In the final analysis, it is you Australians, who will suffer the most from what was aptly described as a swindle, in Dr Etherington’s book, The Wind Farm Scam. You will suffer physically from wind turbine syndrome if you happen to live within 10km or more from the wind turbines. Low frequency noise and infrasound can disturb sleep. [And I know first hand about that getting up at 3 o’clock in the morning, having lived now for 6 weeks between the Cullerin Range turbine installation and the Capital Wind farm installation and feeling the thump-thump-thump as I went out the door to have a pee.] So it will disturb your sleep and have other ill effects and great distances, yet this is being denied by the pseudo-scientific community that caters to the wind industry and its deep pockets. You will suffer as well from the visual devastation of your great countryside, from the rarefaction of bird life and from the declining economy stifled by rising energy costs and the burden of public debt, inflated by huge subsidies to wind farms and other frauds. [It is not wind farms – they are not farms – they are industrial turbine installations].

Last but not least, I am particularly saddened to learn that Aboriginal rights are being trampled by your misguided government. Wind farms are being installed without consideration for Native Title laws, thus riding rough-shod over the Internationally-acclaimed Mabo decision of the High Court of Australia. There is no excuse for that, just as there is no excuse for killing Tasmanian wedge tailed eagles into extinction and endangering the health of thousands of wind farm neighbours.

That was written in Madrid, 16th of June, 2013, a couple of days ago, by Mark Duchamp, and Mark is the Chairman of the World Council for Nature, with which I am affiliated.

So, the issue of no due diligence on Native Title is a very real one. The Mabo decision is a decision of the High Court of Australia, it is case law – it is being ignored. Native Title Legislation, Commonwealth, 1992, is legislative law. it is being ignored by these wind farm developers. There is no evidence on any documentation, by any turbine development that I have seen to date that gives any mention of due diligence on Native Title, under the Act, or common law Native Title. And yet they are bull-dozing over the top of common-law Native Title land with out fail.

These developments are far from economical. They are costing the taxpayer, and they return the taxpayer nothing.

But, with that, I am going to hand back to Alan Jones and I applaud you and make you so welcome to Country. Thank you.

*The actual figure is 6-18 million birds and bats every year.

All the Rally videos will be available in this playlist.