The Australian Greens have called on the chief executive of Rio Tinto Iron Ore, Chris Salisbury, to resign or be sacked over the growing scandal regarding his company\u2019s destruction of the sacred Pilbara site.
\nThe Greens will also move for Rio Tinto and the Federal Environment Minister to be called before the Senate Environment References Committee.
\n\u201cThe mining industry in WA have a long history of disregard of First Nations peoples connection to their sacred sites and land. The Aboriginal Heritage Act in WA is so weak because of the mining industry influence and their agenda of prioritising profit and access to land over all else,\u201d Greens spokesperson on First Nations issues Rachel Siewert said.
\n\u201cThis site was knowingly destroyed and someone must be held accountable. Rio Tinto knew this site was of deep cultural significance and should have been protected, not blown up.
\n\u201cThis time Rio Tinto have been caught out and they will be held accountable.
\n\u201cThis must be the last time this wanton destruction occurs. All laws must be strengthened to ensure this never happens again.
\n\u201cI am deeply upset for the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.\u201d
\n\u201cAfter this morning\u2019s train wreck of an interview it is clear that Chris Salisbury needs to resign or be sacked,\u201d Greens Leader Adam Bandt MP said.
\n\u201cRio can not just wash its hands and move on. They can\u2019t walk away from this. Responsibility rests at the top and they need to be held accountable.
\n\u201cContinuing to obfuscate and pretend they didn\u2019t know what they were doing is just further injury.”
\nChair of the Senate Environment References Committee Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the Greens will move for Rio Tinto and the Federal Environment Minister to be called before the committee.
\n\u201cRio Tinto needs to be held to account for what they have done and the Environment Minister has serious questions to answer about her involvement or lack thereof,\u201d Senator Hanson-Young said.
\n\u201cIt seems lots of people knew about this and nobody did anything to stop it.
\n\u201cMore than 40000 years of heritage and history has been destroyed. If it was Stonehenge or the Pyramids there would be global outrage.
\n\u201cEvery Australian should be angry that our nation\u2019s history has been trashed in the name of corporate profit.
\n\u201cThis has happened on Sussan Ley\u2019s watch and if we are going to stop such wanton destruction from happening again we need to know what went so wrong and what changes are needed to the law to make this type of destruction illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Australian Greens have called on the chief executive of Rio Tinto Iron Ore, Chris Salisbury, to resign or be sacked over the growing scandal regarding his company\u2019s destruction of the sacred Pilbara site. The Greens will also move for Rio Tinto and the Federal Environment Minister to be called before the Senate Environment References … Continue reading “Rio Tinto must sack boss and front Environment Committee: Greens”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}