Sydney media conference's staggering gaslighting of traditional custodians must be called out
By Raelene Cooper
On Wednesday, a Mumbrella conference will feature corporate lobbyists on a panel that suggests Murujuga traditional custodians engaged in “misinformation” about their own Country. Having spent years leading the campaign to protect the site’s sacred rock art from industrial threats and government cover-ups, Save Our Songlines founder Raelene Cooper sets the record straight.
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My name is Raelene Cooper. I am a Mardathoonera woman with cultural, spiritual and bloodline connections to Murujuga, also known as the Burrup Peninsula, in Western Australia. I am a Murujuga traditional custodian, and was a former Chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.
Murujuga is the site of the largest, oldest collection of Aboriginal rock art in the world, with more than a million petroglyphs dating back at least 50,000 years, including the earliest known depictions of the human face anywhere on earth. In July last year, Murujuga was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, a source of great joy and pride for all of us.
I am the founder and lead campaigner of Save our Songlines, Murujuga traditional custodians campaigning to protect our Ngurra (Country), our ancient sacred rock art from industrial threats including Woodside’s North West Shelf extension. Woodside’s North West Shelf extension is the largest gas export facility in the Southern Hemisphere, and also threatens Murujuga with acidic emissions from its gas processing plants. Save our Songlines has led national coverage of these issues over recent years, including for the UNESCO World Heritage listing process for Murujuga.
On Wednesday, these issues will be discussed at a panel event at the Mumbrella CommsCon media conference in Sydney. The event was originally titled: “This is World Heritage: How Strategic Communications Helped Protect 50,000 Years of Culture”. After Save Our Songlines wrote to the organisers, it was tweaked to: “How Strategic Communications Helped Murujuga on to the World Heritage List”.
Promotional material for the event talked about how “a surge of misinformation threatened to derail the World Heritage listing of one of the world’s oldest living cultural landscape”. Incredibly, though, the misinformation they’re referring to is not the government cover-up of evidence of industrial damage to the rock art that a whole range of whistleblowers, scientists and rock art experts have called out over the last year.
Instead, ironically, the Mumbrella event claims that those very whistle blowers, Save our Songlines and myself foremost among them, are the ones peddling “misinformation”. That’s because it’s been organised by Orizontas, a crisis PR company founded by former Minerals Council lobbyist Patrick Gibbons, which was hired to manage the UNESCO lobbying process “on behalf” of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.
Orizontas are also shortlisted for an award at the event. It seems they have influential friends within the small world of Australian corporate lobbying. But the reality is that a wide range of internationally renowned experts have repeatedly exposed the misinformation of Orizontas and the government.
In May 2025 the West Australian government published an 800-page report titled the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Program. This included findings that the report’s own chief statistician subsequently described as “a smoking gun of damage…The only explanation we could come up with is that chronic exposure to pollution is causing damage to the rocks. That’s the only explanation that currently makes sense.”
Just weeks before the UNESCO vote last year, this evidence clearly conflicted with the government’s desired narrative - so instead of presenting it openly, they produced an eight-page public summary document in which key data was altered to hide the evidence of industrial threats. This was swiftly exposed by whistleblowers, including the Professor of World Rock Art at the University of Western Australia Benjamin Smith who described it plainly as a “government cover-up.”
Days later, UNESCO’s expert advisory body issued a recommendation that World Heritage be deferred to allow the government to address their management recommendations including a moratorium on further industrial development. But hours after this draft decision was published, Environment Minister Murray Watt announced his proposed approval for the North West Shelf extension until 2070.
The government, assisted by Orizontas, then engaged in an intense international lobbying effort to overturn the draft decision from the UNESCO experts - and to deny the evidence their own rock art monitoring report had discovered of industrial damage to the rock art.
We wanted World Heritage listing, myself and Save our Songlines, along with every other organisation that made a submission to UNESCO. We were hopeful that the expert recommendations for protection, preservation and management of World Heritage Listing would elevate the UNESCO application, and industrial impacts would decrease. However, the Australian government, assisted by Orizontas and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, lobbied to weaken all protections. I know this because I was there at the UNESCO World Heritage summit, along with my family members and other Save our Songlines campaigners. I watched with a heavy heart, much disappointment, and feelings of betrayal.
Once the UNESCO outcome was secured, Minister Watt published a Statement of Reasons for the North West Shelf approval decision, which made a series of admissions that directly contradicted all the messaging from the government prior to UNESCO, and directly contradicts ongoing claims made by Orizontas. In this document, Minister Watt stated “I … agree with the department that there is sufficient scientific evidence to conclude that areas of the Burrup Peninsula have been exposed to industrial emissions capable of accelerating rock art weathering.” He also stated “that there are multiple lines of scientific and other evidence suggesting that nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and other acidic airborne emissions are having a significant adverse impact on the rocks of Murujuga.”
It is the lowest form of gaslighting for corporate lobbyists from Sydney to claim that Murujuga traditional custodians have engaged in “misinformation” about our own Country and the threats to it from industry and government - all the while government and industry have lied about the evidence and colluded to gag traditional owners from sharing our concerns. (Not to mention that the Orizontas PR campaign this panel promotes was incompetent, as for example the social media post they made on behalf of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) that read “MAC is influenced by the government and industry and has allowed the science to be compromised”, before swiftly deleting it when questioned by media.)
I have written to Mumbrella to inform them of all this, but they have responded that the event is still going ahead. In a post over the weekend, their Editorial Director Hal Crawford explained Mumbrella’s response to what he reductively called “a controversy about rocks” - “just rocks”, in his words, which clarifies Mumbrella’s priority for PR rather than the 50,000 years of stories these rocks contain.
He explains he consulted Professor Ben Mullins, the lead author of the rock art monitoring report, who himself admitted the government summary was “very rosy spin” in secret emails the ABC obtained. Mullins later attended the UNESCO conference as part of the lobbying effort Orizontas coordinated, so he’s hardly a disinterested observer of this process either. Mumbrella have removed the reference to “misinformation” in their event description, but informed us they will still provide a platform for these claims. They also offered to “consider” an opinion piece from me after the conference - but you are reading it here first, instead.
I am encouraging anyone else concerned about this to write to Mumbrella as well, and urge them not to proceed as planned. They certainly shouldn’t be rewarding gaslighting. I am so grateful to Cheek Media CEO Hannah Ferguson, who was due to speak at the event, for withdrawing in protest at this outrageous gaslighting of traditional custodians. I urge others to do the same.
Save Our Songlines has started a petition calling on Mumbrella to Stop Gaslighting Murujuga Traditional Custodians. You can add your name here.
About the author
Raelene Cooper
Raelene is a Mardathoonera woman with cultural, spiritual and bloodline connections to Murujuga, also known as the Burrup Peninsula, in Western Australia. She is a Murujuga traditional custodian, and was a former Chair of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation. She is a founder and lead campaigner of Save our Songlines, Murujuga traditional custodians campaigning to protect their Ngurra (Country) and ancient sacred rock art from industrial threats.
The things corporates try to get away with. Shameful!