SOUTH FREO music superstar John Butler says it’s “f…ing boring” to be back fighting fossil fuel companies 10 years after seeing them off James Price Point near Broome.

Butler was at the Save Scott Reef film night and panel discussion on Thursday along with around 300 others who packed out the Fremantle Town Hall.

“In between we were fighting fracking the whole time and we’re still fighting fracking, so in many ways it hasn’t stopped,” Butler said of his battles with Woodside and other fossil fuel companies. 

“The nature of the insatiable appetite of the mining resource sector is such that it just changes tack constantly.”

• Federal MP Josh Wilson and Fremantle councillor Jemima Williamson-Wong, and a packed-out town hall. Photos by Katherine Kraayvanger

Butler said after licking their wounds after their James Price Point loss and fracking not panning out because of opposition, Woodside had simply come back with a new proposal – the Browse Basin.

“I think sometimes these things have to be looked at like a drug addiction, and every once in a while, you have to have an intervention with the people you care about in your community who are attempting to screw up the place for their addiction,” he said.

“Woodside acts like an addict, and we have to be the family that chains it to a tree for a second.”

The muso said with a lot happening around the world, it could be difficult for climate activists to know where to direct their energy, so events like Save Scott Reef were good for helping give them direction on what to do.

“It’s hard to know where to sift through all the data. 

“I think that the biggest thing for a lot of us is we’re seeing things happening globally, and I think there’s always a really great activist and campaign adage, which is ‘think globally act locally’.

“When you’re inundated by what to do about the world, there’s things to do right here. 

“You don’t need to worry about conspiracies that are somewhere else, there’s things that are happening here that are real and that we have agency in.”

by KATHERINE KRAAYVANGER and STEVE GRANT