DUMP FERGUSON NOT NUCLEAR WASTE
by Jim Green, 28 August 09
Four sites in the NT are under consideration by federal resources and energy
minister Martin Ferguson for a national nuclear waste dump. Not one of the
four sites was short-listed when a national site selection study was
undertaken in the 1990s, informed by scientific, environmental and social
criteria. Thus Labor’s commitment to handle the issue in a scientific manner
has gone out the window. As a 2008 Senate Committee report noted: “One of
the most disturbing features of the current legislation is that it severely
curtails the role of sound science in the process of choosing a site. It
abandons the Commonwealth’s commitment to basing the process on the best
science, in favour of basing it on choosing a location with the least legal
capacity to dispute the outcome.”
Later this year, Mr Ferguson is expected to wave around a consultant’s
report purporting to demonstrate that his favoured site – − an area in the
Muckaty Land Trust, 120 kms north of Tennant Creek − is ideal for a
radioactive dump. (Likewise, his predecessor, Senator Peter McGauran,
paraded a consultant’s report in 2002 purporting to demonstrate that a site
immediately adjacent to a missile and rocket testing range in South
Australia was the safest place in the nation for a radioactive waste dump.
Controversy forced the Howard government to abandon that location, then to
abandon the SA dump plan altogether.)
The Muckaty site was nominated by the Northern Land Council despite vocal
opposition from many Traditional Owners whose country will be affected by
the proposal. Dianne Stokes, a Muckaty Traditional Owner, told a Senate
Committee hearing in Alice Springs last year: “We want to keep talking about
it and continue to fight it until we are listened to. The big capital N-O.
The Ngapa clan and the rest of the other totems in that land trust are all
connected. We have connections to each other and are related to each other.
We are the same tribe, the one ancestral cultural group of people who are
the strong voice, and one voice, in that country.”
Muckaty Traditional Owner Marlene Bennett told the Senate Committee: “I
would just like to question why Martin Ferguson is sitting on this issue
like a hen trying to hatch an egg. The people of the Northern Territory
elected the Labor Party. We were led to believe that the nuclear waste thing
would be all overturned and overruled, and at this moment we are extremely
disappointed. How many times do we have to say no? No means no.”.
The opposition of numerous Muckaty Traditional Owners was expressed during
the Senate Committee’s inquiry last year and has also been acknowledged by
the ALP at federal and territory levels. Among others, Indigenous Affairs
Minister Jenny Macklin has acknowledged the opposition and distress of
Muckaty Traditional Owners, while in 2001 she publicly acknowledged that
Australia has no need for the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor − by far the
biggest single source of the nuclear waste.
Last year, the NT Labor conference unanimously adopted a resolution
acknowledging that the nomination of Muckaty was not made with the full and
informed consent of all Traditional Owners, that it did not comply with the
Aboriginal Land Rights Act and that the Muckaty nomination should be
repealed.
The ALP needs to be held to account for its failure to implement an election
promise to repeal a particularly repugnant piece of Howard-era legislation,
the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA). The CRWMA was
designed to facilitate the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in
the Northern Territory. It takes the sword to public health and
environmental standards and allows for the dumping of nuclear waste on
Aboriginal land in the absence of any consultation with or consent from
traditional owners. Pesky things like “procedural fairness” and legal appeal
rights are severely curtailed by the legislation, and NT legislation banning
the imposition of a national dump is overridden.
Labor voted against the CRWMA in 2005/06 with senior Labor MPs describing it
as “extreme”, “arrogant”, “draconian”, “sorry”, “sordid”, and “profoundly
shameful”. At its 2007 national conference, the ALP voted unanimously to
repeal the legislation. Last year, Labor members of a Senate Committee said
the CRWMA is “unfair and discriminatory” and should be repealed in early
2009. But Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson has not budged.
Indeed he has been using the CRWMA as the legislative basis for ongoing site
selection studies in the NT. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd − for all his
boasting about keeping election promises − has conspicuously failed to
ensure that this election promise is kept.
More information on the nuclear waste controversy:
www.no-waste.org
http://beyondnuclearinitiative.wordpress.com
www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/oz/nontdump
The Ferguson Files: www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/oz/ferguson
2008 Senate Inquiry
www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eca_ctte/radioactive_waste
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