Antinuclear

Resistance growing to Martin Ferguson’s Nuclear Waste Bill

There are serious and unresolved problems in the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Bill (2010) currently before the Parliament that fail the test when it comes to reflecting international best practise in radioactive waste management ….

Traditional owners opposed to a dump at Muckaty are taking legal action, travelling widely to address forums and exploring international avenues as part of their efforts to build awareness and halt the plan – and their supporters are growing.

An out of sight, out of mind approach to nuclear waste management, The Drum, David Sweeney, 12 July 11 The unassuming town of Tennant Creek hugs the Stuart Highway 500 kilometres north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory…… if Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson gets his way – Australia’s first national radioactive waste dump.

And, like the waste itself, the politics of how to manage radioactive waste are getting hotter and dirtier.

Mr Ferguson has consistently refused to meet with traditional owners or others affected by the dump plan, or to explore other management options. Instead the Minister appears intent on the development of a central dump site on contested Aboriginal land at Muckaty Station, around 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek.

The issue has deeply divided local Aboriginal traditional owners with one group signing a secret agreement in favour of the dump while many others remain bitterly opposed to both the plan and the process being used to advance it.

Before the 2007 federal election Labor promised a new approach characterised by international best practice and community consultation and consent. It promised transparency, accountability, procedural fairness and legal redress and to adopt a “consensual process of site selection” with “agreed scientific grounds for determining suitability”.

Labor has instead continued the highly divisive approach of the Howard era.There are serious and unresolved problems in the proposed National Radioactive Waste Management Bill (2010) currently before the Parliament that fail the test when it comes to reflecting international best practise in radioactive waste management and has been described by the Central Land Council as a “short-sighted political fix”.

Labor was highly critical of the previous Howard government’s heavy-handed legal framework….

Labor’s repackaged law fails to restore full procedural fairness and appeal rights, suspends the application of key Indigenous and environmental protections and overrides all Commonwealth, State and Territory laws that might delay or frustrate the opening of a waste dump.

The Howard government first nominated Muckaty as one of four possible sites for a nuclear waste dump in September 2007. It was a controversial choice then and remains so now. The Muckaty nomination is highly contested and the subject of current Federal Court action by traditional owners opposed to the dump plan.

Much of the controversy and acrimony focuses on the way the Federal Government has gone about securing a ‘voluntary nomination’ from the Northern Land Council and one single Aboriginal family group. The terms of that agreement have never been made public, even to traditional owners opposed to the plan.

While some members of the Muckaty Land Trust support a national waste dump in return for cash benefits and access to improved services, many do not. And to link hosting a perpetual industrial sacrifice zone with the provision of desperately-needed services for some of our nations poorest citizens is a profound failure of both policy and politics…..

…….The international expectation was clearly articulated by the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management in 2007 that “it is ethically unacceptable to impose a radioactive waste facility on an unwilling community”

Traditional owners opposed to a dump at Muckaty are taking legal action, travelling widely to address forums and exploring international avenues as part of their efforts to build awareness and halt the plan – and their supporters are growing.

The Northern Territory Government, Unions NT, the ACTU, medical and public health bodies, the Central Land Council and Indigenous rights groups, development and regional and national environmental groups including the Australian Conservation Foundation all oppose Labor’s ‘out of sight – out of mind’ approach to radioactive waste management.

The most ethical and effective way to choose nuclear waste storage sites is based on sound science, voluntary consent, transparency and community dialogue. All these features are missing from Minister Ferguson’s agenda and his planned legislation……http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2791570.html

July 12, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, wastes