Antinuclear

Make Roxby Downs Indenture Act discussion transparent, and study environmental issues, say Greens

Weatherill must back Roxby words with action, 27 Oct 11  Greens Leader Mark Parnell has welcomed Premier Jay Weatherill’s call for the special Parliamentary Committee examining the Roxby Expansion to be an ‘open process’ that hears from critics of the project.

 In response to pressure from the Greens, today’s hearings of the Select Committee into the Olympic Dam expansion legislation were opened up to the media and public.  However, at this stage the Committee – made up of 4 Labor and 3 Liberal MPs – has no plans to hear from any other witnesses apart from the 3 pro-expansion spruikers: the Government ODX Taskforce, BHP and the Chamber of Mines, despite other requests from scientific and environmental experts to appear. The Committee has only 2 days left to schedule hearings.

“I welcome the Premier’s intervention, but he has to back his words with action,” said Greens Parliamentary Leader Mark Parnell.  “Time is well and truly running out to hear from anyone else.  If the Committee is genuine about keeping faith with the Premier, it will make a public call for submissions and offer an opportunity for those who have raised concerns in the past about this project to challenge the assertions made by BHP Billiton and the ODX Taskforce.

“The Greens have forced the door to be opened on these hearings.  Now we insist these hearings must be open to other witnesses,” he said.    Mark Parnell also rejected the claim by Committee Chair Tom Koutsantonis that the Parliamentary Committee should not be looking at the project’s environmental issues.  “The Minister’s claims that the environmental issues with the expansion project were signed away with the EIS approval is rubbish,” said Mr Parnell.

“The Roxby Indenture legislation is all about the deal done with BHP on water, energy, waste tailings, the desalination plant and environmental monitoring. The reason BHP CE Marius Kloppers is crowing to his shareholders that this is a ‘low cost’ project is because SA is bearing all the environmental costs and not getting a fair share of the returns.

“So far, this Parliamentary Committee has failed to rigorously examine this project to ensure our State gets the best deal possible,” he said.

October 27, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, South Australia | South Australia