Antinuclear

Muckaty nuclear dump shows Mabo still matters

 Beyond Nuclear, ABC Unleashed,    GEORGE NEWHOUSE , 4 July 12 The Mabo case is widely recognised as a turning point in Australian legal history, as it challenged the colonialist assumptions upon which our nation was founded and acknowledged the realities of Indigenous dispossession.

When, in 1992, the High Court of Australia recognised that the Indigenous population held a connection to the land predating European settlement, a door opened for Indigenous Australians to reclaim at least some of their rights to parts of our nation.

However, 20 years on, Aboriginal land rights remain as contested and as tenuous as ever. Of particular note is the Commonwealth Government’s plan to establish a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory at Muckaty, north of Tennant Creek.

Since the 1990s, the Commonwealth has led a long and troubled search for a remote place to store the country’s radioactive waste. The Howard Government tried to locate a site in South Australia but a spirited campaign by Aboriginal custodians, the wider community, and the state Labor Government ended that push.

Despite promising no mainland dump site ahead of the 2004 federal election, the re-elected Howard government announced three possible Northern Territory sites in July 2005. As part of that effort, the Coalition government then turned to the Aboriginal Land Councils to encourage them to identify other possible waste sites on Aboriginal Land. In 2007, the Commonwealth Government accepted a nomination by the Northern Land Council for a site to be assessed, 120km north of Tennant Creek on the Muckaty Land Trust.

That nomination has been the subject of continuing controversy. Many of the traditional owners of Muckaty argue that they were never consulted, and others say that they were not consulted in a meaningful way and never consented to the nomination. Most importantly, many traditional owners allege that they were never informed about the details of the proposal to dump nuclear waste on their land, the danger that this might present to them and their families, the potential impact of the proposal on their sacred sites, and the fact that the nature of the legislation and the material involved meant that they were effectively giving up their land in perpetuity (i.e. forever).

July 4, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News