South Australia’s Nuclear Inquiry: Chasing Fuel’s Gold
Meg Sobey, Conservation South Australia, 8 Feb 15 The state’s peak environment body is deeply disappointed that so much time, energy and resources will be spent on a costly and ultimately fruitless inquiry into the unwanted and unsafe nuclear industry, when we should be focusing on clean, green renewables instead.
“Conservation SA, like the vast majority of South Australians, remains deeply opposed to nuclear power, nuclear waste and all other parts of the nuclear cycle,” said Chief Executive, Craig Wilkins.
“South Australians have spoken time and time again: we don’t want to be the world’s nuclear waste dump. “Yet that’s the real agenda here: the only market gap in the nuclear fuel cycle is for us to become the dumping ground for the world’s nuclear waste.
“The first two questions the Royal Commission should ask is: Where on the South Australian coast will a nuclear power plant be located?
What impact will becoming the world’s nuclear waste dump have on our state’s tourism and education export markets and clean and green food reputation?
“South Australia is already a world leader in clean and green energy.
“That’s the real energy gold we should be chasing, not the fuel’s gold of turning our state into a toxic nuclear waste dump,” he said.
Meg Sobey, Communications Officer on 0411 028 930 meg.sobey@conservationsa.org.au Craig Wilkins 0417 879 439
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Antinuclear 
9th February 2015
The Editor
The Advertiser
Just when South Australia was leading the way to a clean green energy future Jay Weatherill makes an Abbott-like right royal charlie of himself (The Advertiser, 9/2/15).
First we had the regressive Abbott throwing his weight behind polluting fossil fuels now we have the opportunistic Weatherill flagging a return to the bad old days of Maralinga, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
It would appear that the ability of consumers to generate their own heat and electricity from clean renewable energy sources and to compete successfully with dirty fossil and nuclear fuels has cashed-up CEO’s and energy corporations worried, and so they should be. The Liberal-Labor duopoly response to this concern demonstrates how much is at stake.
Recent events strongly suggest that the voters will not stand by as politicians wreak havoc on our environment, economy, and sovereignty. The Liberal-Labor duopoly has been put on notice – listen to the electors or suffer the consequences. Stop wasting tax-payers money on pandering to vested interests or you will go the way of Olsen, Bligh, Newman and Abbott.
Dennis Matthews
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Greens MP Mark Parnell has criticised Jay Weatherill’s opportunistic decision to look at ways of promoting the nuclear industry in SA (The Advertiser, 9/2/15) but it was Greens preferences in the Fisher by-election that gave Weatherill the ammunition to launch his pro-nuclear attack.
The ALP’s narrow victory in Fisher gave them the extra seat to be able to govern in their own right. If the Such-endorsed independent had been elected then the status-quo would have been maintained and Weatherill would have had to delay his pro-nuclear ambitions.
Weatherill’s about-face was preceded by the Rann back-flip on uranium mining in SA.
Thanks to SA Greens long-standing preference deals with the ALP we are now headed towards a pro-nuclear agenda that the Greens have long fought against.
It’s time for the SA Greens to distance themselves from the Labor-Liberal duopoly, to stand on their own two feet, and to not support anti-Greens policy by default.
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From its comments denigrating would-be opposition to the nuclear industry whilst at the same time paying lip service against radical pro-development forces it’s pretty obvious that The Advertiser has already made up its mind about Jay Weatherill’s opportunistic so-called independent Royal Commission into the nuclear industry (The Advertiser, 9/2/15).
With subjective comments like those from the media, business communities and pro-nuclear politicians why waste taxpayers money on window dressing a foregone conclusion?
Once again the public is being led like lambs to the slaughter in the name of development, which in truth is nothing less than a proxy for narrow-minded, regressive, vested interests.
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