Antinuclear

TONY JONES: Antony, I’m going to bring you in here and ask you how you got involved in this because, you know, we know you as a singer, obviously, but this is a new side of you. Very few people would know you have spent time with the Martu people. So how did you get involved and what’s your understanding of the situation?

ANTONY HEGARTY: Well, I would just add to that from the side of corporations and business interests in general, it is the oldest – it’s the story as old as the hills. It is the story of – it’s the story of the, like, you know, the virulent consumption of North America, you know, is to manipulate, to divide and conquer Indigenous people, create a cloud of confusion and then rush in and steal the spoils during that window of opportunity and then it’s too late to go back. You know, these kinds of damages that you are proposing, that the companies your party represents are proposing, you know, are irreversible. You know, and they affect the most pristine lands on this continent, in some of the most beautiful places in the world and affect some of the most plugged in, spiritually aware and forward thinking communities in this country. You know, the Indigenous people of Australia are one of our most precious resources in terms of being a people that have an almost unbroken, you know, story that goes back 60,000 years of maintaining a sustainable relationship with nature and with treading lightly on the ground and leaving no trace and collaborating with nature in a sustainable way……….

ANTONY HEGARTY: Moral obligation. You got two claps. You got two claps. Why don’t you ask Germany – why don’t you ask Germany if uranium mining is the way forward? Like, why don’t you ask the companies that are, like, investing so much money in renewable energy? That’s the way forward. You know, usage of minerals and materials and natural resources that don’t have the capacity to destroy whole regions in the process of excavating them or whole countries in the process of bombing them, do you know what I mean. Or look at what happened in Japan. I mean, you know, there was grieving that took place in the Martu community after the nuclear spill in Japan because they felt responsible for that material as stewards of their land. That material was taken from their land and they felt like a burden, a (indistinct) burden, you know, a spiritual burden that they were somehow connected to that catastrophe……..

LINDA TIRADO: Right. But if you start – I think that if you start with wind and solar and then you look at what else you need to do after that, that would be your moral obligation. You don’t start with the most potentially dangerous and then move on to the most innocuous, right?

TONY JONES: Okay, I’m going to quickly go to Grahame because you were doing quite a good impersonation of steam power there. It was coming out of your ears.

GRAHAME MORRIS: Oh, God. Look, you know, not everyone wants a bloody big windmill in their back yard. Look, nuclear power is clean. It is the clean energy.

ANTONY HEGARTY: We’d be happy to dig – we’d be happy to dig a uranium mine in your garden. ……..http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4242255.htm