Northern Territory’s new mining law might put the brakes on uranium push
New Territory mining legislation comes into force, ABC News, By Tom Nightingale, November 07, 2011 The mining industry says exploration companies will be the most affected by new Northern Territory legislation that takes effect today.
The Minerals Titles Act aims to increase transparency about the environmental impacts of mining, by increasing obligations about what needs to be reported.The Minerals Council says it agrees with the changes in principle, but is mindful of the potential for excessive red tape….http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-07/20111107-mininig-legislation/3650374
Obama to Darwin – to do military and nuclear waste deals?
Darwin readies for Obama visit, 9 News, Xavier La Canna, 29 Oct 11 The Northern Territory is getting ready to throw down the welcome mat, after confirmation US President Barak Obama will visit Darwin next month…. Although details of Mr Obama’s itinerary are scarce, it appears unlikely he will have time to visit world famous heritage areas like Kakadu National Park or Uluru while in the territory.
Mr Obama will be in Darwin on November 17, the only Australian city he will visit apart from Canberra during his stop in Australia while en route to the East Asia Summit in Bali. In Darwin Mr Obama will meet Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Mr Henderson.
There has been speculation Mr Obama will use the visit to make an announcement relating to increasing the US military
presence in the Northern Territory. Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith recently foreshadowed increasing the number of joint training exercises with America in Darwin……
Already the US and Australia jointly run the Pine Gap spy base near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory….
Donna Jackson, a senior member of the Larrakia people who are the traditional owners of the land Darwin is on, said the visit would probably be good for the city.
But Ms Jackson said she had concerns Mr Obama might use his visit as a chance to look over the city on behalf of big businesses in America who could ultimately spoil the local environment….. Following the Darwin visit the Prime Minister and President Obama will attend the East Asia Summit in Bali http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8366836/darwin-readies-for-obama-visit
Still no radiation registering of Northern Territory’s uranium workers
NT URANIUM WORKERS STILL NOT ON NATIONAL REGISTER, GREENS SAY, Safe To Work, By Cole Latimer 20 October 2011 Uranium miners in the Northern Territory are still not on the National Radiation Dose Register, Greens senator Scott Ludlam says. It comes five months after Ludlam originally brought the issue to bear in May, with Ludlam today again quizzing representatives from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency on this issue.
“In July 2010 the register began collecting data on the radiation doses to which workers had been exposed. There are now over 18,000 workers on the database – covering about five years – but there is no information at all on the radiation workers have been exposed to at the Ranger Mine in the Northern Territory. We revealed this in May, and urged the Territory and Federal authorities to address it. ARPANSA told us today that nothing has changed, and to raise the issue with the office of energy and resources minister Martin Ferguson,” Ludlam said in a recent statement.
“We will write to Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson to encourage urgent action to fix this problem.” The national register was created as a central database to track radiation dose histories of miners….. Under this new development, information on radiation doses will be sent to a central register, where miners can then access their personal records.
“Excluding work in the Northern Territory is a huge crack in the system, and it was revealed five months ago and NT uranium mine workers are still off the radiation dose radar. The system will only have integrity if all radiation doses are included,” Ludlam says….. http://www.safetowork.com.au/news/nt-uranium-workers-still-not-on-national-register
Energy Resources of Australia begging shareholders for $500 million
ERA begging for $500m boost, The Age Barry FitzGerald October 13, 2011 THE fall from grace of Rio Tinto-controlled Energy Resources of Australia has become absolute, with the Ranger uranium miner going cap in hand to shareholders for $500 million in equity funding in a heavily discounted rights issue.
The 12-for-7 underwritten issue of new shares at $1.53 a share represents a near 30 per cent discount on ERA’s share price before the stock went into a trading halt. The funds will go a long way to overcoming ERA’s water-handling issues, as well as funding potential mine life-extending activities….. Rio is also to act as sub-underwriter to the equity raising. Should that role be fully utilised, its holding in ERA could increase to 82 per cent, reducing liquidity in what is an already thinly traded stock.
ERA has been producing uranium at Ranger for 30 years and is only the second mine in the world to have produced more than 100,000 tonnes of uranium. But its shares have been in free fall for the past 12 months on the realisation that despite the long production history, it has not been on top of the environmental threat that a record big wet in Kakadu poses.
The build-up of water around the mine and in its pits forced the decision in January to suspend processing operations as a ”precautionary measure” to ensure levels in the operation’s tailings storage dam remained below the authorised limit. More rain forced a further suspension to late July…..
Rio’s decision to back ERA’s equity raising suggests Rio is confident that ERA’s Jabiluka deposit near Ranger might one day be developed.
Jabiluka is one of the biggest undeveloped uranium deposits in the world but its development is being vetoed by traditional owners. http://www.theage.com.au/business/era-begging-for-500m-boost-20111012-1ll13.html#ixzz1ahltBWq2
Australian government policies drive Aborigines off their healthy lives on homelands
More than one-third of the NT’s Aboriginal population lives in 500 remote homeland communities…..people were more healthy living in small communities on traditional homelands
Aboriginal policies ‘ethnic cleansing’, SMH, Lisa Martin, October 9, 2011 –Starving Aboriginal people off their traditional homelands is akin to “ethnic cleansing”, the Amnesty International boss has been told during his Central Australia visit.Amnesty International chief Salil Shetty visited communities in Utopia on the weekend describing the plight of locals as “devastating.”….. The human rights group profiled the Utopian region, in an August report that claimed homeland communities were being starved of money for proper housing, maintenance and basic services like rubbish removal.
Amnesty says the policies are aimed at driving Aborigines off their homelands and herding them into 21 “hub towns” where the federal and NT governments were splashing out cash for resources and services. Community leader Rosalie Kunoth Monks told Mr Shetty how desperately her people wanted to stay on their land. Continue reading
Traditional Aboriginal landowners excluded from Rio Tinto land agreement
The Bark Petition: An expression of legal ownership, Green Left, September 18, 2011, By Emma Murphy Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem land, is home to the famous 1963 “Bark Petition”. This was a protest action by the Yolngu people that led to the first native title litigation in Australia’s history. Continue reading
Jeff McMullen’s passionate call against a second Aboriginal Intervention
the fight for the homelands is the new frontline.
Federal, Northern Territory and state government policy is now in collusion — and it’s across both sides of the political spectrum.
Assimilation is the essence of this government approach and what they are trying to do is, ever so slowly, prise Aborginal people up from their settlements on the homelands and move them for economic rationalisation and to clear the way for the the various kinds of development that have always taken the wealth out of Aboriginal land…..the contest with the miners, and that appetite, that greed for the wealth on Aboriginal lands, is bringing Aboriginal society once more to the crossroads……
This intervention started with a vicious lie: the one that said all of these communities had pedophile rings.
The Australian Crime Commission has now erased that lie, saying there were, and there are, no pedophile rings…….
Jeff McMullen: Don’t buy the NT intervention lie, Green Left, September 17, 2011, Outside prescribed Aboriginal communities in the NT ‘those shameful signs still exist’. Jeff McMullen, a prominent journalist and Aboriginal rights advocate, gave the address below at the Sydney launch of Walk With Us: Aboriginal Elders Call Out to Australian People to Walk with them in their Quest for Justice at Gleebooks, Sydney, on September 1. Continue reading
Muckaty radioactive waste dump not necessary for nuclear medicine
HEALTH PROFESSIONALS DISPUTE CANBERRA’S NUCLEAR DUMP CLAIMS , 12 sept 11, The Public Health Association of Australia and the Medical Association for the Prevention of War are tonight hosting a special forum at Charles Darwin University to address Canberra’s plan for a radioactive waste storage and disposal facility in the NT. Topics will include refuting the Federal Government’s claims about the connection between nuclear medicine and the proposed waste facility.
The forum is timely with the federal Senate scheduled to debate the highly-controversial National Radioactive Waste Management Bill (NRWMB) this week, and with the Federal Court scheduled to hear a legal challenge against the nomination of the Muckaty site next month. Medical groups have previously written to Federal Senators calling on them to reject the NRWMB (online at <http://tiny.cc/2c7z0>). Continue reading
Uranium pollution in Darwin harbour – taxpayers cop the cost
Taxpayers pay for polluting Darwin harbour 1057 ABC Darwin, Sep 07, 2011 , by Vicki Kerrigan
Contaminated stormwater containing uranium, zinc, copper, arsenic, lead, cobalt, iron, nickel and magnesium gushed into Darwin Harbour last year. The Darwin Port Corporation has been ordered to to pay a 19 thousand dollar offence for the disaster. The fine has to be paid by one government department to another government department; effectively this means you the taxpayer will pay….. http://blogs.abc.net.au/nt/2011/09/taxpayers-pay-for-polluting-darwin-harbour.html
Australian government secretive about radioactive waste in its planned Northern Territory dump
Elder’s death won’t affect nuclear waste dump case, ABC News, Anna Henderson and Emma Masters, The Northern Land Council (NLC) says a Federal Court case over a planned nuclear waste dump near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory has not been affected by the death of the senior elder who nominated the site, September 07, 2011 The elder, now known as Kumanjayi Napurrula Lauder-Dixon, died in Elliot last week.
The matter returns to court next month.
………Meanwhile, an anti-nuclear campaigner says he is concerned the federal Government is not doing enough to dispel the belief that the proposed nuclear waste dump will hold only low-level waste.
Dr Jim Green says government documents show plans for a waste dump at Muckaty Station to hold low and intermediate radioactive waste. Dr Green says some of the waste will have a half-life of thousands of years.
“They really ought to be more upfront with Territorians,” he said. “They are not honest and yet they still expect Territorians to trust the federal Government with this dump proposal. “Yet a number of their claims are contradicted by freely available documents, which are produced by the government itself.”
Dr Green says the Government is not doing enough to communicate what type of waste will be stored.”The spent nuclear fuel reprocessing waste that has been sent to Scotland and France is going to come back, and they want to dump that above ground at Muckaty.”…http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-07/20110907death-mackaty-nuclear-dump/2874942
Hypocrisy of Country Liberal Party in Northern Territory, over uranium mining.
Gloves off in Angela Pamela uranium mine scrap ABC News, Jane Bardon and Lucy McNally, 23 Aug 11, “…..The Country Liberals’ Robyn Lambley won the Araluen by-election last year while opposing development of the Angela Pamela uranium deposit after a backlash from Alice Springs residents.
The party has now changed its policy to say it will encourage all applications for uranium developments….
The Arid Land Environment Centre says neither party in the Territory can be trusted when it comes to the proposed Angela Pamela mine.
Opposition environment spokesman Peter Chandler took part in a debate in Alice Springs on the weekend and said the CLP would support a uranium mine there if it met environmental standards.
That prompted the Government to accuse the party of ignoring the community’s concerns on the issue.
Environment Centre spokesman Jimmy Cocking says a CLP government is more likely to approve a mine at the site, but he wouldn’t put it past the Labor party either.”In terms of policy outside of Angela Pamela they are both the same,” he said…http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-23/20110823angela-pamela-mine-scrap/2852248
Australia’s Northern Territory seeking to have 20 renewable energy hub towns
Energy hubs planned for outback, NT News, ALYSSA BETTS | August 19th, 2011, PLANS are afoot to execute one big leap for Territory-kind-renewable energy hubs to free the bush of the tyranny of distance, diesel and degraded roads. Chief Minister Paul Henderson wants each of the 20 Territory growth towns to become independent energy hubs, using, in particular, solar technology. He is in Canberra for a Council of Australian Governments shindig and will today pitch the vision. Continue reading
Exciting new development for renewable energy in Australia’s Northern Territory
Centre for Renewable Energy launched at CDU, Power Engineering, 08/12/2011, By Dr. Heather Johnstone ,Chief Editor, Charles Darwin University (CDU), based in Northern Territory, Australia, has launched a new renewable energy research facility. Australia’s minister for climate change, Karl Hampton, said: “This new centre will be the backbone of renewable energy development in the Territory. The Territory has many potential sources of renewable energy and is already attracting significant investment interest in its solar, tidal and geothermal energy possibilities.
“The centre will work with government, the private sector and the community to drive the research, development and uptake of these projects. “The Centre for Renewable Energy will be the key institution in spearheading initiatives under the Northern Territory Government’s Climate Change Policy, including sourcing 20 per cent of wholesale electricity from renewable sources by 2020.”
Professor Glover, vice chancellor of CDU, said the Centre will develop and evaluate new renewable energy and low emissions technologies for their commercial application. He said: “The hybrid integration of renewable and low emissions applications in the Territory’s remote and regional communities will be a priority.”– http://www.power-eng.com/articles/pei/2011/08/centre-for-renewable-energy-launched-at-cdu.html
Australian government policy drives Aboriginals off their homelands Amnesty report
Aborigines being driven off homelands: Amnesty, Google News, 9 Aug 11, SYDNEY — Australia’s Aborigines are being forced off their traditional land because of government policy, despite the fact they would live longer if they stayed put, Amnesty International claimed Tuesday.The human rights organisation studied small groups in the central desert region and found those choosing to live on their ancestral lands were effectively denied services such as public housing due to a government emphasis on bigger towns.
“There’s a grave risk that these policies will mean that one-third of the Aboriginal population in the Northern Territory will be abandoned,” said Amnesty International Australia director Claire Mallinson. “The report highlights the really unique and special relationship that Aboriginal people have with the land and then how government policies are putting that relationship at risk, and as a result, people and culture at risk.”
Mallinson said that research showed Aborigines lived healthier and longer lives in the small, homeland communities and that these tended to have fewer social problems such as domestic violence and substance abuse. “The stripping away of essential services will effectively force families to abandon their traditional lands and move into larger towns and cities,” she told AFP.
Australia has committed to improving the lives of its indigenous people but is directing the majority of resources in the Northern Territory to so-called growth towns, Amnesty argues. It said this means that outside these towns, many Aborigines live in overcrowded and dilapidated housing, often without electricity, running water or sanitation…..http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hk-Qm-M0PbPOcmJN4TeShRpGgnjA?docId=CNG.acce424d93fc8a31839fc35f83f0dae3.5d1
Australian govt policy grabs Aboriginal homelands, (suits uranium miners)
In its report to be released today, Amnesty International slams the federal and NT Government’s Closing the Gap policy ….More than one-third of the NT’s Aboriginal population lives in 500 remote homeland communities….
the federal government’s NT Intervention had been a “traumatising” land grab.
During the 2007 NT Intervention the federal government took over homelands under a five-year lease which is due to expire next year.
NT Aborigines driven out of homelands, Herald Sun, AAP , August 09, 2011 NORTHERN Territory Aborigines are being driven off their traditional homelands and herded into “hub towns” Continue reading
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