Both the Native Title body (ATLA), and the relevant individual custodians for the project area have completely lost faith in the consultation process undertaken by the DIIS. The current program of Aboriginal community engagement for this project has all but collapsed and only non-relevant Aboriginal people remain on the consultative committee.
In particular we note that the EPBC Act recognises the following three key documents as best practice for Aboriginal community engagement in Australia. These documents are particularly relevant to all projects that require approval by the Federal Minister for the Environment under existing EPBC Act processes:
1. Commonwealth of Australia (COFA), 2016. Engage Early – Guidance for Proponents on Best Practice Indigenous Engagement for Environmental Assessments Under the EPBC Act’ (the Guidelines).
2. Australian Heritage Commission (AHC), 2002. Ask First – A Guide to Respecting Indigenous Heritage Places and Values.
3. Australia ICOMOS, 2013. Burra Charter and associated Practice Notes.
Regina McKenzie Letter to Minister the Hon. Matthew Canavan Selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility in South Australia
Submission 107 – Attachment 1 to Submission to Senate
Regina McKenzie
Hawker South Australia
Senator the Hon. Matthew James Canavan
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia
Thursday 8 February 2018
Dear Senator Canavan
Re: Your commitment to protect and not cause harm to Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in the Flinders Ranges
As you may be aware, recent actions undertaken by the environmental consultancy directly engaged by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS) has resulted in harm to a significant Aboriginal site in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. The identified harm occurred to a previously known Aboriginal site that has been recorded on the Central
Archive of the Register of Aboriginal Sites and Objects that is maintained by the South Australian Government, Department of State Development – Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation (DSD-AAR). The issue of harm by the DIIS and their preferred supplier is being considered as a potential breach of the South Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988, and is pending a formal compliance investigation by DSD-AAR. We add that formal legal
advice is also being sought by the prescribed body corporate of the Native Title body for the Flinders Ranges, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA). Given the likely legal ramifications of this potential breach of the South Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act, we will, for the time being, leave these matters of fact in the hands of the regulatory and judicial systems.
I do wish, however, to acknowledge the Commonwealth Government’s repeated commitment to: (1) protect; and (2) do no harm to the Aboriginal cultural heritage of our region through the investigations and/or implementation of the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF) proposed project area in Barndioota have given. Additional reasoning in support of each of the following actions is further
articulated in the following pages of this document:
1. The DIIS need to immediately stop the current program of ineffectual, damaging and culturally inappropriate consultation, and work toward a more inclusive program of consultation with relevant Aboriginal parties in accordance with the best practice consultation guidelines of the Commonwealth Government.
2. The DIIS need to cease all activities currently proposed for the NRWMF Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment of the Barndioota project area until adequate consultation has been undertaken with relevant Aboriginal parties; and until such time as suitable cultural and regulatory protocols are developed to protect all investigators, the Aboriginal community and the lands subject to this assessment.
The development of these protocols must be undertaken with the active participation of relevant Aboriginal parties in accordance with the best practice standards identified by the Government of Australia (COFA 2016), and required by the Federal Minister for the Environment for all matters that may be considered under an EPBC referral.
3. The DIIS needs to clearly articulate the statutory nature, intended scope and
proposed sequence of works for the investigation of Aboriginal cultural heritage values for the NRWMF project in Barndioota. All culturally relevant Aboriginal parties need to be actively involved in the development and execution of the intended scope of work for any cultural heritage assessment of our lands and our culture.
4. The DIIS need to officially and publically reprimand the environmental consultancy that has caused harm to our significant cultural area.
5. The DIIS need to prove to us that clear processes are in place to prevent this level of harm from ever reoccurring.
This letter also outlines many of our concerns with the current processes and procedures that are currently being enabled by the DIIS. Ultimately we are prepared to work with the Commonwealth Government to complete the assessment phase of works required for the NRWMF project, but we wish to do this in a culturally and socially appropriate and
responsible manner. If the DIIS continue to act in their disrespectful manner, we ask that you put a stop to their culturally inappropriate actions so that we can begin to concentrate on healing the damage that the DIIS NRWMF project has caused to our community.
This letter seeks to discuss the following key issues:
The Commonwealth Government commitment to not harm Aboriginal cultural heritage has failed and requires urgent reparation/damage assessment.
• Aboriginal cultural heritage constraints at the proposed Barndioota project area
cannot be avoided by the NRWMF project.
• Consultation, Relevance and Obligations: How the Department of Industry,
Innovation and Science has repeatedly and categorically failed to meet the
consultation best practice considerations of the Australian Government.
• The environmental assessment process and Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment
context for the Barndioota NRWMF project has not been clearly defined by the
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.
I look forward to your detailed response to all of the issues detailed in this letter.
Sincerely
Regina McKenzie
Regina McKenzie Letter to Minister the Hon. Matthew Canavan
The Commonwealth Government Commitment to Not Harm Aboriginal Cultural
Heritage
In an email to both ATLA and the VYAC (26 August 2016), Bruce Wilson from the DIIS restated the Commonwealth Government’s commitment to protect the full extent of Aboriginal cultural heritage associated with the Barndioota NRWMF project area. Bruce Wilson noted:
Was this much too expensive choice made because these submarines could easily be converted to nuclear submarines?
THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS OF QUESTIONS
Australia’s Future Submarine program could blow out by billions, Senator Rex Patrick warns
This week I revealed in Parliament that the Coalition Government’s choice of the French submarine builder as the preferred partner for the Navy’s Future Submarine will cost taxpayers $30 billion more than the price offered by the unsuccessful German builder.
The Government is refusing to explain the difference in cost.
We’re talking a whopping $30 BILLION. That’s $30 billion that could have been better spent on other defence projects or even health, education and/or infrastructure. I will be pursuing this further.
Here is my question to the Defence Minister this week.
South Australia’s academic bigwigs infected with pronuclear delusions.
UniSA Chancellor Jim McDowell is also Chair of the ANSTO Board & ex-CEO of BAE.
AdUni Chancellor is Nuclear Fuel Chain Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce.
University of Adelaide and UniSA in merger talks, InDaily, Bension Siebert- 19 June 18The University of Adelaide and UniSA have announced historic talks to merge into a single university which they claim could be immediately placed within the world’s top 100 universities.
The governing councils of both universities have agreed to a six-month “period of collaboration” to negotiate a potential merger, according to a joint statement released by the universities today.
University of Adelaide Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Rathjen and UniSA Vice-Chancellor David Lloyd will oversee a joint report into the prospective merger, to be delivered by the end of the year.
The university councils will decide on the viability and merits of a merger at that time.
In a joint statement, University of Adelaide Chancellor Kevin Scarce and UniSA Chancellor Jim McDowell say now is the right time to consider joining together as a single university.
“Now is the time to facilitate a conversation about whether uniting our universities would create a new internationally renowned university of scale that would be well placed to anticipate and respond to this changing landscape,” the statement reads……..
Merging the Adelaide University and UniSA was an ambition of former Labor Premier Jay Weatherill in 2015, but universities and both sides of federal politics were opposed to the idea. ……..
Ed note. This submission has an important attachment – a letter – which will later be published on this site
Regina McKenzie Selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility in South Australia (Submission No.107)
This independent submission addresses the following key points of the Terms of Reference of the Australian: Senate Economic Reference Committee inquiry (2018) into the appropriateness and thoroughness of the site. selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility at Kimba and Hawker in SouthAustralia:
c) how any need for Indigenous support has played and will continue to play a part in the process, including how Indigenous support has been or will be determined for each process advancement stage; and
f) any other related matters.
My name is Regina McKenzie and I am an identified (Aboriginal) Kuyani traditional owner for the area of land currently subject to the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Project (NRWMFP) at Barndioota, South Australia. I have extensive cultural knowledge of this portion of Adnyamathanha country and have been working collaboratively with non Aboriginal specialist for well over ten years to investigate and report on this area. Some of the projects that I have worked on in my cultural interest area include:
Numerous archaeological investigations with a number of Australian universities;
Palaeontology investigations with Flinders University, South Australia;
Aboriginal heritage investigations for NRM projects with multiple State Government agencies;
Archaeological investigations for SA Power Networks;
Archaeological training programs with the Heritage team of the South Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet, Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Division (DPC AARD) (now Department of State
Development Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation – DSD AAR);
Cultural heritage management planning for the Commonwealth Government’s Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) program.
The development of large area cultural mapping protocols for the SA State Government;
The translation and spatial mapping of one of my Nation’s ancestral story lines that includes the nominated NRWMFP area in Barndioota.
The reference committee should understand that the Adnyamathanha People are an historical conglomeration of multiple and individually identified Aboriginal tribal Nations, each of which has its own cultural interest area. The Adnyamathanha people, as a whole, hold native title over much of the Flinders Ranges and this is managed by a prescribed body corporate on behalf of all traditional groups by the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA). I would also like to note that only individual people, not organisations, can hold cultural knowledge and be considered as traditional owners (there is case law in South Australia to this affect). It is also vital that the committee appreciate the difference between Aboriginal cultural heritage laws and obligations (whether they be State or Federal), and Native Title laws, rights and interests. My submission is focussed on the cultural heritage rights and interests of identified traditional owners and the State/Federal obligations for those that wish to investigate /or harm Aboriginal cultural heritage.
Many of my concerns with the Aboriginal cultural heritage consultation process for the NRWMFP in Barndioota have been summarised in a recent letter to Minister Canavan (see Attached) [ed. note: This letter will be published on this site, as a separate post] . I would appreciate if the committee accepts the attached letter as part of my submission. I note that despite repeated requests to Minister Canavan’s office, I still have not received a response to this letter and many questions remain unanswered and concerns unresolved. I believe that these questions and concerns must be addressed for the DIIS consultation process to be considered effective.
In addition to my questions and concerns detailed in the attached letter, I would appreciate some clarification on the following:
Australia’s commitment to Article 29.2. of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which notes:
States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.
I would appreciate some clarification on the Australian Government’s or the the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (DIIS) position on this United Nations charter and how it applies to proposed developments on traditional Aboriginal lands and lands that contain significant cultural value to relevant Aboriginal people.
The DIIS, on behalf of the Commonwealth Government of Australia, took no steps during the nomination and shortlisting process to secure either the free, or the prior, or the informed consent of the Indigenous peoples who have significant cultural ties to the NRWMFP area in Barndioota. To the best of my knowledge, the DIIS believed that the Commonwealth Government did not need to consult with Aboriginal people in Barndioota because the proposed project area was not subject to Native Title. This was stated to myself and my sister when we first called the DIIS to enquire about the project after we heard about it on ABC news. This was also repeated by DIIS representatives at their initial public meetings in Hawker.
Importantly, and from an Aboriginal cultural heritage perspective, ATLA and the relevant cultural custodians of the Barndioota area have repeatedly advised the DIIS that they do not support the siting of the NRWMFP within our traditional country.
The DIIS initially confused Aboriginal cultural heritage obligations with Native Title constraints and only consulted with affected Aboriginal people after repeated requests for information from myself and my sister
The Aboriginal cultural heritage investigations undertaken to support the Barndioota NRWMFP have not been undertaken in accordance with the Commonwealth Government’s best practice requirements for investigating and reporting on Aboriginal cultural heritage (see attached letter). Importantly, this failure to adhere, recognise or use the Commonwealth best practice guidelines has led the DIIS to:
Consult with inappropriate Aboriginal people who do not hold cultural information for Barndioota, and
Completely ignore the significant cultural/gender restrictions associated with the NRWMFP area, and
Alienate relevant culturally appropriate people from participating in the NRWMFP assessment, and
Not have access to vitally important cultural information associated with the NRWMFP area.
These factors alone have made the DIIS Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment ineffective, inappropriate, and incomplete. This significantly flawed consultation process needs to be completely abandoned as soon as possible because it has caused significant mental health issues within our broader Aboriginal community and continuing lateral violence within our immediate family. The NRWMFP Aboriginal consultation process has left me feeling ostracised within my own family and I find myself constantly witnessing aggressive, misogynistic and culturally inappropriate behaviour from a select few who have been validated through the DIIS Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment process.
The DIIS has failed to abide by their own governance guidelines that they established for the Aboriginal cultural heritage consultative committee. There have been too many instances of aggressive and inappropriate behaviour that have not been recorded or addressed.
The DIIS has inappropriately engaged a cultural heritage consultancy:
Against the wishes of both ATLA and the relevant cultural custodians of the NRWMFP area,
Without presenting any tangible proof that the consultancy has/can record the intangible values associated with large area cultural sites to a level that is similar to, or better than, that developed by DPC AARD,
Without developing the scope of work for the assessment with ATLA and the relevant cultural custodians of the NRWMFP area,
Without informing ATLA or the relevant cultural custodians of the agreed scope of work between the DIIS and the consultancy for the Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment
The nomination and short-listing process of the Barndioota NRWMFP site failed to acknowledge the unique and intrinsic Aboriginal cultural heritage values of the associated cultural landscape. Many of these values have been documented by the State Government through extensive cultural mapping and archaeological investigations, and acknowledged by the Commonwealth Government for the neighbouring IPA program. Importantly, the failure to acknowledge the values of this cultural landscape also extended to a failure to recognise and acknowledge the nominated traditional custodians of the land subject to the NRWMFP area. These custodians are well known to DPC AAR who hold the contact details for the custodians of all of our recorded sites.
Ministers Frydenberg and Canavan have both issued seperate commitments that no Aboriginal cultural heritage will be harmed through this project. The DIIS has been informed of the extensive archaeologyand all-encompassing intangible values associated with the NRWMFP area, and the impossibility of situating the NRWMFP and its associated road/power infrastructure without harming Aboriginal cultural heritage which includes our cultural beliefs, lore and customs. Could the committee please clarify the DIIS’/the Commonwealth Government’s understanding of what Aboriginal cultural heritage means and how the DIIS intend to avoid/not cause harm, particularly to our system of lore, custom and belief. We believe that this is a major constraint for the NRWMFP and that valuable public funds could have been saved if the relevant Ministers honour their commitments and resolved this matter early in the project.
During Phase one, the DIIS never undertook any formal Acknowledgement of Country, and has never requested a formal Welcome to Country from any Adnyamathanha elder for any of the meetings held in Hawker.
Retired Liberal Senator Chapman’s nomination of the Barndioota site has never been questioned either in the context of any potential political conflict of interest, or for his prior engagement in the Federal Senate and his involvement in past Senate committees who were tasked to investigate the establishment of above ground Nuclear waste facilities nearly two decades ago. We have been assured that the nomination of the Barndioota site is not related in any way to the current Liberal government or to the ex Senator’s prior profession. I would like this matter to be assessed in a transparent way.
Key Hawker community representatives who support the NRWMFP in Barndioota have long term relationships with, and have worked for Wallerbedina Station for many years. This potential conflict of interest needs to be identified and acknowledged in a transparent manner.
The Barry Brook Position in the light of Ergen – Enforced Amnesia or Ignorance ? Nuclear Exhaust, 22 June 18 The Aim of this post is to present the mass media statements of knowledge and opinion given by Prof. Barry Brook.
Prof. Brook has presented the pro-nuclear environmentalist case for a number of years. I was and remain particularly interested in his public level presentations regarding the nuclear accident at Fukushima Diiachi in March 2011……….
Prof. Brooks, assured as he is by the statements of government and private nuclear experts, vigorously proposes that the risks of a greatly and rapidly expanded nuclear reactor for power sector are far less than the unmitigated risks of sudden climate change.
Both over the history of the “nuclear age” and since the accident a Fukushima Diiachi. It is my view that nuclear authorities have twice justified their actions on the premise that they and their skills and technology were and are needed to “save the planet”. ….. nuclear experts and authorities have many very many false claims regarding the safety of the human dose response to exposures of radiation in absorbed dose quanta which suit the experts at the time. ……..
on the basis of medical ethics, nuclear authorities often deliberately conflate medical treatment doses and medical diagnosis doses of radiation exposure with additional doses, whatever they are from case to case, imposed as a result of nuclear industry, military and civilian. ……..
(For example, in March 2011, the Japanese electrical generator company, TEPCO, claimed that the fallout exposure from radionuclides released by the failed Fukushima Diiachi nuclear power plant were harmless because the dose imposed upon civilians in the Prefecture was less than the dose imposed by a chest ray. This statement is a perfect example of a corporation acting completely outside of its brief and authority and in direct contraction of medical ethics. Medicine is only medicine when 1. the patient gives informed consent to the treatment 2. where there is a health benefit which outweighs the risks of the treatment. Power plant executives are not qualified to administer medicine to a gnat, let alone a human being. Much has been made of the alleged “paradox” of the Evacuation zones in Japan, but it is not a paradox at all, as much some nuclear advocates actually mock the evacuations which took place in Japan.) …….
Barry’s views on radiation safety are his views. They are based upon advise he has received. But with sincere respect, Barry is not qualified to give nuclear safety advice. He has no formal qualifications in health physics. …….. The account Prof. Brook gives of the nuclear accident at Fukushima and it’s consequences is very conventional when compared with other accounts from nuclear industry experts. ……https://nuclearexhaust.wordpress.com/2018/06/22/the-barry-brooks-position-in-the-light-of-ergen-enforced-amnesia-or-ignorance/
Australia’s dangerous obsession with the Anglosphere, The Conversation, Dennis AltmanProfessorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe University, 22 June 18
Over the past three weeks the ABC program Four Corners has presented special reports on American politics, which involved one of our best journalists, Sarah Ferguson, travelling to the US on special assignment. I watched these programs and I enjoyed them. But in part I enjoyed them because they covered ground that is already familiar.
If the same effort had gone into bringing us in-depth special reports from, say, Jakarta or Mumbai they would have been less familiar, but perhaps more interesting. Most important they would not be stories already covered by major English language media to which we have extraordinary access.
As we struggle to make sense of a changing world order, in which the role of the US seems less defined and dependable, our fascination with things American continues to grow. It is one of the ironies of current Australian life that preoccupation with “the Anglosphere”, a favourite phrase of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s, is in practice shared by many who regard themselves as progressive.
What is the Anglosphere? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “the countries of the world in which the English language and cultural values predominate”, clearly referring to Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. A surprisingly recent term, it was coined by the science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his 1995 novel The Diamond Age, and then picked up by a number of conservative commentators.
The Churchillian notion of near-mythical bonds created by the English language and British heritage has always attracted Australian conservatives
……… Despite 50 years of governments talking about Australia as part of Asia, now somewhat rebadged in the concept of the Indo-Pacific, our cultural guardians continue to behave as if nothing has changed. We may be wary of Trump’s America, and a little bemused by the reappearance of Little Britain, but we still look unreflectively to the US and Britain for intellectual guidance……..
Australia is not Britain or the United States, and there is a paradox that we are more and more obsessed with them even as their relative importance in the world, and certainly in our region of the world, declines. …….
Australia has a bipartisan record of sending troops overseas to win the gratitude of our “great and powerful friends”.
With an American president who seems uninterested in traditional alliances and unmoved by appeals to protect democracy or human rights, one might expect the government would be more conscious of the reality that US and Australian interests will not always converge. On the contrary: they seem to be working harder to align us with the United States.
……… culture and foreign policy meet: alarm bells about Chinese influence ignore the far greater sway of American, to a lesser extent British, influence on our everyday lives. Yes, China is a repressive authoritarian state which is trying to increase its global influence. Yes, we should be cautious about their expansion. But too often we view this through an American prism, rather than making the effort to understand how the shifting power relations are being understood in countries in our region……..
‘In April Adani applied to the federal Department of Environment and Energy
to expand a dam by 450% and build a pipeline for its Carmichael coalmine,
without an assessment under national environment laws.
‘The project, North Galilee Water Scheme, involves expanding an existing
2.2 billion-litre dam to 10 billion litres and building associated infrastructure,
including 110 kilometres of pipeline to transport water
from the Suttor River and Burdekin Basin. The aim is to supply at least
12.5 gigalitres of fresh water to the Carmichael coalmine and
other mines in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland. …
‘In its application, Adani said the water trigger applies only to
projects associated with extraction. …
‘“It’s an incredibly narrow reading of the EPBC Act,” said Australian Conservation Foundation Stop Adani campaigner Christian Slattery.
“Clearly it’s a project connected with coalmining.”
‘“If this interpretation is accepted by the minister it further demonstrates
the weaknesses of the EPBC Act and the need for a new generation of environmental laws.”
‘Labor’s environment spokesperson Tony Burke said the government should ensure
a thorough and rigorous environmental assessment is conducted:
“Adani cannot evade the scrutiny of the expert independent scientific committee,
and the minister for the environment should not be facilitating an opportunity for Adani
to avoid scientific scrutiny on its use of water.
‘“The more I look at this [Carmichael] project and the way the company has dealt with
different layers of government the more sceptical I have become.”
‘Lock the Gate Alliance campaign coordinator Carmel Flint said the proposal came
when “most of central Queensland is in drought” and the effects on other water users
and the environment must be considered.
‘“Adani is apparently trying to sneak through approval for a massive water scheme
without a full environmental assessment … in our view that’s an activity
which is absolutely required to go through the water trigger,” she said. …
‘Adani’s claims in the application, in relation to consultation with local Traditional Owners
and its track record on adherence to environmental regulations, are spurious at best. …
‘It makes no mention that its dodgy Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA)
is subject to legal challenge. …
‘The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists told the Productivity Commission review
that mining exemptions make it difficult to measure the cumulative
impacts of water extraction,
“placing entire groundwater and interconnected surface water systems at risk”. …
‘Environmental Defenders Office Queensland chief executive Jo Bragg said
the community was not given an opportunity to object to the granting of Adani’s water licence.
‘She said the commission’s findings added to pressure on federal Labor
to revoke Adani’s environmental approvals if it wins power.’
AUSTRALIAN taxpayers are forking out nearly $20,000 to send Kimba school students on an all-expenses paid, five-night excursion to Sydney to learn about radioactive waste.
SA Senator Rex Patrick believes the trip is to “schmooze” families ahead of an August 20 ballot to determine whether the town should host a national nuclear waste facility.
The Federal Government will also gauge community support in Hawker, in the Flinders Ranges, with Wallerberdina Station as the other possible location for the low-level waste facility.
This week’s excursion by 16 students to Adelaide for two nights and then on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights, follows a fully-funded trip by 17 Quorn students in April.
Senator Patrick said the money being spent by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science for the trips highlighted the site-selection process being a “sham”.
“My view is that the department … will do everything and anything to improve community sentiment by schmoozing the locals,” the Centre Alliance politician told The Advertiser.
“This is about understanding what will be in their backyard and I’m sympathetic to that effort, but it crosses a line when you move from informing to schmoozing.”
The government dismissed claims the trip was to influence the ballot outcomes and said each community proposed the excursions to educate students on career opportunities.
National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Taskforce principal adviser Bruce Wilson said the excursions were for children to get “insights” into the types of jobs in the industry.
“The Kimba Economic Working Group saw the success of the (Quorn) excursion and requested something similar for their area,” Mr Wilson said.
Kimba consultative committee independent convener Allan Suter said some 15,000 people visit ANSTO each year and the students had as much of a right to the opportunity as others, “probably more so given the conversation the community is currently in”.
“This is a school excursion that was endorsed by the school and will assist children to understand both nuclear research and types of jobs that would come alongside a radioactive waste management industry,” Mr Suter said.
“Jobs can be pretty hard to come by in our area.
“These kids are aged between 15 and 18, which is a key time you are thinking about your future career.
“Should Kimba have this facility, we want our kids to be in the best position to work towards jobs created by it, or in the flow-on contracts, or in the research the facility enables.”
An itinerary by school principal Anne Moyle said all flights, travel, accommodation and meals, including a dinner cruise, had been paid for by the department.
As well as the excursion, ANSTO staff have visited the schools to talk about nuclear science and its applications.
ANSTO chief nuclear officer Hef Griffiths said: “We are there to answer questions about what it’s like working at a nuclear facility, how safety is assured, the medicine we produce and why, agricultural research and the like.”
A Senate Inquiry into the government’s site-selection process highlighted landowners, traditional owners, community members, neighbours and stakeholders had all visited ANSTO.
The Advertiser last week revealed a private company said it had support for the nuclear repository to be built in Leonora, in Western Australia.
Minister for Resources Matt Canavan said any landowner was free to nominate a site until the final selection was made however, “the government will not be progressing detailed assessment of other nominations until the results of the votes in the two South Australian communities are known”.
Katrina Bohr No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/, June 20 at 12:20 PM An interview with Matt Canavan, near the end. His flexible term of broad community support for a nuclear waste facility is quoted in the Australian-‘There is already broad community support for three South Australian properties.’
Projects near possible nuclear sites receive funding, SA sites earmarked as possible nuclear waste facility sites have received $4 million in funding for various community projects Stock Journal
PROJECTS near Kimba and Wallerberdina Station, which have been earmarked as possible nuclear waste facility sites, will receive $4 million through new National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Community Benefit Programme grants.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan said 45 projects had been awarded funding.
“These communities, presently being consulted about hosting a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility, were invited to submit applications for projects that will deliver social and economic benefits to their area,” Mr Canavan said……
Lowy Institute Poll shows Australians’ support for climate action at its highest level in a decade , The Conversation Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland,
The annual Lowy Institute Poll on Australian attitudes to the world and global issues for 2018 has been released. Among a series of interesting findings, one thing is clear: support for climate action and renewable energy continue to grow.
In response to the survey’s questions on climate and energy, 59% of respondents agreed with the statement: “climate change is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs.”
This represents an increase of 5 percentage points from 2017, and a consistent increase in support for this statement over the past six years. It suggests that support for climate action in Australia is bouncing back towards its high point of 68% in the first set of Lowy Polls in 2006.
What’s more, while the federal government doggedly pursues a “technology-neutral” energy policy, Australians don’t seem to be buying it. Public support for a large-scale energy transition in Australia is even more emphatic than support for climate action.
According to the Lowy poll, which involved a nationally representative sample of 1,200 adults, 84% of Australians support the statement that “the government should focus on renewables, even if this means we may need to invest more in infrastructure to make the system more reliable”.
Both figures suggest that most Australians are genuinely concerned about climate change, a finding consistent with the ever-growing scientific consensus.
The big question is: will Australia’s political leaders respond to this support for climate action and energy transition by putting legitimate policy in place?
It’s political
Two key impediments present themselves here, both political.
The first is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s own party……..
While some Australian politicians are steadfast in their support for coal, despite the questionable economics, mainstream financial institutions and even energy companies like AGL are shifting away from fossil fuels. Far from economic considerations preventing climate action, as they seemed to in the 1990s, the economy might just be starting to drive that action.
The Northern Territory Government has downplayed concern following the ABC’s revelation that drinking water has been high in uranium in three Aboriginal communities for a decade — even as the Power and Water Corporation said a plan to filter heavy metals was still years away.
Key points:
Earlier this week ABC revealed at least three Central Australian communities have uranium levels in drinking water that exceed health guidelines
The NT Health Minister has now responded, saying the NT Health Department and Power and Water were working together on the issue
But medical professionals said the situation was “unacceptable”
The response came as the Australian Medical Association urged the water supplies be fixed, with Aboriginal health organisations describing the situation as “unacceptable”.
Data from the Power and Water Corporation showed Laramba’s water supply contained uranium at higher than 0.04 milligrams per litre (mg/L).
Australian Drinking Water Guidelines outline those levels should not exceed 0.017 mg/L — and the corporation agreed that several communities are drinking water above the national guidelines.
Yet the Power and Water Corporation said a plan to filter out elevated levels of heavy metals like uranium from drinking water in some Central Australian communities is still years away……….
Doctors said fixing the supply should be a priority.
“Contaminants which do make the drinking water unsafe to drink above the guidelines as stipulated, should be treated as a health priority,” AMA president Dr Tony Bartone said.
“All governments — of either jurisdiction — need to ensure that all Australians have access to potable drinking water.”
Dr Bartone said the AMA wanted safe drinking water levels to be part of the Closing the Gap targets, which are currently undergoing a review after 10 years of limited progress.
“Access to safe drinking water is a prerequisite for good health,” he said.
“You can’t really set aspirational targets for health without really pinning the strategy to the building blocks around good health — the social determinants of health.”
John Paterson, chief executive of the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory, said an independent review was needed “as soon as possible”.
“Governments need to respond to this, we need the experts out there to explain how much contamination is in the water and what solutions have been provided,” he said.
James Cogan’s speech at Sydney rally to free Julian Assange
Constant attacks on the ABC will come back to haunt the Coalition government The Conversation Denis Muller Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne,
In January 1931, as the newly elected United Australia Party government of Joseph Lyons was contemplating the establishment of a national broadcasting service, the prime minister received a deputation of prominent Melburnians, including a barrister and member of the Victorian parliament, Robert Gordon Menzies.
They urged that the new broadcasting service “be organised on an independent basis and that cultural potentialities of the Broadcast Service be considered a matter of primary importance”. The broadcast service came to be named the Australian Broadcasting Commission and went to air for the first time on July 1 1932.
It is a measure of how far today’s Liberal Party has drifted away from the values and ideals of its founder, Menzies, that last Saturday its federal council should have resoundingly adopted a motion that the ABC should be privatised.
One of the proponents of the motion was Mitchell Collier, the federal vice-president of the Young Liberals. He said there was no economic case to keep the broadcaster in public hands.
No economic case. Where the ABC is concerned, that is a false premise on which to proceed. The ABC was explicitly not established for economic purposes or in pursuit of an economic ideology. It was established for social, educational and cultural purposes.
It was also established on an explicitly non-commercial basis: it takes no advertising. Why? Because it was believed advertising would weaken its independence. The policymakers of the 1930s had seen only too clearly how beholden the newspaper proprietors of the day had become to commercial imperatives: the demands of advertisers and the pressure to increase circulation, even at the cost of editorial quality and integrity.
The newspapers of the day had also become mouthpieces for sectional interests. In Melbourne, The Argus stood for the interests of the mercantile classes and conservative political causes; The Age for a kind of Protestant liberalism and social justice. It supported the miners at Eureka.
The bipartisan political vision for the ABC was that it should not be vulnerable to sectional interests or commercial pressures, but should exist to serve the public interest in the widest sense.
The first paragraph of its charter captures the essence of these expectations:………
A motion to privatise the ABC, no matter how vigorously repudiated by the government, is political poison, especially in regional, rural and remote Australia.
These voters have watched as the Abbott-Turnbull administrations have cut the ABC’s funding by $338 million since 2014. They have watched as the ABC has been used – in Guthrie’s words yesterday – as a punching bag by narrow political, commercial or ideological interests
Guthrie was too diplomatic to nail the government or the Murdoch press. But the overt hostility to the ABC shown by the government over the past four years may now reap a political harvest.
That hostility has been demonstrated not only by the funding cuts but by sustained carping criticisms, vexatious complaints and political stunts exemplified by the current competitive neutrality inquiry.
It would be more accurately called the editorial neutering inquiry. Its focus is clearly on the ABC news service, as its own issues paper makes clear. That is the part of the ABC most detested by the government and the politician for whom the government is a cat’s paw in this, Pauline Hanson.
Each Tuesday, I engage in a pro-bono 25-minute segment on media issues with the presenter of ABC Radio Statewide Drive, Nicole Chvastek. The program is broadcast across regional Victoria and southern New South Wales, covering the National seats of Riverina, Mallee, Murray and Gippsland, and the Liberal seats of Farrer, Wannon, McMillan, Corangamite and McEwen.
Yesterday the talkback calls ran hot on this one issue: privatisation of the ABC. Yes, the ABC needed scrutiny; yes, the ABC was a bunch of lefties. But: where would we be without it?
It has been six years since Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to seek asylum from possible extradition to the United States to face indictment under the US Espionage Act.
At the time, Assange, an Australian national, was wanted by Sweden for questioning over sexual offense allegations. Assange had also broken the terms of his UK bail. Since then, he has become even more controversial, having published US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails and internal emails from Democratic Party officials.
While some admire and others despise Assange, no one should be prosecuted under the antiquated Espionage Act for publishing leaked government documents. That 1917 statute was designed to punish people who leaked secrets to a foreign government, not to the media, and allows no defense or mitigation of punishment on the basis that public interest served by some leaks may outweigh any harm to national security.
The US grand jury investigation of Assange under the Espionage Act was apparently based on his publishing the leaks for which Chelsea Manning, a former US army soldier, was convicted. Her sentence was commuted.
The publication of leaks—particularly leaks that show potential government wrongdoing or human rights abuse—is a critical function of a free press in a democratic society. The vague and sweeping provisions of the Espionage Act remain ready to be used against other publishers and journalists, whether they be Wikileaks or the New York Times.
Assange has agreed to surrender himself to the British police – but only if he were granted assurances against extradition to the US, where he could face life in prison. He also offered to appear in Sweden if Sweden would offer similar assurances.
In 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found Assange’s stay in the Ecuadorean embassy, enforced by the alternative of his potential extradition to the US, to be an arbitrary deprivation of liberty. Ecuador, offended by Assange’s political comments, this year has denied him internet access and visitors, other than occasional contact with his lawyers. Ecuador denied Human Rights Watch permission to visit him this May. Concern is growing over his access to medical care. His asylum is growing more difficult to distinguish from detention.
The UK has the power to resolve concerns over his isolation, health, and confinement by removing the threat of extradition for publishing newsworthy leaks. It should do so before another year passes.
If the recent Cambridge Analytica data scandal has taught us anything, it’s that the ethical cultures of our largest tech firms need tougher scrutiny.
But moral questions about what data should be collected and how it should be used are only the beginning. They raise broader questions about who gets to make those decisions in the first place.
We currently have a system in which power over the judicious and ethical use of data is overwhelmingly concentrated among white men. Research shows that the unconscious biases that emerge from a person’s upbringing and experiences can be baked into technology, resulting in negative consequences for minority groups.
These biases are difficult to shed, which makes workplace diversity a powerful and necessary tool for catching unsuspected bias before it has a chance to cause damage. As the impact of data-driven algorithms and decisions grows more profound, we need to ask: how is this going to change in the future?
Unfortunately, the indicators suggest the answer is: not much.
The problem has led to gendered language translations, biased criminal sentencing recommendations, and racially skewed facial recognition systems.
For example, when an automated translation tool such as Google Translate is required to translate a gender-neutral language (such as Turkish) into a gender-specific one (such as English) it makes a guess as to which gender to assign to the translated text.
People noticed that Google Translate showed a tendency to assign feminine gender pronouns to certain jobs and masculine pronouns to others – “she is a babysitter” or “he is a doctor” – in a manner that reeked of sexism. Google Translate bases its decision about which gender to assign to a particular job on the training data it learns from. In this case, it’s picking up the gender bias that already exists in the world and feeding it back to us.
If we want to ensure that algorithms don’t perpetuate and reinforce existing biases, we need to be careful about the data we use to train algorithms. But if we hold the view that women are more likely to be babysitters and men are more likely to be doctors, then we might not even notice – and correct for – biased data in the tools we build.
So it matters who is writing the code because the code defines the algorithm, which makes the judgement on the basis of the data.
Who holds the power?
Only ten years ago the first smartphones were making their mark. Today some of the most powerful people on the planet are those who control data gathered through mobile technologies.
Data is central to the functioning of the modern world. And power over business, democracy and education will likely continue to lie with data and data-dependent tools, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Currently, the people who have the power to make ethical decisions about the use of data are typically white males from high-earning, well-educated families.
One research company, Open MIC, which describes itself as “investing in racial diversity in the tech world”, reviewed data from some of the biggest tech firms and found a consistent pattern: disproportionate percentages of white employees compared with the wider working population.
Adobe’s workforce is 69% white, Apple’s is 56% white, Google is 59% white and Microsoft is 58% white. The list goes on:
Black people, Latinos, and Native Americans are underrepresented in tech by 16 to 18 percentage points compared with their presence in the US labour force overall.
This is made far worse by a crippling lack of gender diversity.
In a 2017 Microsoft report, a survey of UK IT and tech leaders found that on average, the gender mix among their teams was 80% male and 20% female. A staggering 35% of respondents had no plans in place to change this imbalance.
The numbers are similar in Australia, according to a study of Australian professional profiles on the social network LinkedIn.
It revealed that just 14% of executive roles in the local tech industry were held by women. Of the 435,000 people in IT listed on LinkedIn in Australia, only 31% were women. Even these numbers may be optimistic, according to Australia’s Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, who noted that women make up less than one-fifth of Australians qualified in science, technology, engineering and maths.
Will this change?
Those likely to be in charge of developing the algorithms of the future are those who are studying computer science and mathematical sciences right now. Sadly, the groups dominating those subjects at schools and universities largely reflect the current workforce.
Australian domestic students enrolled in tertiary level information technology dropped from a peak of 46,945 in 2002 to 27,547 in 2013. While the numbers have improved slightly according to AEN University Rankings, females in engineering and IT still represent less than one in five students.
Meanwhile, the number of girls at the senior high school level taking the advanced computing and mathematics subjects needed to enter these roles remains resolutely low.
This ship is taking a long time to turn around.
What can we do about it?
If the coders of the future are today’s middle-class boys, how are we preparing them to make unbiased ethical choices when they become the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow? And how can we steer the ship so that the wealth and power that will continue to flow from mastery of such technical skills is not denied to those who are not white and male?
Our education system is unwittingly allowing boys to train as technical people without the skills to put their work in a social context, and allowing girls to do the reverse.
Indeed, while many of the smartest young women are choosing to go into medicine or law, these professions are vulnerable to the advance of artificial intelligence – paralegals, radiologists, and those making preliminary diagnoses.
We are in a structure in which the same old imbalances are strengthening and look to persist. But this is not the way it should be. Unless we confront the culture through big shifts in educational trends, nothing will change.
Antinuclear 