Muckaty Station: Traditional owners reject $12 million compensation offer for nuclear waste dump June 11, 2014, Traditional owners who have opposed a nuclear waste dump on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory say they had no interest in a $12 million compensation package offered by the Commonwealth……..Traditional Owner Ronald Morrison said current generations were guardians who inherited the land from long family lines.
“From our ancestors and our elders, from our elders down to us and from us we’d like to pass it on to our young ones,” Mr Morrison said.
Another traditional owner, Jeannie Sambo, said the money would run out, but the land would be there forever.
“Our land is more important than the money that we live on because as aboriginal people we have more food than buying things from the shop.”
Bunny Nabarula, a Milwayi woman, earlier described the compensation package as “dirty money”, telling the special sitting on country that she was passionate about keeping her land pristine. https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24209801/muckaty-station-traditional-owners-reject-12-million-compensation-offer-for-nuclear-waste-dump/?source=wan
June 11, 2014
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Nuclear waste dump would ‘dispossess’ Indigenous landowners in NT Australian Associated Press theguardian.com, Wednesday 11 June 2014 Researcher says commonwealth’s offer of financial help should not be conditional on outcome of court case over proposed site The commonwealth government is dispossessing Indigenous people by seeking to place a radioactive waste storage facility on their land, a researcher says.
The federal court is sitting in Tennant Creek this week to hear from traditional landowners, who say they were not consulted when the Northern Land Council (NLC) and the commonwealth decided to put forward the site for consideration in 2007.
Four clans from the Muckaty area, 120km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, say they were cut out of the process in favour of the Lauder family of the Ngapa clan.
The family were paid $200,000 and promised a further financial package of $12 million to pay for a road, educational scholarships and other initiatives benefiting all indigenous groups on Muckaty Station.
Paddy Gibson, a researcher with the Jumbunna House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney, said the money should be released to the traditional owners regardless of the outcome of the case.
“It’s not money going into people’s back pockets as cash, it’s money they’re saying is going to be spent on basic services,” he told reporters in Tennant Creek on Tuesday.
“It’s an absolute disgrace that Aboriginal people in this region, who are some of the most impoverished people in the country, are being told they’re not going to be able to access basic services if not for establishing a nuclear waste dump.”……
“Our ancestors passed it to our elders and our elders passed it to us and we want to pass it to our young ones,” said Ronald Morrison of the Milwayi. “The dump would destroy our land and bush tucker for our living and for our next generation. We want to keep it clean for all of us.”…….http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/nuclear-waste-dump-would-dispossess-indigenous-landowners
June 11, 2014
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Nuclear waste will poison land: elder https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24214130/nuclear-waste-will-poison-land-elder/
NEDA VANOVAC June 11, 2014, The spirit people of Muckaty don’t want “poison” stored on their land in the form of a nuclear waste dump, the Federal Court has heard. The court is sitting in Tennant Creek this week to hear evidence from four clans who are against the radioactive waste storage facility being placed on their land, 120km north of the Northern Territory town.
The clans say their will was overruled by a fifth clan which worked with the Northern Land Council (NLC) and the Commonwealth government to approve it.
Milwayi woman Pamela Brown originally agreed to the radioactive waste storage proposal, thinking it would be a rubbish dump that would hold predominantly medical waste. “They said they would put gloves and gowns there from the hospital, that it’s not poisonous,” she told the court on Wednesday.
But her younger sister who was living in Adelaide reminded her of the long-term health effects experienced by Aboriginal people living at Maralinga, near Woomera in South Australia, in the aftermath of the British nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 60s. Ms Brown said she was also concerned by the explosion at Chernobyl.
“I don’t want any poison on our country,” she said. “I want my country for the future generations so I can teach them and they can get out there. “If the dump goes ahead, there will be destruction (of the land),” she said. “The spirit is alive. The spirit people don’t want any rubbish put on their country.”
Muckaty Station covers 221,000ha and seven Aboriginal groups claim land within it.
One of the key issues of the case is determining who owns the roughly two square kilometres which would house the dump: the Lauder family of the Ngapa clan have been acknowledged as traditional owners by the NLC, but the Milwayi people say the land is theirs.
Ms Brown told the court that maps used for the successful land rights claim of 1993 showed the Milwayi were traditional owners of the site, but said the maps had since been redrawn.
“All these names got juggled up by the new map the NLC did … they moved the sites around,” she said. “They changed the whole map.”
But the NLC says there was no claim that the land belonged to the Milwayi when the site was first proposed in 2006.
The hearings continue.
June 11, 2014
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Indigenous elder speaks out at NT nuclear waste dump trial, Guardian, 10 June 14 Bunny Nabarula threatens to ‘block the road and let the truck run us over’ if a waste dump is approved on her traditional land A central Australian Indigenous elder has threatened to throw herself in front of a road train if a proposed radioactive waste management facility is approved to be built on her ancestral lands.
The federal court held a special sitting at the Muckaty community on Monday, 120km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, to hear the evidence of Milwayi traditional owner Bunny Nabarula, about 84.
Members of the Lauder family of the Ngapa clan laid false claim to the land when they along with the Northern Land Council (NLC) nominated the site for a national nuclear waste storage facility, say members of four other clans who are against it.
In 2007 the NLC nominated the site to the commonwealth and agreed on a package of $9m to be held in a charitable trust, $2m for a road on Indigenous land and $1m for scholarships over five years. A $200,000 payment was made to a narrow group of Indigenous families, which Nabarula dismissed as dirty money.
She told the court her Milwayi people had principal claim to the land, and that the Ngapa dreaming just passed through it……..http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/09/indigenous-elder-speaks-out-nuclear-waste-dump-trial
June 10, 2014
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Muckaty Station: Federal Court hears Indigenous clan’s cultural stories at proposed nuclear waste dump site, ABC News 10 June 14 By Robert Herrick A traditional land owner has yelled and sworn during a Federal Court hearing examining plans to build a nuclear waste dump in Central Australia. Bunny Nabarula, a Milwayi woman, stood up and cursed before the court as she vented frustration over the kind of legacy a facility for storage of low and intermediate-grade nuclear waste at Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek, would be for future generations.
She told a special sitting of the court, on country, that she was passionate about keeping her land pristine and a $12 million compensation package was “dirty money”.
The court is holding a rare hearing on country as it considers a challenge to plans to build a nuclear waste storage site on the remote station.
The Northern Land Council nominated the site on behalf of members of the Ngapa group, but four other clans have laid claim to the land and say it is adjacent to a sacred site……..
Traditional owner Kylie Sambo says a hearing on the station gives the Federal Court a real understanding of the land’s cultural significance.”I reckon its very important because they need to see how how we feel about the country and how the country is to us and actually be out here on country and getting the feeling and knowing and understanding that we have,” she said.
Another traditional owner Dick Foster pointed out the culturally significant parts of the site, important for passage to a sacred area where men’s business takes place. Paddy Gibson from the Jumbunna House of Learning says many traditional owners have been given the impression the waste is not very harmful.
“Some of the most dangerous waste in the world is a spent nuclear fuel rod and that’s what from day one has been the issue that’s in contention here, that they want to use this as a dumping ground for some of Australia’s most toxic industrial waste,” he said……http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-09/muckaty-station-federal-court-hearing/5510346
June 10, 2014
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Beyond Nuclear initiative By Padraic Gibson 6 June 14Dr Donoghue continued submissions for the Commonwealth for most of the morning session. He restated an argument that both the Northern Land Council and Commonwealth have used in the lead up to this trial during Directions Hearings; that the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (2005) had been clearly designed to shut down legal avenues for Aboriginal people wanting challenge the nomination of their land for a
waste “facility”. Dr Donoghue explained that the Commonwealth had been attempting to establish a remote “facility” since the 1980s in numerous locations. But consistent opposition, including successful litigation, had prevented them from doing so. With this in mind, the Howard Government went out of it’s way to ensure Traditional Aboriginal Owners were explicitly stripped of their rights in the 2005 Act.
Dr Donoghue cited a number of legal avenues explicitly closed to anyone wanting to challenge a national radioactive waste dump, including the exclusion of procedural fairness and a clause allowing nominations on Aboriginal land to remain valid even if a Land Council had not complied with obligations under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT) 1976.
If this argument is accepted by the court, the nomination of Muckaty as a nuclear waste dump will stand even if the Traditional Owners are found never to have consented to the nomination. Or, as Dr Donoghue put it, “the fact of consent being validly given is not legally relevant”.
This line of argument, not to mention the Radioactive Waste Management Act itself, demonstrates the extreme contempt in which the Commonwealth holds the rights of Aboriginal people.
Another attack on Land Rights contained in the Act also became clear in the course of the Commonwealth submissions. So far, arguments in court have focussed on whether the NLC followed proper process in nominating the particular site now earmarked for the waste dump. The quality of consultations with other Traditional Owners, said to hold responsibility for land on Muckaty that is required for transport of the radioactive materials, has also been discussed. But Dr Donoghue made it clear that if the nomination of the waste dump site is allowed to stand, Aboriginal owners of adjacent lands would lose any rights to stop developments on their land needed to facilitate the dump. The Act gives power to the Commonwealth to simply compulsorily acquire any further land that they need to allow the dump to operate…….
three scandals are undeniable. Firstly the Commonwealth held impoverished Aboriginal communities to ransom, withholding funding for essential services unless they accepted a nuclear waste dump. Secondly, as Dr Donoghue made clear yesterday, they did so using legislation which strips Aboriginal people of their actual rights to land. And thirdly, a major Aboriginal Land Council has, from the outset of this case, been hiding behind an argument which says a nuclear waste dump should proceed at Muckaty even if it is found that Traditional Owners do not consent. This is a sad indication of the extent to which Land Rights in Australia were seriously pushed back under the Howard Government. www.beyondnuclearinitiative.com/blog
June 9, 2014
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Muckaty Court report Day 3- June 4 when is a dump not a dump? By Padraic Gibson Beyond Nuclear Initiative, 5 June 14 “…...Mr Merkel handed up to the court two anthropologist reports completed by the NLC specifically for the waste dump nomination in 2006. Mr Merkel argued there were differences between the first report, prepared exclusively by the NLC anthropologists, and the second, which had been both “heavily edited” and “rewritten” by NLC principal lawyer Ron Levy, despite his signature being absent…….
More significant than an argument about who has primary responsibility however, is the emphasis in the original report on shared responsibility for sites across Muckaty by all clan groups. Mr Yarrow argued that this fundamental principle that underpins the land grant had been abandoned by the NLC in their nomination of the site on Muckaty……
Despite the focus of the legal proceedings on the alleged misconduct of the NLC, from the perspective of the campaign against the Muckaty dump, the Commonwealth submissions provided an important reminder that the central problem here is the discriminatory actions of the government in targeting impoverished Aboriginal communities for some of Australia’s most toxic industrial waste.
The genesis of the Muckaty dump nomination is the Commonwealth push to establish a waste dump on Aboriginal land. The court heard evidence of Commonwealth representatives starting to attend full council meetings of the Northern Land Council in late 2005, to pitch the idea of a dump to Aboriginal land owners……..
As Traditional Owners have consistently pointed out – if this stuff is so safe, why do you want to put it so far away from the cities?
The second ideological argument put strongly by the Commonwealth, both in their submissions to court and in their presentations to Traditional Owners during consultations, is that the waste dump is needed to allow for the continued operation of nuclear medicine in Australia. This argument has been comprehensively rebuffed by health professionals, such as Dr Michael Fonda from the Public Health Association, who has highlighted the cruelty of making Traditional Owners, who live in communities that suffer from developing world health conditions, feel guilty that somehow their opposition to a waste dump would be an impediment to others receiving health care.
See for example the short video: Nuclear Furphies and Political Follies……..
No mention was made about provisions in the 2005 Radioactive Waste Management Act which stipulate that the Commonwealth will not hand back any land that had been contaminated. This also ignores the fact that the “low level” waste is set be buried, with no intention of recovery.
The nature of the waste dump then, is shaping up to be a central issue in the case……..
In my discussions with Muckaty Traditional owners over the last seven years, key witnesses relied upon by the Commonwealth have strongly rejected the assertion that they ever consented to the waste dump, or ever said the decision should rest with the narrow family group in question. Next week they will have a chance to be heard directly, as the court relocates to the Northern Territory for hearings both at Muckaty itself and in Tennant Creek http://beyondnuclearinitiative.com/muckaty-court-report-day-3-june-4/
June 6, 2014
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Indigenous land owners accuse lawyer of manipulating nuclear waste storage report June 4, 2014 – Jane Lee Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age A lawyer who was key to the Howard government’s plan to store nuclear waste on indigenous land has been accused of manipulating the legal process required to ensure its approval.
Traditional owners from four indigenous clans are challenging the Ngapa clan’s 2007 nomination of Muckaty Station for the dump site in the Federal Court in Melbourne. The owners, including Aboriginal elders, argue they did not consent to the nomination, were not consulted on the agreement reached and were misled on the government’s proposal for the nuclear storage site.
Ron Levy was then the chief legal counsel for the Northern Land Council, which was set up to help indigenous people in the Northern Territory acquire and manage traditional lands. Mr Levy will be called as a witness later in the five-week case before Justice Anthony North.
Ron Merkel, QC, for the traditional owers, told the court on Thursday that Mr Levy “personally edited” anthropologists’ views in a Council report which concluded that only the Ngapa Lauder clan owned the site. Mr Levy also wrote a new section in the final report, reflecting his view that the Land Commissioner could depart from judges’ previous decisions on land claims, “if relevant material was before the commissioner.”
Mr Merkel said that he did this “(so) that the Lauder Ngupas would be recognised by the Northern Land Council as the only traditional owners of the site so their consent could be secured.” The site nomination could then “jump a hurdle” of having to consult in more detail about about the plan with other clans, he said………..
Mr Merkel told the court on Tuesday that Mr Levy, who controlled the consultation process, also failed to tell the full Northern Land Council or traditional owners about the only up-front $200,000 payment given to traditional owners for the site nomination or the terms of their agreement.
But he later told the federal goverrnment that he had all traditional owners’ full consent.
Mr Merkel said there was no explanation for this “unless … Mr Levy had a plan from the outset about how to achieve the end result and he did”. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/indigenous-land-owners-accuse-lawyer-of-manipulating-nuclear-waste-storage-report-20140604-39jk8.html#ixzz33nhZjp26.
June 5, 2014
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Financial irregularities in Muckaty compo http://localtoday.com.au/get-local/local-news/137684-financial-irregularities-in-muckaty-compo.html By AAP 03/06/14 There were financial irregularities in the compensation package for indigenous people who face a nuclear waste dump on their land, a court has heard. A $200,000 up-front payment to a narrow group of indigenous families was not part of the package that was negotiated, lawyer Ron Merkel QC told the Federal Court on Tuesday.
Mr Merkel pointed to letters and meeting minutes which showed the Northern Land Council’s (NLC) 2007 discussions with the Commonwealth, in which it secured use of the remote land near Tennant Creek as a radioactive waste management facility.Negotiations ultimately arrived at a package of $9 million to be held in a charitable trust, $2 million for a road on Aboriginal land and $1 million, over five years, for scholarships.
“There was no mention of a $200,000 payment, which was the only payment to go directly into pockets,” Mr Merkel said.
“It was the only money to be paid up-front.”
A $200,000 payment was made to a narrow group of indigenous families who, Mr Merkel said, did not represent all traditional owners of the land.
The court was also told the same group was cited in letters in which the NLC sought to reassure the federal government it had obtained informed consent from all traditional landowners.
The case is being heard by Justice Anthony North, who also sought to confirm whether Mr Merkel’s clients were opposed to “the dump or the deal”. “My clients are not trying to get a penny of this,” Mr Merkel said. “They were never given the right to consent or not to consent and if they were included, as they should have been, then the NLC would not have got consent (of all traditional land owners) at all.”
Highlighting process flaws was the only legal avenue to challenge the project, Mr Merkel said, and his clients did not want it to proceed.
The Commonwealth and the NLC are yet to make opening submissions.
Forty witnesses will be called for the hearings being held in Melbourne, Muckaty Station, Tennant Creek and Darwin.
June 5, 2014
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Nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land invalid, court told The West Australian, 3 June 14. Sydney (AFP) – The earmarking of a remote Australian outback area as a nuclear waste dump was invalid because officials failed to contact all traditional Aboriginal landowners affected, a court heard Monday.Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory was nominated in early 2007 as a site to store low and intermediate radioactive waste under a deal negotiated with the Aboriginal Ngapa clan.
While Australia does not use nuclear power, it needs a site to store waste, including processed fuel rods from the country’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, on the outskirts of Sydney,…..Opponents have fought against the dump for years, with a trial starting in the Federal Court in Melbourne Monday alleging Muckaty’s nomination was invalid due to a failure of the government and the land council to obtain the consent of all Aboriginal owners.
“What we’re here to say is ‘no more’ and that this process was so legally flawed that it is invalid,” Ron Merkel, who is representing traditional owners, told the court.
“The opposition is in no small part based on a spiritual affiliation to the land and that radioactive waste will poison the land,” he said in comments cited by Australian Associated Press.
The court was told the consent of all groups with a claim to the land was required for the facility to go ahead, but some Aboriginals whose country was affected have never had a chance to voice their concerns until now……..Speaking to reporters, Kylie Sambo, of the Warlmanpa people, said the idea of a waste facility on the land, which is in the centre of the country, was “poison”.
“We don’t want it to spoil our country because we love our land and we’ve been there for centuries,” she said. “My uncle once told me, ‘You may think you own the land, but in fact the land owns us’.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the case raised questions about the country’s management of long-lived radioactive waste.
“Australia has never has an independent assessment of how best to manage radioactive waste; now we urgently need one,” campaigner Dave Sweeney said.
The case is set to run for five weeks. https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/24084083/nuclear-waste-dump-on-aboriginal-land-invalid-court-told/
June 3, 2014
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Northern Land Council ‘misled’ elders over Muckaty Station nuclear dump site http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/northern-land-council-misled-elders-over-muckaty-station-nuclear-dump-site/story-fn9hm1pm-1226940619084# PIA AKERMAN THE AUSTRALIAN JUNE 03, 2014 ONE of the country’s most powerful Aboriginal bodies has been accused of misleading Top End residents about the safety of using Muckaty Station as a nuclear waste dump site.
In the opening day of the legal challenge to the proposed nuclear waste facility at Muckaty, 110km north of Tennant Creek, opponents of the plan said they would never accept nuclear waste there.
Ron Merkel QC, representing Mark Lane Jangala and three other elders who oppose the waste dump, told the Federal Court that the Northern Land Council had acted outside its powers and misrepresented the facts during “consultations’’ with traditional landowners.
“This is a matter which has literally torn the Muckaty community apart,” he said.
Mr Merkel’s submissions claim the NLC failed to ensure traditional owners understood the effect of nominating Muckaty as a nuclear waste site, telling them it was safe to bury it and downplaying any risks. The NLC is also accused of incorrectly identifying people with an interest in the land and not consulting in a culturally appropriate manner with Aboriginal interpreters.
Muckaty Station was chosen by the Howard government in 2007 after being volunteered by the NLC in a deal worth more than $12 million to the NLC and $10m initially to the Northern Territory government, which would receive another $2m a year from other governments once the facility was operational.
Mr Merkel said “not one” Aboriginal person at Muckaty had any right to any money if the dump went ahead according to a deed that nominated the site.
The hearing continues in Melbourne this week before moving to the NT.
June 3, 2014
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NT nuclear dump will ‘poison’ land: trial The indigenous owners of Muckaty Station, which is earmarked for a nuclear waste dump, fear it will poison their land. SBS News, 2 June 14, Source AAP “….
…The indigenous owners of the Northern Territory’s Muckaty Station were asked to welcome a nuclear waste dump while waving away their rights to compensation, a court has heard.
The remote site near Tennant Creek has been earmarked, since 2007, as the site of a major Commonwealth-run radioactive waste storage facility.
A seven-year bid to halt the project reached the Federal Court on Monday, where Justice Anthony North was told its indigenous owners were being short-changed………
Mr Merkel said the waste to be stored at the site would remain dangerously radioactive for 200 years, and indigenous people he represented had a connection to the land for 50,000 years. The indigenous owners did not want it to proceed, he said, because they believed it would affect their spiritual affiliation with – and “poison” – the land.
The court was also told proper process to determine Muckaty Station’s indigenous ownership, or to obtain consent from all affected families, was not followed.
“It is an unusual structure for what is a compulsory acquisition of land,” Justice North said………
Kylie Sambo, 20, of the Warlmanpa people, said it was a relief for her community to get its day in court after more than seven years of campaigning against the waste dump. “It’s a poison. We don’t want it to be there,” she told reporters. “We don’t want it to spoil our country because we love our land and we’ve been there for centuries. “My uncle once told me, ‘You may think you own the land, but in fact the land owns us’.”Muckaty Station has been selected as the preferred site to provide long-term storage for radioactive waste that is now being held at Lucas Heights and then sent to France for further processing. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/06/02/nt-nuclear-dump-will-poison-land-trial
June 3, 2014
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Muckaty nuclear waste proposal in Federal Court today, ABC Rural By Lauren Fitzgerald , 2 June 14, A row over the future site for Australia’s first nuclear waste dump hits the Federal Court today. Muckaty Station, 600 kilometres north of Alice Springs, was nominated by the Howard Government as its preferred site for storing low and intermediate level nuclear waste in 2007.
That policy, continued under Labor, has been met with vocal resistance from some traditional owners since its inception. Muckaty Station was declared Aboriginal land under the Land Rights Act in 1997, with seven different clans identified as part of the Muckaty Land Trust.When the Northern Land Council nominated a small part of that property to host a nuclear waste facility, they did it on behalf of the Ngapa clan.
But four other groups say they also lay claim to that particular area.
Dianne Stokes is one of the traditional owners opposing the dump. She says she has waited a long time to have her case heard in court.”While I was waiting we went around to all the big cities to protest, went to public meetings to let everyone know that we’re still going ahead on this court challenge,” she said.
“The Commonwealth and the Northern Land Council weren’t talking to the traditional owners and they weren’t consulted properly at the beginning.”………
Maurice Blackburn Social Justice Practice will represent the Traditional Owners opposing the facility, on a pro-bono basis. Lawyer Elizabeth O’Shea says the case is significant for a number of reasons.
“It’s a proposal that concerns burying radioactive waste on Aboriginal land, and that throws up all sorts of questions about whether you can apply the process of obtaining consent and to what extent you need to make extra effort to ensure people know what they’re consenting to,” she said.
“There’s also some provisions about misleading and deceptive conduct, which is traditionally consumer protection and we’re alleging that the Northern Land Council was engaged in that behaviour. “And it will test some provisions as well that the Commonwealth is relying on, so some technical legal stuff.
“But mostly I think it’s interesting because the Northern Land Council is never usually put under this level of scrutiny, and we’re ready to undertake that process and give traditional owners the opportunity to be heard.” She says that if the case is successful, she hopes the decision will give Traditional Owners more say over particular land use proposals…….. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-02/muckaty-nuclear-waste-federal-court/5492958
June 2, 2014
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Comment: Australia’s radioactive waste management on trial Australia has never had an independent examination of the best way to manage our nation’s radioactive waste. It’s time for that to change.
By Dave Sweeney 28 MAY 2014 IT IS A LONG WAY FROM THE LORE OF THE WORLD’S OLDEST CONTINUING CULTURE TO THE LAW COURTS OF MELBOURNE BUT A STORY THAT STARTED YEARS AGO IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA WILL SOON BE THE FOCUS OF A MONTH LONG FEDERAL COURT TRIAL SEEN BY MANY AS A TEST OF BOTH AUSTRALIA’S SOCIAL CONTRACT WITH ITS FIRST NATION PEOPLE’S AND COMMITMENT TO RESPONSIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP.
In May 2007 the Northern Land Council nominated an area of land on a pastoral station called Muckaty around 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory as a site for a national radioactive waste dump.
The proposal was advanced through a commercial in confidence agreement between the NLC, an Aboriginal clan group and the then Howard government that saw the group “volunteer” an area of the shared Muckaty Land Trust for the burial and above ground storage of radioactive waste in return for federal payments, promises and a “package of benefits” worth around $12 million.
The dump plans lack of transparency, inclusion and scientific or procedural rigour left the majority of Aboriginal land-owners without any awareness of or ability to input into the process or the plan.
Like all things nuclear, this is an issue with shelf life and now after years of sustained community opposition a Federal Court trial is set to explore the unresolved issues of ownership, consultation and consent at hearings in Melbourne, Tennant Creek and Darwin throughout June.
Critics maintain that the dump plan fails two fundamental tests: it has explicitly excluded and marginalised Aboriginal landowners from decision making processes and power and it is based on an approach to radioactive waste management that is increasing at odds with international industry best practise and sound thinking.
The Federal Court’s focus will be the question of consent and control, and these concerns are of pivotal importance. Shared title for the Muckaty lands was only formally granted to Aboriginal people fifteen years ago and now many are saddened and angry that access to this area could be lost for centuries to come through a secretive process and without their knowledge or consent. Further, it is unreasonable and unconscionable for any government to play the politics of carrot and stick with some of the nation’s poorest people in order to find a remote place to dump some of the nation’s nastiest industrial waste.
The need to responsibly manage the serious and long term environmental and human risks posed from any industrial waste is a clear test of a mature society. When that risk involves the unique properties of radioactive waste then the need is magnified and multiplied.
Radioactive waste is a serious environmental management challenge. The material is often hot, always hazardous and extremely long-lived. Current problems at waste facilities in the US and elsewhere highlight the complexity of the issue and no nation on earth currently has a safe, final disposal facility for high level radioactive waste. This issue demands and deserves genuine attention but for too long been mismanaged by successive politicians seeking a short term ‘fix’ to a long term threat……. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/05/28/comment-australia-s-radioactive-waste-management-trial
May 29, 2014
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Budget 2014: Clean energy bodies call for compensation as Government cuts green funding ABC Radio Australia, 16 May 2014, Clean energy industry representatives have slammed federal budget cuts in the sector, calling for compensation if legislation is changed. By environment and science reporter Jake Sturmer, Alex McDonald – The Federal Government has taken the sword to renewable energy, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from various green programs.
“I think it’s a very depressing message for the industry and for the investors in it,” said Miles George, head of the 
country’s largest renewable energy provider, Infigen.
Among the changes is a decision to spread the Government’s $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (direct action policy) over 10 years rather than four.
-……………………“If we actually throw away options, a fear for me is that the energy mix that we currently have just gets ossified,” said ARENA chairman Greg Bourne.
“Infrastructure is hospitals, infrastructure is schools, but infrastructure is also the energy system that you have within a country and without the energy system, your overall system begins to grind to a halt.” Mr Bourne says the current reliance on traditional energy sources is “not fit for purpose in this century”.
The last significant piece of green energy legislation, the Renewable Energy Target (RET), is currently under review. After investing billions in the sector, Mr George warns any changes would be a breach of faith. “If the legislation is now to be changed we would expect to be fully compensated,” he said.
“If [they] took the RET away tomorrow … we would lose 40 per cent of our revenue and our Australian business would fail … along with nearly all wind farms and wind farm businesses in Australia.” Mr George says Infigen has made investments over the past 10 years on the basis of legislation that had “bi-partisan support”.
“If the legislation is now to be changed retrospectively and that has a negative effect on our business, we would expect to be fully compensated,” he said. “This is the way Australia does it. Australia does not wreck existing legislation without compensation.”
The Environment Minister declined an interview but maintains that tough decisions needed to be made in the current economic climate.
– See more at: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2014-05-15/budget-2014-clean-energy-bodies-call-for-compensation-as-government-cuts-green-funding/1312024#sthash.7ak0HtGS.dpuf
May 17, 2014
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AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, legal, politics |
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Dr Donoghue explained that the Commonwealth had been attempting to establish a remote “facility” since the 1980s in numerous locations. But consistent opposition, including successful litigation, had prevented them from doing so. With this in mind, the Howard Government went out of it’s way to ensure Traditional Aboriginal Owners were explicitly stripped of their rights in the 2005 Act.
Antinuclear 
