Brett Pike: The overwhelming majority of South Australians do not want a nuclear waste dump in their State
Brett Pike to Senate Committee on National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 67
I am writing today to register my concern and frustration at the continued reoccurring proposals of a Nuclear Waste Dump here in my home state of South Australia.
From the devastating environmental impacts with being so close to National Parks, the long term prolonged economic impact of the local Kimba region due to the stigma associated with hosting a Nuclear Waste Dump, the already vocal disapproval from the local indigenous authority and the cherry picking of voters in the local ballot all suggest that the shadiness of the operation to clout the public’s best interest and render the land useless for the rest of time.
To put it plainly, we don’t want any Nuclear Waste Dumps here in South Australia. We never have and we never will. The overwhelming majority of South Australian’s do not want it here. This bill has to go.
Nancy Lennon:: ensure that key environmental laws are applied to National National Radioactive Waste Management Act
Nancy Lennon National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 202 [Provisions] Submission 66
I respectfully request your rejection of the federal governments proposed changes to the National Radioactive
Waste Management Act.
The government has not made a clear case about the need for the planned national facility at Kimba. Moving
radioactive waste across long distances is extremely hazardous and completely unnecessary. This waste is
presently managed near the site it is generated at Lucas Heights, and it should remain stored in that area.
In particular, I am requesting you to remove options for judicial review of the government’s site selection
under current laws. Rather, please ensure that the key environmental and cultural heritage protection laws are
applied to any future changes in the NRWM Act.
The coronavirus pandemic and the uranium industry
The coronavirus pandemic and the uranium industry
Jim Green, 25 May 2020, Nuclear Monitor #885, www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/885/nuclear-monitor-885-25-may-2020
The uranium industry has been harder hit by the coronavirus pandemic than other sectors of the nuclear fuel cycle. Major producers have sharply cut production.
First, a quick summary of the past 15 or so years to put the current turmoil in context. Uranium mine production increased by 50% from 2007 to 2016.1 But the expected nuclear renaissance didn’t eventuate so increased uranium production has resulted in ever-growing stockpiles. Those stockpiles alone would suffice to keep the entire global reactor fleet operating for roughly eight years.2
Surplus production and stagnant demand have put persistent downward pressure on uranium prices. AMP Capital estimated in 2018 that around half the world’s uranium mines are losing money.3 The World Nuclear Association acknowledged in September 2019 that oversupply in recent years has led to a sizable reduction in uranium production levels at existing mines and a sharp decrease in investment in the development of new and existing mines.4 In 2011, according to a uranium company executive, there were about 420 companies around the world exploring for or mining uranium; now, the number is 62, of which 27 have “limited to non-existent resources”.5
Even before the recent pandemic-related cutbacks, numerous mines had been put into care-and-maintenance or production was reduced:6
- In Australia, the Beverley, Beverley North and Honeymoon mines were put into care-and-maintenance (and at the Ranger mine, mining has ceased and the processing of stockpiled ore will be soon be completed).
- Cameco has put several uranium mines into care-and-maintenance in recent years: McArthur River (and the Key Lake mill) and Rabbit Lake in Canada, and the Crow Butte and Smith Ranch-Highland in-situ leach mines in the US.7 Plans to expand Crow Butte were abandoned in 2019.
- Kazakhstan’s (mostly) state-owned uranium producer Kazatomprom cut uranium production by 20% in late 2017. Kazatomprom announced last year that the 20% curtailment of production will be extended until 2021, and its statement left plenty of wriggle-room for curtailment beyond then.8
- In Africa, the Langer Heinrich and Kayelekera mines were put into care-and-maintenance (and Paladin has since sold the Kayelekera mine).9
BHP Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine operates on outdated 1991 era Occupational Radiation Exposure Limits:
BHP Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine operates on outdated 1991 era Occupational Radiation Exposure Limits:
A Bill for a new Radiation Protection and Control Act 2020 goes to the SA Parliament for debate on/from Tues 2nd June, involving a range of untenable 1982 Indenture Act legal privileges to BHP that are retained in the Bill and proposed to be just rolled over into a new Act – which is unfit for the 2020’s…
Please see a Briefing Paper (4 pages) – with sub-headings covering key points:
“BHP Olympic Dam operates under outdated 1991 era Radiation Exposure Standards”
Briefing Paper prepared by David Noonan, Independent Environment Campaigner, 18 May 2020
Strong evidence to Reform a 30-year old standard and apply a Safer Lower Worker Exposure Limit p.1
BHP Olympic Dam underground mine workers face a significant increase in cancer risk p.2
BHP Olympic Dam workers face radiation health impacts double that of cancer risks alone p.3
The Bill and the Olympic Dam mine expansion must trigger a Radiation Safety Review p.4
How long will SA wait to Review and Reform worker radiation exposure health risks?
Covert-19: Government stacks Covid Commission with oil and gas mates
Covert-19: Government stacks Covid Commission with oil and gas mates, cosy deals follow, Michael West Media, by | May 13, 2020
The Government is quietly blowing away years of environmental protections under cover of Covid. Its Covid Commission (NCCC) is stacked with executives from the gas and mining lobbies in what is turning out to be a bonanza for multinationals and yet another destructive blow to Australia’s efforts to curb global warming. Sandi Keane investigates.
His declaration in Parliament, “This is coal; don’t be scared”, came back to haunt Prime Minister Scott Morrison when summer’s catastrophic wildfires brought global media attention over his handling of the crisis and Australia’s response to climate change.
Fast forward from bushfires to COVID-19 and his reputation has reversed thanks to the handling of the virus. Yet, while the attention of the nation has been drawn to the daily COVID-19 count and embracing the digital world of schooling, working and socialising from home, the fossil fuel industry – with help from the Morrison Government – has quietly seized the opportunity to entrench its power and profits.
A report from environmental advocacy group 350 Australia has detailed 36 individual policy changes or requests for project-specific support — all under cover of COVID-19. SEE THE EXCELLENT TABLE ON THE ORIGINAL
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Tax cuts and other financial concessions = 💸
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Slashing environmental or other corporate regulation = ✄
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Fast-track project approvals = ✅
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Delay or rollback of climate and renewables policies = 🔥
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Attacks on charities and right to protest = 🚫
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Undermining local communities and workers rights =
The findings are shocking. While we’ve been in a deep funk, as of May 7, 69% of demands from the fossil fuel sector have already been enacted or agreed to by the Government. Concessions and sweetheart deals include 14 requests to slash important environmental or corporate regulations, 11 requests for tax cuts and financial concessions, and 12 instances of requests to fast-track project assessment.
Lucy Manne, CEO of 350 Australia, called it out:
“It is rank opportunism for the fossil fuel lobby to call for slashing of corporate taxes and important environmental protections under the cover of COVID-19.”
Taking a cue from Howard’s love-in with the mining industry when alone among the rest of the developed world, he took key mining lobbyists to Kyoto rather than climate scientists, Morrison awarded key positions in the PM’s office to former mining executives and lobbyists. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that the National COVID-19 Co-ordination Committee (NCCC) has been:
COVID-19 National Co-ordination Committee’s links to fossil fuels
The NCCC was set up on March 25 with no terms of reference, no register of conflicts of interest with even less divulged about its financial resources. So let’s look at what 350 Australia has dug up on its links to fossil fuels.
Its six-strong Executive Board of Directors is supported by the Secretaries of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Philip Gaetjens, and Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo. Gaetjens was intimately involved with the controversial community grants pre-Election. NCCC’s role is described as two-fold … “to help minimise and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on jobs and businesses and to facilitate the fastest recovery possible once the virus has passed.”
Here are the key players:………https://www.michaelwest.com.au/covert-19-government-stacks-covid-commission-with-oil-and-gas-mates-cosy-deals-follow/
COVID-19: US Military Pursues War Games Amid Contagion. Australia involved
The U.S. Army is also pursuing a 6,000-person war game in Poland, June 5-19, with a Polish airborne operation and a U.S.-Polish division-size river crossing.
If these weren’t too many military operations during an epidemic in which personnel on 40 U.S. Navy ships have come down with the hyper-contagious virus and during which military personnel and their families have been told not to travel, plans are also underway for a U.S. Army division-sized exercise in the Indo-Pacific region in less than a year. Known as Defender 2021, the U.S. Army has requested $364 million to conduct the war exercises throughout Asian and Pacific countries.
The pivot to the Pacific, begun under the Obama administration, and maintained by the Trump administration, is reflected in a U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS) that sees the world as “a great power competition rather than counterterrorism and has formulated its strategy to confront China as a long-term, strategic competitor.”
Earlier in May, the U.S. Navy sent at least seven submarines, including all four Guam-based attack submarines, several Hawaii-based ships and the San Diego-based USS Alexandria to the western Pacific in what the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force announced as simultaneous “contingency response operations” for all of its forward-deployed subs. This was all in support of the Pentagon’s “free and open Indo-Pacific ” policy — aimed at countering China’s expansionism in the South China Sea — and as a show of force to counter ideas that the capabilities of U.S. Navy forces have been reduced by Covid-19…….
In May, 2020, the Australian government announced that a delayed six-month rotation of 2,500 U.S. Marines to a military base in Australia’s northern city of Darwin will go ahead based on strict adherence to Covid-19 measures including a 14-day quarantine. The Marines had been scheduled to arrive in April but their arrival was postponed in March because of the pandemic.
The remote Northern Territory, which had recorded just 30 Covid-19 cases, closed its borders to international and interstate visitors in March, and any arrivals must now undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days. U.S. Marine deployments to Australia began in 2012 with 250 personnel and have grown to 2,500. The Joint U.S. Defense facility Pine Gap— the U.S. Department of Defense, Five Eyes and CIA surveillance facility that pinpoints airstrikes around the world and targets nuclear weapons, among other military and intelligence tasks — was also adapting its policy and procedures to comply with Australian government COVID restrictions.
As the U.S. military expands its presence in Asia and the Pacific, one place it will NOT be returning to is Wuhan, China. In October 2019, the Pentagon sent 17 teams with more than 280 athletes and other staff members to the Military World Games in Wuhan. Over 100 nations sent a total of 10,000 military personnel to the games in Wuhan last October.
The presence of a large U.S. military contingent in Wuhan just months before the outbreak of the Covid-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, fueled a theory by some Chinese officials that the U.S. military was somehow involved in the outbreak, which now has been used by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress and the media that the Chinese deliberately used the virus to infect the world and adding justification for the U.S. military build-up in the Pacific region.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. She is co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/26/covid-19-military-pursues-war-exercises-amid-contagion/
In 2019, fire chiefs were ‘gagged’ when trying to give climate change warnings to government
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Asked by Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson if he thought “the current serving fire chiefs are gagged in some way”, Mr Mullins replied: “yes”. Mr Mullins, a former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner, said when he was in the role “some things were out of bounds and often climate change was one of those issues, even to the point of having to work around it when preparing documents, and I think that is a tragedy”. Greens senator Janet Rice asked Mr Mullins if it was “still the case” that fire chiefs were discouraged from raising the effect of climate change on bushfire risks with politicians. “I know it’s the case,” Mr Mullins said. “I’ve had a number of discussions and it’s clear.” Mr Mullins had a 39-year career in NSW Fire and Rescue, and was appointed commissioner in 2003. He retired in 2017. Mr Mullins was representing the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group, which comprises 33 former fire and emergency service leaders from around the country. Mr Mullins said he was pressured not to speak out on climate change when he was a public servant. “We self-censored because we knew what would be acceptable, and what would not, for certain political masters and if you went outside those bounds life could be made very unpleasant for you,” he said. The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action unsuccessfully sought meetings with Prime Minister Scott Morrison in April and again in May last year, ahead of the long 2019-20 summer bushfire season about the looming “catastrophic” fire season…….https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/some-things-were-out-of-bounds-fire-chiefs-gagged-on-climate-change-warnings-to-government-commission-told-20200527-p54wxv.html |
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David Myer : nuclear lobby bullying their way by their effort to change the National Radioactive Waste Management Act
David Myer to Senate Committee on National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 68
The proposed waste facility at Kimba is a bad idea.
1. Handling and transport of nuclear waste is seriously hazardous.
2. The native people of the Kimba regoin have not been consulted. This is deeply troubling after years of being
ignored, we finally apologise for our historical appalling treatment of our aborigines, and now here we are
again, pretending they don’t exist, don’t have an opinion and don’t matter. Talk about third class citizens.
3. Removal of common law rights, as proposed in the draft legislation, through the denial of access to judicial
review and exempting environmental and heritage legislation, is tantamount to admitting that “this proposal
won’t stack up so we are bullying our way through.” How dare they exempt the law of the land!
Please do not support the proposed changes to the Act.
A WASTE OF TIME – submissions re radioactive waste dump Inquiry- ONLY TECHNICAL MATTERS will be considered
Noel Wauchope 27 May 20 It looks like the Senate Committee inquiring into the Bill to amend the National Radioactive Waste Management Act 2012 will limit the scope of their inquiries to mainly technical and scientific information. This will be done for two reasons.
The first reason is to bolster ANSTO’s position for getting all the licences for the facility at Napandee as described in ARPANSA’s submission since there are strong and real doubts that ANSTO will not succeed in getting them.
This would make the whole selection process a futile and unnecessary exercise without a result. We all know that this cost millions of dollars.
The second reason is that by concentrating on the technical factors the Committee will be able to avoid dealing with the more emotive questions based on the differences within the community, the outcome of the Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights and the destroying of Native Title and other matters. The result is that many of fine submissions to the Committee will now be simply ignored as they do not include technical data.
What hope does the general community have?
Bob and Sue Tulloch: scrutiny needed on Radioactive Waste Management Amendment- paves the way to import foreign nuclear wastes
Bob and Sue Tulloch ( Flinders Local Action Group ) to Senate Inquiry on National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 72
There is a lot of misinformation about the Federal Government’s proposed National
Nuclear Waste Management Facility at Kimba. Information has been with held from most Australians via a deliberate, discriminatory voting process, with only two South Australian communities ( Hawker / Quorn and
Kimba ) allowed to vote, (1300 citizens) a process that has so far failed them.
Do our law makers understand WHAT they are voting for?
This is NOT, just mainly a low level nuclear waste dump for hospital gloves and gowns. Two dumps co-located are planned. The second, a temporary storage facility, for far more dangerous intermediate level waste. This will include reprocessed spent fuel rods, used in the nuclear reactors at Lucas Heights, being returned to Australia from
France and the UK. Waste needing serious isolation from humans and the environment for 10,000 years. It is the temporary storage of this ILW, that worry people.
Case for keeping ILW at Lucas Heights
World’s best practice for dealing with Intermediate Level Waste, or High Level waste as classified in France and the UK, is permanent, deep underground burial. There are currently no plans for this to happen in Australia. There is also no time limit set for the storage of this waste, to be placed ‘temporarily’ in an above ground shed at Kimba, if moved from its current modern safe, secure storage facility at ANSTO’s Lucas Heights complex.
It is well documented that the cost of establishing a permanent, deep underground disposal facility for Australia’s relatively low volumes of ILW, is prohibitive. Unless the Australian Government is planning to subsidise the cost of establishing a nuclear waste storage and disposal facility at Kimba, by importing nuclear waste from overseas,
one must question the economical rational to relocate ILW to a second, temporary storage facility at, huge expense to the Australian tax payer.
Australian Nuclear Waste Law
Ref. Protecting Authority, Burying Dissent: An Analysis of Australian Nuclear Waste Law – Angela
Morsley. 2016
This paper considers the Australian legal framework for a national nuclear waste repository. The paper argues that the current law protects the Commonwealth’s decision- making in relation to a repository site, at the expense of ‘the place for
public participation in the development of the land’, conservation of Aboriginal heritage and environmental impacts, legitimate protections that under the proposed changes to the Act will be even more eroded.
In 2010 the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee recommended that the NRWMA not be enacted unless mandatory provision was made for a Regional Consultative Committee. Closer analysis reveals that the RCC
has no power or influence over a Ministerial declaration, it’s function being merely to ‘facilitate communication’ between the host community and the Commonwealth’.
….. ‘Consultation may be provided for under the NRWMA, but there is no evidence to suggest that it has anything other that a tokenistic place within a legal framework that positions site selection as an almost inevitable outcome of nomination, supported by Ministerial fiat, rather than broadly sought public consent.’
The South Australian Parliament has legislation in place under the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000 to prevent the construction of such a facility and the transportation of radioactive waste through the state. The proposed
amendment to the NRWNA to nominate the Napandee site near Kimba as the‘relevant land’, will exclude all state legislation from regulation of all activities associated with the NRWMF. ARPANSA’s Code of Practice for the Safe Transport
of Radioactive Materials, is merely a code of practice and not a statute, is unenforceable in regards to the transportation of radioactive waste through South Australia.
Australia’s Future Nuclear Industry Involvement
Questions about nuclear power generation in Australia, future lucrative ‘fuel leasing’ plans involving an Australian Nuclear Fuel Industry as detailed in the following government reports, and the role a ILW storage facility at Kimba will play, need
clarification and public disclosure.
Australia’s Uranium – Greenhouse friendly fuel for an energy hungry world
A case study into the strategic importance of Australia’s uranium resources for the Inquiry into
developing Australia’s non-fossil fuel energy industry. November 2006
Final Report and recommendations of the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.
May 2016
Not without your approval: a way forward for nuclear technology in Australia;
Report of the inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia; Dec 2019
A report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the Environment & Energy.
The proposed amendments to NRWM Act, 4A, specifically, refers to ‘radioactive waste’ to be replaced with ‘controlled materials’ (ref ARPANSA Act 1998 ‘controlled material means any natural or artificial material, whether in solid or liquid form, or in the form of a gas or vapour, which emits ionizing radiation spontaneously’), and removal of the words ‘domestic origin’, can allow future operations of the storage facility to encompass nuclear power and nuclear fuel leasing industries as detailed in the Dec 2019 ‘Not without your approval’ report.
For these reasons, more scrutiny on this proposal should be obligatory, and a genuine national discussion implemented. Information supplied to the communities of Hawker/Quorn, Kimba did not include these possibilities, and ballot results obtained from 1207 votes does NOT therefore represent an honest national conversation.
To pass the proposed amendments to the NRWM Act now, would be irresponsible and premature to say the least.
Legal action to follow the shonky National Radioactive Waste Management’s processes?
This is an extract from Peter Remta – submission to Senate Committee on National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 [Provisions] Submission 65
“…………..PROVIDED INFORMATION
All of the information on which the government has based its proposals for the facility has been completely one-sided and self-serving and without any opposing or contrary research and opinions being presented to the Kimba community.
At no stage has the government provided or suggested any review or assessment of its information by the general community of Kimba especially when its members have asked some awkward questions which were mostly responded to by deflecting information or simply left unanswered.
When it was requested to do so the government neither responded nor provided any financial assistance for an independent assessment and scrutiny of its proposals and the information provided by the government and the District Council to the Kimba community.
This is a most unfair and unsatisfactory situation considering the quantum of substantial grants made by the government to the Kimba and previously Hawker communities in order to obtain their approval for hosting the government’s facility.
To that extent the members of the Kimba community opposing the government’s proposals have been deprived of properly and fully testing the validity of the information given by the government as in many instances it lacked credibility and caused grave concern within the Kimba community.
All of this flies completely in the face of the facts and the implications of human rights described in the explanatory memorandum especially as the members of the Kimba community were deprived of the full benefits of those rights and their consequences.
BALLOTS
The Kimba District Council has held two ballots to gauge the community support for
proposed facility with the later being in October 2019.
The results of that ballot were:
Voting papers issued 824
Formal votes accepted 735
Yes vote 452
No vote 283
Informal (no vote) 89
The government decided that the result is the percentage of yes votes of the total formal votes accepted and this is 61.5% in favour. However if the informal 89 votes were rightly included then the result is 54.8% in favour.
The voting base for this ballot was relatively limited as explained in the Federal Court decision dismissing the Barngarla appeal and even excluding the Barngarla many people within the Kimba region who should have been given a vote were not included The irony is that there were residents of the Kimba area who were denied a right to
vote yet they lived closer to the town than some of the eligible voters.
A previous community ballot was held at Kimba in June 2017 with people in the District being encouraged to participate in voting. While it was claimed that this ballot achieved voting of 57.4% in favour and 42.6% against on a total of 691 votes accepted the result in favour dropped to slightly less as they were not resident ratepayers which was the necessary qualification prescribed for the voting.than 50% based on the total of 793 voting papers issued.
INFORMED CONSENT
For a proper and fair ballot vote the Kimba District Council which arranged the ballot should have provided the voters with full written explanations accompanying the voting papers as to both sides of the question to be decided by the ballot so as to enable the intending voters to make a fully considered and informed decision. This has not been done and therefore makes the result highly suspect and unreliable.
Most importantly all the information regarding every aspect of the facility has been provided solely by the government and has been completely one-sided without any information to the contrary or at least a proper scrutiny of the government’s proposals.
Still on the issue of informed consent the government has never enabled or offered the members of the Kimba community who oppose the facility to obtain their own independent advice and assessment of the government’s proposals or to provide funds to meet the costs involved.
This has become extremely important as some of the information given by or on behalf of the government or the District Council of Kimba as proponents of the facility has been misleading or plainly wrong.
It is a well established legal principle that the Kimba District Council owes a duty of care to its community in providing proper and full information on any important issue such as the proposal to establish the facility but the Council has quite clearly failed tosatisfy that duty at law.
Leaving aside any legal rights and remedies available to the Kimba community in that regard the most pragmatic and practical solution would be for the government to pay for a full and proper independent assessment and critical analysis of the whole situation for or on behalf of the members of the community opposing or questioning
the government’s proposals.
This could then be followed by a much wider based ballot which would include explanations of the for and against cases in full so that a properly informed decision can be made by the intending voters. In the overall situation this is probably the most important factor having regard to the mainly disingenuous or at least misleading information from the government over the past four years.
This becomes even more relevant having regard to the numerous requests for information which have never been satisfied by the government in any of its guises and to that extent the community of Kimba were deprived of their full rights described in the explanatory memorandum.
LEGAL ACTIONS
It would seem that in all the circumstances the members of the Kimba community opposing the facility (should they feel so inclined) would have a right of action against the District Council and probably the federal government on the issues of failing to provide full and proper information and holding a fair and more extended ballot based on that information.
It could readily be argued by the Kimba community members who feel aggrieved by the actions of the District Council and the government that the voting rights should be extended to a much broader area and include persons who are not necessarily on the ratepayers’ roll but still have a close affinity to Kimba. For example there are apparently instances of community members who are not on the roll but are much closer to the Kimba township than some of the persons entered on the roll.
An Email from Stichting Thorium MSR — The Industry Push to Force Nuclear Power in Australia
Why is the Majority Report of the Australian Senate here: https://www.aph.gov.au/-/media/02_Parliamentary_Business/24_Committees/243_Reps_Committees/EnvironmentEnergy/Nuclear_energy/Full_Report.pdf?la=en&hash=2826513C078551487B8265502776DAD5D23EB71D so full of misinformation and a totally false set of technical assertions???
via An Email from Stichting Thorium MSR — The Industry Push to Force Nuclear Power in Australia
Australian nuclear dump decision trashes indigenous peoples’ rights
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Australian nuclear dump decision trashes indigenous peoples’ rights, https://www.foe.org.au/australian_nuclear_dump_decision_trashes_indigenous_peoples_rights Jim Green and Michele Madigan, 26 May 20, Earlier this year, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation voted against plans for a deep geological repository near Lake Huron. The Canadian government will respect the decision and will no longer target the site. Sadly, the situation in Australia is the exact opposite: Traditional Owners were denied a right to vote in a ‘community ballot’ concerning a national nuclear waste dump, and the federal government is proceeding with the dump despite their unanimous opposition.
The federal government announced in February that it plans to establish a national nuclear waste ‘facility’ near Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. It will comprise a permanent dump for low-level nuclear waste, and an ‘interim’ store for long-lived intermediate-level waste. Shamefully, the federal government has decided to move ahead despite the unanimous opposition of the Barngarla Traditional Owners, native title holders over the area. The federal government refused a request from the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation (BDAC) to include traditional owners in a ‘community ballot’ held last year. So BDAC engaged the Australian Election Company to conduct a confidential postal ballot open to all Barngarla Traditional Owners. None of the respondents voted in favour of the dump. Jim Green and Michele Madigan Earlier this year, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation voted against plans for a deep geological repository near Lake Huron. The Canadian government will respect the decision and will no longer target the site. Sadly, the situation in Australia is the exact opposite: Traditional Owners were denied a right to vote in a ‘community ballot’ concerning a national nuclear waste dump, and the federal government is proceeding with the dump despite their unanimous opposition. The federal government announced in February that it plans to establish a national nuclear waste ‘facility’ near Kimba on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. It will comprise a permanent dump for low-level nuclear waste, and an ‘interim’ store for long-lived intermediate-level waste. Shamefully, the federal government has decided to move ahead despite the unanimous opposition of the Barngarla Traditional Owners, native title holders over the area. The federal government refused a request from the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation (BDAC) to include traditional owners in a ‘community ballot’ held last year. So BDAC engaged the Australian Election Company to conduct a confidential postal ballot open to all Barngarla Traditional Owners. None of the respondents voted in favour of the dump. Racist legislation The National Radioactive Waste Management Act systematically discriminates against Australia’s First Nations. For example, the nomination of a site for a nuclear dump is valid even if Aboriginal traditional owners were not consulted and did not give consent. And the Act has sections which nullify or curtail the application of laws such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984, and the Native Title Act 1993. The federal government recently announced that it plans to amend the Waste Management Act. While the Act is sorely in need of an overhaul, the planned amendments aren’t those that are needed. Clauses in the Act that dispossess and disempower traditional owners will remain untouched. Indeed, the planned amendments will, if passed, further disempower traditional owners. Barngarla Traditional Owners are lobbying opposition and cross-bench federal parliamentarians regarding the flawed amendments. A recent report by the federal parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights found that the amendments could breach international law by failing to protect the human rights of Barngarla Traditional Owners and that the amendments pose a significant risk to their right to culture and self-determination. Appalling process The South Australian Labor Party argues that traditional owners ought to have a right of veto over nuclear projects given the sad and sorry history of the nuclear industry in South Australia, stretching back to the British atomic bomb tests at Maralinga and Emu Field. Deputy Leader of the Opposition Susan Close says that South Australian Labor is “utterly opposed” to the “appalling” process which led to the announcement regarding the Kimba site. Compare that to the federal government, whose mind-set seems not to have advanced from the ‘Aboriginal natives shall not be counted’ clause in the Constitution Act 1900. As Barngarla Traditional Owner Jeanne Miller says, Aboriginal people with no voting power are put back 50 years, “again classed as flora and fauna.” The current debate follows a history of similar proposals ‒ all of them defeated, with traditional owners repeatedly leading successful campaigns. In 2004, after a six-year battle, the Howard government abandoned plans for a national nuclear waste dump in SA. The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta ‒ a senior Aboriginal women’s council ‒ congratulated the government for belatedly getting their ‘ears out of their pockets’. In 2016, the plan to import high-level nuclear waste from around the world was abandoned after a Citizens’ Jury noted the lack of Aboriginal consent and concluded that “the government should accept that the Elders have said NO and stop ignoring their opinions.” And last year, the federal government abandoned plans for a national nuclear dump in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, a plan that was fiercely contested by Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners. South Australian Premier Steven Marshall is rightly proud of his record promoting the growth of renewable energy in the state. And he’s proud of his significant role in putting an end to the plan to import high-level nuclear waste from around the world. But the Premier ‒ whose portfolio includes Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation ‒ supports the federal government’s nuclear dump plan. He needs, as the Kungkas put it, to get his ears out of his pockets and to respect the unanimous opposition of the Barngarla Traditional Owners. The fight goes on! More information: www.nuclear.foe.org.au/waste Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia. Michele Madigan is a Sister of St Joseph who has spent the past 40 years working with Aboriginal people across South Australia. |
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Australia could address another global threat by supporting the UN the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
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As we wait for a vaccine, there is another global threat we could address today, https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6767846/as-we-wait-for-a-vaccine-there-is-another-global-threat-we-could-address-today/?cs=14246 Sue Wareham, 25 May 20
Calls by scientists and others have been made for climate action to play a key role in the post-COVID-lockdown world that is slowly coming into view. These calls are critically important; no responsible government can ignore them. After warnings in recent years about the risk of a global pandemic, we should have learnt that risks don’t go away simply by being ignored. However, there is another call to action on a profound risk to humanity that has received less attention – the need to get rid of the 14,000 nuclear weapons in existence. This risk has been highlighted again this month by President Trump’s discussions with senior officials of a possible resumption of US nuclear testing, a dangerous move that would break a nuclear test moratorium which has been honoured for over two decades by all nations except North Korea. In addition, an important high-level meeting, the five-yearly Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was scheduled to take place at the UN in New York from April 27 to May 22, has been postponed for the obvious reason until early 2021.
The NPT entered into force exactly half a century ago, in 1970, and has played a very significant role in preventing the rapid spread of nuclear weapons; currently there are just nine nuclear-armed states. At the quarter-century mark, in 1995, it was extended indefinitely, with member states reaffirming their commitment to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, a goal that is central to the treaty and yet remains unfulfilled. That failure lies at the heart of growing tensions, between the countries with the weapons and those without, that have marked the five-yearly NPT Review Conferences since 1995. Far from disarming, the nuclear-armed states are updating their arsenals.
The US, followed by Russia, abandoned the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in February last year, with mutual accusations of violations. In 2018 Trump pulled out of the nuclear accord with Iran. The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), the last remaining treaty limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals (the US and Russia), is due to expire next February, with no renewal in sight.
The same rules apply to all nations, and the rule is zero tolerance of the world’s worst weapons. Australia boycotted the whole process, arguing that the security needs of the nuclear-armed states need special consideration – a bit like special pleading for those planning genocide. Entry into force of the TPNW was expected this year but, like everything else, is now delayed.
The driver for negotiating the TPNW was the overwhelming scientific evidence of the catastrophic harm that humanity would face with any use of nuclear weapons, and the knowledge that the risk is increasing. In January this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the hands of its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, closer to global catastrophe than at any other time, including during the Cold War.
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Australian media is not doing its job to expose power and corruption
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What lies beneath must be resurfaced — or the media is not doing its job to expose power and corruption
And yesterday, the government released a discussion paper proposing that the declining role of gas in Australia’s energy production and manufacturing sectors instead be significantly expanded, which would also directly benefit Santos. In between, the government’s COVID economic recovery panel, chaired by another energy company executive, also urged that gas be used as part of Australia’s economic recovery. Both ideas would require massive government subsidies for gas companies like Santos. As a result Santos has had a good week. Last Friday, the company saw its share price close at $4.60. Yesterday it closed at $5.29, a 15% rise compared to just 3% on the ASX 200. This represents a handy return on investment. Santos is the country’s second-biggest fossil fuel industry political donor after Clive Palmer, having given over $1 million to the Coalition in the last decade. It has a rich history of exchanging staff with Coalition governments…… [In the media coverage] The story was treated as an energy or climate policy story, rather than one about corruption and power……. When even good, experienced journalists fail to give a full account of the fossil fuel companies working to not merely stymie climate action but to turn climate policies to their financial advantage, it points to a serious problem in our media — an inability to explore how surface events reflect underlying structures of power in Australia. And it results in a normalisation of corruption. Why do we instinctively see corruption if Trump does something, but if the government here does exactly the same thing, it’s written up seriously as an energy policy story, with the government and business on one side of a serious debate and “green groups” on the other? We see through the words a figure like Trump uses to disguise their corruption; here, the same words are taken at face value, and debated as serious contributions to policy…… Turnbull at least spoke and wrote about the role of fossil fuel interests and News Corp (which he correctly described as a foreign political party, rather than what it purports to be, an Australian media company) ….. Despite the woeful level of transparency around influence-peddling, there is considerable information available about the financial and personal links between key stakeholders and policymakers across federal politics.
At the ABC, Stephen Long is one of the few mainstream media journalists who sees his “investigative” role as extending to the structures of power rather than simply the surface. Paul Karp of The Guardian is also attuned to the tendency of donors to benefit from political parties. But they are, sadly, exceptions. We’ve seen before what happens when the media ignores the underlying reasons for decisions by policymakers. For years, the extensive donations by the major banks to the Liberal Party, and the revolving door between the executive suites of banks and the ranks of both ministerial staff and ministers themselves, was ignored by the media. The donations and revolving doors operated for both political parties, but the Liberals had — and have — by far the deepest and richest links with the banks. But the role of these financial and personal links in the Liberals’ long-running protection of the banks from regulation, and their constant attacks on industry superannuation funds, received little attention……. Australia’s political system is corrupted. Corrupted not merely or even particularly in the NSW Labor way of bags of cash and dodgy deals for mates, but systemically, institutionally corrupt, a pervasive soft corruption in which the powerful use money and lobbying to influence policymakers and get favourable policies, indeed, as we’ve seen this week, often get to craft policy themselves. All it takes to understand and explain that is to look beneath the surface. Is the Australian media holding policymakers to account? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/05/22/political-reporters-not-doing-their-job-power-corruption/ |
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1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 