AUSTRALIA: Aboriginals, Activists Balk at Plan for Nuke Waste Dump

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bob Burton

CANBERRA, Jul 17 2003 (IPS) - Two hundred people from Aboriginal groups and anti-nuclear activists have vowed at a just-concluded meeting here to prevent plans by the government to establish a nuclear waste dumps in the South Australian desert.

"We have created new alliances between the indigenous groups and anti-nuclear groups this week, so we are going to go full steam ahead to stop the dump," said Jeroen Van Veen, a spokesman for the four-day gathering in New South Wales in western Australia.

”We don’t want dumps to be buried all around our places. And the land is ours. And the people are going to damage it,” added Tjunmutja Myra Watson, a member of Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, a group of Aboriginal women from the tribal groups that would be affected by the dump proposal.

”It’s time they stopped. It’s time they listened to us and what we say about dumps and radiation," she told Australian Broadcasing Corp radio.

Under Commonwealth legislation, Aboriginal groups can – under certain conditions – apply for recognition of their rights to traditional lands.

While their rights to the land have not been recognised, negotiators for the government have offered native title claimants 60,000 U.S. dollars if they agree to relinquish their claims over the land affected by the proposed dump.

However, in a setback for the anti-nuclear campaign, draft legislation by the South Australian government that would have declared the proposed dump site a public park was narrowly defeated 10-9 in the upper house on Wednesday night.

Last week, the Commonwealth minister for finance and administration senator, Nick Minchin, announced that the government would compulsorily acquire from the South Australian government land near the desert township of Woomera – currently leased to a sheep farmer – to enable the dump to be established.

Minchin acknowledges that the public park legislation would have prevented the compulsory acquisition from proceeding.

The compulsory acquisition of the land has also drawn a sharp response from Aboriginal groups with an interest in it. "Not your land, even if you say you own it. Even if you buy it. It’s women’s place," Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta wrote in a letter to the Commonwealth government after Minchin’s announcement.

"You’re digging a hole in the dreamtime à If you dig this hole in the ‘manta’ (the earth) and fill it with the poison, make the dump, something will happen. There will be anger. If you don’t listen you will be sorry,” the letter said.

”We talking and talking, go round and round same words. We’re trying to help everyone. We talking straight don’t go there, it’s dangerous," said the letter.

Despite the defeat of the park proposal, South Australian Minister for the Environment John Hill, vowed to pursue every avenue to prevent the nuclear dump being established. A spokesman for Hill acknowledged that the defeat of the park bill was a setback, but that scope for other legal challenges to the dump proposal remained.

The state government has written to the Commonwealth government seeking an explanation for the urgency behind the acquisition of the land. The response – due in approximately one month – may lay the groundwork for a challenge to the land acquisition in the Federal Court.

In a separate bill that did pass the upper house on Wednesday night, the establishment of the dump and the transportation of nuclear waste through the state were banned.

The state government has campaigned – backed by public opinion – against the proposed dump on the grounds that it will adversely affect the state’s reputation as a "clean, green food producer" as well as a tourism destination.

Underlying opposition to the dump is concern about the impacts of the above ground nuclear bomb tests carried out in the South Australian desert by the British government in the 1950s and the ongoing controversy over the inadequacy of the clean-up of contaminated lands.

The government is well aware of strength of public opposition to the project.

Market research undertaken for the government in 2001 revealed that over half of those aware that South Australia had been chosen for a national low-level nuclear waste dump were opposed to the project.

In October 2002, Minister for Science Peter McGauren allocated 145,000 dollars for the services of the global public relations company, Hill and Knowlton, to advise it on how to overcome opposition to the dump.

In a brief for the project, McGauren’s department wrote that market research revealed a "strong cynicism by people towards government organisations" about the project.

To bypass community concern about government information, the brief proposed that in addition to announcement by government ministers, the public relations strategy should use ”willing experts to provide facts about site selection issues in media interviews and radio talk-back programmes and other media outlets".

While disappointed with the defeat of the legislation creating the park, Van Veen is optimistic that this week’s meeting in outback New South Wales has built a more effective national coalition opposed to the dump.

"The opposition to the nuclear industry is so much stronger now à we are going to go places and stop the proposal," he said.