By Alison Dellit
The Australian government's response to the World Heritage Commission's damning report on uranium mining in Kakadu has been a predictable combination of "You're wrong", "You have no right", and "We're doing all we can".
The report, prepared in October 1998, described the Kakadu World Heritage area as facing ascertained and potential dangers. It listed 15 recommendations to safeguard the park, including the cessation of mining, improving relations between the government and traditional owners and a re-examination of the 1982 agreement by the traditional owners of the Jabiluka lease to allow the mine to go ahead.
In responding to the report, the government has chosen not to redress these problems, but to deny their existence. The response issued by environment minister Senator Robert Hill's office on the morning of April 15, although 158 pages long and five months in the making, brings nothing new to the debate over the environmental impact of the mine.
Instead the government has chosen a rather hostile, bullying approach that emphasises above all the "right" of the government to determine its own affairs and blames the dispute on the traditional owners and "domestic organisations projecting their campaigns to an international audience".
Environmental damage
In response to the commission's findings of potential environmental damage from water released into Swift Creek, tailings storage problems and the impact on catchment ecosystems, Hill replied that the Supervising Scientist Group (SSG) has determined that the mine is perfectly safe. But the SSG themselves have since recommended changes to the engineering design due to these problems.
Concerns about the conduct of the environmental impact assessment, and the impartiality of the SSG, raised by the report, have not been answered in the response.
The key argument put forward to "prove" the safety of the Jabiluka mine is that the Ranger mine has "operated for almost twenty years without causing any problems to the natural heritage value of Kakadu".
Aside from bizarre notion that if we have one mine, we might as well have two, this ignores that the commission's report identified ongoing concerns about the damage to Kakadu caused by the Ranger mine.
Ranger has been responsible for more than 100 leaks, spills and incidents. The Mirrar people are vocal in their condemnation of the Ranger mine, and in a separate section of the response the government itself admits that the mine has "not resulted in expected improvements to the economic and social conditions of the traditional owners".
Indigenous rights
The government reiterates its "not our fault" approach to indigenous oppression. The document fails to mention that the Mirrar have agreed to speak to the government — if drilling is suspended — and the government has refused. It refuses to consider the protection of sacred sites affected by the drilling.
Resorting to falsified evidence, the document implies that the Jawoyn people oppose the in-danger listing, which is untrue. It contains numerous statements asserting that most indigenous people resident in Kakadu support mining — but offers no evidence to support this theory.
The Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation, representing the Mirrar people, has responded angrily, refuting the allegations about Mirrar support for the mine. It also accused the response document of displaying "an appalling understanding of indigenous culture".
Bully boy
The most sinister aspect is the implied threats throughout the document. The government repeatedly challenges the right of the World Heritage Committee to place an area on the in-danger list without the consent of the "state party". It implies that the government signed the convention only on the understanding that the committee would act with its permission. It also implies that other signatories might feel the same way.
The government has recently decided to commit more than $1 million to an international campaign to prevent the in-danger listing. The tone and threats in the response suggest that some of this money will go towards discrediting the commission.
Despite use of the phrase "open and transparent" five times in the summary alone, the errors of omission and dishonesty of the response are breathtaking.
The report fails to acknowledge that most Australians oppose the mine and perceive it as a threat. It fails to mention the recent controversy around withholding documents about the mine and fails to mention the involvement of ERA in preparing the environmental impact statement.
While the government claims that it has begun implementing "the majority" of the 15 recommendations, this is not borne out in the detail of the report. Even the relatively innocuous recommendation to increase funding to cane toad prevention programs has been rejected as "too expensive".
Environmental groups have rejected the response. The Australian Conservation Foundation's Dave Sweeney commented, "The government's failure to meaningfully engage with or address the concerns of the Mirrar is reflective of a policy approach that has already been strongly criticised by a range of international forums, most recently in the UN over Howard's 10-point plan. The government is directly risking Australia's international perception and not meeting its international and domestic responsibilities."
Resistance activists around the country are involved in organising high school and university student actions against the mine for April 29.
Resistance member and rally organiser Jacquie Moon said of the government document, "This response shows clearly that the government is more interested in bribery than argument. The million dollars put aside for the campaign have clearly not gone on attempting to fix the problems of the mine.
"The weakness of their arguments shows that we can stop the mine through a mass campaign of opposition reaching into every sector of Australian society. The April 29 actions being organised by Jabiluka Action Groups, the National Union of Students and Resistance will be part of this."