BY
JIM GREEN
ADELAIDE The South Australian parliament has legislated to ban the construction of a national radioactive waste dump in the state. The legislation, passed by the upper house in a special sitting to debate the bill on March 19, also bans the transportation of radioactive waste from other states on SA roads.
The SA Labor government's bill was passed with an amendment requiring the government to strengthen the legislation within four months. The amendment, put forward by independents and the Democrats, was motivated by legal advice they had received indicating that the bill could be strengthened.
While it remains likely that the federal government has the legal power to over-ride the state legislation, it is not certain, and the legislation raises the political stakes for Canberra in pushing ahead with its plans.
Public pressure will probably be sufficient to get the state government to use the legislation as the basis for a High Court challenge against the dump plan at some stage during the federal government's approval, land acquisition and licensing processes.
In April, federal environment minister David Kemp will rubber-stamp the environmental impact statement. Then the federal government plans to use the Land Acquisition Act 1989 to compulsorily acquire state-owned land for the dump, annulling native title rights in the process. After these moves, the federal government's puppet regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, will undertake a licensing process.
While opposing the planned dump, the Adelaide Advertiser's March
20 editorial also reflected the defeatism which the federal government
is inculcating at every opportunity. This is a government which decided
from day one the dump was coming to SA come hell or high water", the editorial
said. Forget public consultation before any decision; forget actually
asking the people of this state what they feel; forget democracy. The truth
is the federal government does not need our permission to establish the
dump on crown land. The truth is it dismisses our reasonable concerns out
of hand."
Union ban
On March 14, a meeting of delegates to the SA United Trades and Labor Council (UTLC), unanimously passed a motion calling on all SA unions to ban the construction of and provision of services to the planned dump, and supporting the opposition to the dump of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta women's group. The meeting was addressed by representatives of the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Campaign Against Nuclear Dumping.
UTLC secretary Janet Giles said: We're sick of the federal government treating South Australia as a wasteland... South Australia has endured appalling radioactive pollution as a result of the Maralinga [nuclear weapons testing] debacle, we deserve no more."
The SA branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union passed a similar resolution on February 26. CFMEU state secretary Martin O'Malley told the February 24 Advertiser: We're not mugs, we understand they can bring in non-union labour, but we will be letting people know what our attitude is to the federal government attempting to jam this awful bloody thing down the throats of ordinary South Australians."
A crude divide-and-rule tactic by the federal government to buy off Aboriginal opposition to the dump has failed. Three native title claimant groups the Kokatha, Kuyani and Barngala tribes were offered $90,000 to surrender their native title rights, but only if all three groups agreed.
Two of the groups refused. Our heritage is not for sale", Kokatha Land Council representative Andrew Starkey told the February 27 Australian. Starkey said the Kokatha are investigating legal options to stop the government compulsorily acquiring the land. Philip Teitzel, a lawyer representing the Barngala people, said they rejected the offer because many South Australians opposed the planned dump.
The risks associated with transporting radioactive waste have led to growing opposition along the transport corridor between the Lucas Heights nuclear plant in Sydney and the planned dump site near Woomera.
Those concerns have also led to the first hint of opposition to the dump from within the SA Liberal Party. Graham Gunn, Liberal MP for the state seat of Stuart, told Central Television in early March that the radioactive waste should be handled in the safest possible way, which may mean detouring around highly populated areas" such as Port Augusta.
Responding to Gunn's comments, SA environment minister John Hill said in a March 6 media release: I'm glad to see at least one member of the Opposition sticking up for his electorate instead of forming a conga-line behind [federal science minister] Peter McGauran and his radioactive waste road-show."
The federal government has short-listed three sites near Woomera for the dump. The preferred site is in the Woomera Prohibited Area, near a rocket testing range. As a result of fierce opposition from the defence department and civil aerospace organisations, the government appears to have given up on its preferred site.
McGauran told the March 14 Australian: Perception matters to the burgeoning space industry and even if there is no real threat to their operations, if overseas investors perceive there is a risk that has to be taken into account. I have conveyed that view to the minister for the environment and he takes that fully into account."
One of the other two sites is on land owned by WMC Ltd (formerly Western
Mining), which is fiercely opposed to the dump being sited on its land.
It is likely that the government will opt for the third site, on Arcoona
station, which was bought by pastoralist Andrew Pobke from Kidmans last
year.
Maralinga
The government's dump plan has also been complicated by renewed controversy over the clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site in north-west SA. A whistle-blower Dale Timmons, a geochemist based in the United States who worked on the project for five years has publicly criticised the government's clean-up (<http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/timmons.html>).
Another whistle-blower, Canberra-based nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, has called for plutonium-contaminated debris currently buried in shallow trenches at Maralinga, to be exhumed and vitrified at an estimated cost of $30 million.
SA Premier Mike Rann connected the Maralinga "clean-up to the planned dump in a March 16 letter to the 22 state upper house MPs: It is worrying that the same commonwealth department which continues to tell us that the Maralinga and Emu sites are now safe despite reported expert advice to the contrary is now advocating a national waste dump for our state...
Following the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars, there is still public and scientific debate about the adequacy and safety of the clean-ups."
The multinational PR firm Hill and Knowlton has been employed by the federal government to carry out public relations work to sell the nuclear dump to South Australians. Hill and Knowlton has a reputation for defending the indefensible, having worked for companies such as Enron, the tobacco industry and asbestos companies.
Part of the federal government's public relations strategy detailed in a document leaked last year is to recruit willing scientists to sell the dump.
Media speculation led to an editorial in the February 24 Advertiser decrying this recruit-a-scientist" strategy and stating: The spin doctors are now seeking scientists to deflect the criticism. While it is a perfectly proper course open to Hill and Knowlton, it is a blatant insult to the people of South Australia so vehemently opposed to the proposal. A certain phrase comes to mind: the courage of their convictions. Any case for prosecution or defence which needs expensive, professional bolstering seems distinctly less than convincing."
In an opinion piece in the March 1 Advertiser, former WMC manager Ian Duncan claimed: "The premier who supports the siting of a national repository will probably be remembered as the statesman who cleaned up Australia. The community that is first to accept a repository in its region stands to gain in ways that it can determine, whether it is jobs, investment, population, health, education or tourism."
It's unclear whether Duncan has been hired by the government as part of its recruit-a-scientist campaign the government has ignored repeated attempts to get an answer to that question. Either way, they'll have to do better than Duncan's baloney.
To find out more about the dump or the campaign against it, contact Jim Green from the Campaign Against Nuclear Dumping, phone (08) 8211 7604, email <nonucleardump@hotmail.com>.
From Green Left Weekly, April 2, 2003.
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