Liz Denborough
Between July 22 and August 3, 40 people ranging from 20 to 75 years' old travelled by bus from Melbourne to Adelaide to Alice Springs and back. Our aim was to become better informed about the secrets and lies of Australia's nuclear industry, and our meetings with veterans and activists and Aboriginal elders renewed our passion to campaign against the nuclear threat.
We toured BHP Billiton's Roxby Downs uranium mine, where we debated its managers. Alarmingly, the industry wants to expand this mine's production up to 15,000 tonnes of uranium a year (it currently produces about 4500 tonnes) by 2014. If this happens, Australia will become the largest producer of uranium in the world.
Never has Australia been faced with such a government sponsored multi-pronged nuclear assault. Apart from expanding uranium mining and looking for a national nuclear waste dump site, the Howard government is now flagging nuclear power, uranium enrichment, uranium leasing and an international nuclear waste dump. But this may be an ambit claim. Australians may more readily accept an expansion of uranium mining if the government later backs away from nuclear power, enrichment, leasing and an international dump.
Australia sells uranium to many countries, including the US, France and the UK, all of which are nuclear weapons states. It also sells to South Korea (recently caught with a secret nuclear weapons research program) and has just brokered a deal to sell uranium to China, another nuclear weapons state that is failing to honour its non-proliferation treaty obligations.
In 1982, with money on its mind, the South Australian government created the Roxby Downs Indenture (Ratification) Act which overrules many laws including the Aboriginal Heritage Act. The mine is located on sacred Aboriginal sites, with the main shaft going straight through the head of the Sleepy Lizard from the Dreaming.
The Roxby Downs (Indenture Ratification) Act, 1982 also overrides the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act, 1999. Roxby uses 10% of the South Australian electricity supply, and emits 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. There are currently 70 million tonnes of radioactive tailings' waste and 10 million tonnes more produced each year, which no-one knows how to safely store.
The Labor state government also gave the uranium mining company a special deal on water where it could take - for free - up to 42 million litres of water a day from the Great Artesian Basin.
We visited some of the mound springs, oases with unique flora and fauna and of huge cultural significance to their Arabunna traditional owners. The mine's water take has adversely affected some of these mound springs and destroyed some others. Then we walked on the stunning Lake Eyre at sunset.
One of our most inspiring experiences was our meeting with the inspiring and courageous Yami Lester who told us of his experience of the British atomic tests at Emu Plains in 1953. Yami was about 10 years old when he described how he "felt the ground shake, heard one big bang and another little one and watched the black smoke come over the hill above the mulga trees, black and shiny and just going along. It covered the sunlight like a cloud. After that a lot of people got sick", he told us. Yami lost his sight in both eyes. Totally blind, he spoke out in 1982 and this led to a Royal Commission into the Maralinga Tests in 1984-1985.
Many other Aboriginal people and veterans continue to suffer from the impacts of exposure to radioactive fallout. Despite all the evidence, the government denied that the 28% increase in cancer among veterans who had been involved with the tests was linked to radiation poisoning.
In September 2004, after the successful campaign to stop a nuclear waste dump being built in SA, the federal environment minister gave "categorical assurance" that there would be no radioactive waste dump in the NT. Now it's back on the agenda: culturally important sites, and land on which Aboriginal people live, are being considered.
As Arrente elder Kath Martin said, "We've got to make people understand that if there is seepage, this is going to contaminate our land. Because we live on this land and we care for it. We own this land. It was given to us by our ancestors. People have to understand this - we are this land."
The waste dump site is deemed by the government to be in "the middle of nowhere". Is this terra nullius all over again?
We also heard stories of the government and mining companies using underhand methods to force Indigenous people to accept nuclear developments.
In Alice Springs, tour participants, representatives from Indigenous communities and environmental groups linked up in a show of strength against the proposed dump (see accompanying article).
The Howard government argues that Australia needs a nuclear reactor for producing radioisotopes for use in medical tests. It then adds that because we have a reactor, we also need a dump for the spent nuclear fuel wastes. However, the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in NSW is not essential for nuclear medicine. An electronically-powered cyclotron can produce many radioisotopes and the rest can be imported until non-reactor production methods are developed further.
It seems that Canberra wants a nuclear reactor to keep nuclear scientists here and have the option of producing nuclear power or bombs. It also raises Australia's "status" among the gang of nuclear countries, not to mention money to be made by importing other countries' nuclear waste.
Wherever there's a dump, there's a danger of radioactive leakage on site and during transportation. Howard says there will be no leakage, but as Yami told us, "If it's so safe, why can't they put it in Parliament House in Canberra?"
[Liz Denborough is an anti-nuclear activist in Melbourne.]