Dateline: The Uranium Mining Debate
SBS, Saturday, September 17, 7.30pm (7 Adelaide)
Reviewed by Tom Kelly
This week Dateline deals with the escalating debate around moves to change the ALP's "three mines" uranium policy. Jane Braslin's report from the Northern Territory looks at the arguments being made for and against uranium mining.
The program canvasses the views of ALP figures, mining company representatives, the Northern Land Council, Greenpeace and anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott. The perspectives of the Aboriginal traditional owners of the proposed mine sites are given particular attention.
In the decade since the ALP adopted its three mines policy, the alliances between the various groups involved in the debate have shifted significantly.
In the past, Aboriginal landowners have joined environmentalists in opposing uranium mining, fearful of its impact on their traditional lands. Now more local Aboriginal people are supporting mining.
The economic motivations are made clear by Darryl Pearce, director of the Northern Land Council: "Basically they're living in chook sheds. Tin rooved, wire sheds, concrete blocks. No glass windows. Just a wire shed and they call them chook sheds. They probably live within 80 feet of a generator screaming throughout their lives." Pearce regards nuclear power as very clean in comparison with coal-fired power.
Braslin points out, "While the Northern Land Council and Minister, Robert Tickner, say Aborigines should not have to resort to mining royalties to provide them with schooling, health and a sound economic future, they've certainly felt the need. Many of their elders have died waiting for such benefits to flow from government programs."
Not surprisingly, would-be uranium mining companies have become strong supporters of a version of Aboriginal self-determination that seems to overrule any argument against uranium mining. Such arguments include the potentially global impact of nuclear reactor accidents and the accumulation of radioactive wastes that remain highly toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.
The mistake that well-intentioned people could make, and that this program seems to lean towards, is to support uranium mining as a form of compensation to these Aboriginal communities for the failure of governments to provide them with adequate services, resources and employment opportunities.
Surely the way to address these issues of oppression, discrimination and neglect is not to allow uranium mining, which is against the best interests of everyone on the planet, but to ensure the provision of adequate services, resources and employment opportunities to all Aboriginal communities, whether or not they are traditional owners of land that contains exploitable quantities of uranium oxide.