Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak again, as I have already done a few times in the last 13 months in here, about radioactive matters of public interest. I want to point out that, until very recently, the ALP national policy platform described quite coherently the processes by which the current government would be identifying suitable sites for radioactive waste dumps in Australia. To borrow some of the language there, they should be ‘scientific, transparent, accountable, fair and allow access to appeal mechanisms’. That is very similar to the way the Australian Greens believe matters of radioactive waste disposal should be treated. Unfortunately, these words can no longer be cited as government policy or ALP policy on radioactive waste. These words were so incompatible with the approach taken in the last 18 months—almost two years—by the Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, that he had the recent ALP national conference remove those words from the policy. I wonder why on earth he would want to do that.

We know that what John Howard when he was Prime Minister decided to do with Australia’s nuclear waste was pretty close to the formula that has been tried many times around the world and has been tried previously in Australia as well: to impose a radioactive waste facility on an unwilling community—out of sight, out of mind, as those people’s homes and lands are nowhere and they are nobody. We had the quite stark comment by various ministers in the Howard government: ‘Why can’t a place in the middle of nowhere have a radioactive waste dump?’ That form of thinking took legal effect in the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005. That act was drawn up to do exactly that and was further strengthened late in 2006 so that sites nominated by land councils could be added to the list that the Howard government had chosen, even in the absence of consultation and consent from traditional owners and local people. At that point one extra property was added to the list.

At the time the Greens were opposed to the addition of the fourth proposed radioactive waste dump site in the Northern Territory and some ALP MPs at the time said that the legislation that passed through here was draconian, sordid, arrogant and profoundly shameful. Of course, they were right. What we have now is a minister in the Rudd government explicitly continuing the policy of the Howard government in this respect, to the degree that the ALP policy actually changed over the last few weeks to more closely reflect what is actually occurring on the ground. We have seen an incredible unwillingness to engage with the Greens and the community groups active around Australia with an interest in these issues. Most importantly, there has been a total unwillingness and failure to engage with the people who live there: the traditional owners of that country—and, of course, I am referring to Muckaty station, which is not far from Tennant Creek.

What we have seen from Minister Martin Ferguson is a real unwillingness to acknowledge the consensus recommendations from the committee report that exposed exactly how bad the process was that had been initiated by the Howard government in 2005. Very close attention was paid to the Muckaty station situation in the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts inquiry on this matter, which I participated in. The results in that consensus document were quite acceptable to me and the Australian Greens, saying that we need a completely new approach to radioactive waste because every time governments have chosen the coercive approach in dumping a facility like this on a community it has resulted in a complete failure. That has happened in Australia several times that I am aware of. Most notably was the Pangea proposal in Western Australia—and it took about 18 months to send them packing—and the equally coercive proposal to dump Australia’s domestic radioactive waste in South Australia. That proposal was defeated because of very strong community work by local people.

I believe that is exactly the result that is going to occur here. The people around Muckaty and the other three sites that were targeted by the Howard government and are now being targeted by Minister Martin Ferguson of course are leading a very spirited defence of their country and asking for nothing more than the stress and uncertainty to be lifted from their communities and for a decent process, which was promised to them before the election, to be enacted to deal with the very serious and difficult question of radioactive waste. I have a letter here that was sent to the minister by 57 traditional owners from the Muckaty area. All of them are part of the Muckaty Land Trust, including some from one of the groups that the Northern Land Council believe are proposing a radioactive waste dump and are quite happy to have one there. This letter was sent to the minister on 8 May—and it was cced to me at the time—and they have not yet received a reply. It is asking for Minister Ferguson, Peter Garrett and others to come up to Muckaty, sit down with them on country and have the conversation face to face about what they really believe, because they are faced with the situation of having white politicians and bureaucrats thousands of kilometres away seeking to impose the nation’s most dangerous industrial waste on their land without so much as the courtesy of a visit to tell them what is proposed.

This letter is quite elegant. There is an edge of despair to it in that all these people are seeking is face-to-face dialogue with the minister who is seeking to impose this facility on their country. The last paragraph of the letter states:

We are making a strong effort to tell you that we don’t want the waste dump coming into our land. We want you and Peter Garrett to take it in your minds, in your brains and in your heart to think about us and to have your tongue ready to say ‘no waste dump in the Northern Territory’.

That letter is signed by 57 traditional owners from the Muckaty Land Trust, who are absolutely implacably against the imposition of a radioactive waste dump on their country. I seek leave of the Senate to table this letter.