Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to commend the citizens of Alice Springs for demonstrating their concern about proposals from the federal government to site nuclear waste facilities in the Northern Territory. On Sunday a week ago a few hundred people attended a rally in Alice Springs on the town council lawns. The people who participated in that rally included the Mayor, Fran Kilgariff; my colleague Senator Trish Crossin; and Elliot McAdam, a Northern Territory government minister. What these people have done is represent the views of the people across the Northern Territory who are opposed to the proposition that this federal government should be able to impose upon the people of the Northern Territory the siting of a nuclear waste facility. The government have proposed this—as you would recall, Mr Speaker—without the approval of or discussion with the people of the Northern Territory but have decided that they will do it because they can. It is a major cause of concern.

The people who are most concerned are the traditional owners of that country: Aboriginal people from four different sites across the Northern Territory. They maintain their concern. They have articulated it very fairly and properly. The people of Alice Springs who have contributed to this debate, including people from the environment movement, the Aboriginal community, the Labor Party and other organisations, are doing so very coherently. They are protesting against the government’s imposition on them of a proposal for a nuclear waste facility without so much as a by-your-leave. (Time expired)