Wednesday, 7 November, 2007

by Natalie Wasley
Crikey!

After abandoning its plan for a national nuclear dump in South Australia ahead of the 2004 federal election, the Howard government scrambled for a politically expedient location to dump its radioactive waste problem.

Despite an "absolute categorical assurance" from then environment minister Ian Campbell that a site in the Territory would not be picked, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA) legislation was rammed through federal Parliament in December 2005 and allowed the Commonwealth to override NT laws prohibiting radioactive waste transport and storage.

NT CLP Senator Nigel Scullion had earlier promised his constituents he would work to stop the dump, telling ABC radio on 9 June 2005 that:

There’s not going to be a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. The people of the Northern Territory doesn’t want anybody else’s nuclear waste in the Northern Territory, I represent them and so, "not on my watch".

He even promised to cross the floor to vote against the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA) legislation, saying that:

Territorians don’t like having this sort of stuff shoved down our throat because we’re not a state.

However when push came to shove in Canberra, Scullion not only stood by the Coalition’s party line, he even proposed amendments that allowed for the nomination of additional sites in the Territory to be put forward by Land Councils or the Northern Territory Government.

A year to the day after the CRWMA was passed, Nigel played a key role in further amendments which allowed for additional nominated dump sites to be accepted even without the demonstrated consultation and consent of Traditional Owners. These changes also wiped out the opportunity for judicial review on the grounds of "procedural fairness" by any affected group; communities, pastoralists or the Territory Government.

Senator Scullion had meanwhile been reassuring people that none of the originally named areas would be chosen as the preferred dump site, telling the NT News that he "bet a beer" that it would not be at Harts Range, insinuating he was privy to information that a site somewhere else that would be nominated and chosen.