Monday, 10 September, 2007

by Natalie Wasley
The Age - letters to editor

PRESIDENT Bush has endorsed Australia to join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (The Age, 6/9). An integral part of GNEP is the idea for countries to lease uranium, and then take back waste produced from overseas nuclear power stations. The Federal Government has said that the proposed Northern Territory nuclear dump would take only domestic waste, but lack of transparency in the NT process provides little assurance that the federal dump is not the thin edge of the wedge to an international one. The assessment of NT sites for a federal radioactive dump has been procedurally bereft and outrageously undemocratic. There is little faith from Territorians that establishing an international dump would be done with more community consultation or regard for opposition.

Resources Minister Ian MacFarlane says federal waste is not safe where it is currently stored in cities, yet the Government will dump it in the NT as little as four kilometres from where people live and run pastoral and tourism enterprises with the assurance that it is innocuous. Territorians do not overlook the implication from these double standards that their lives, livelihoods and communities are being viewed as pre-election political sacrifice zones.

Natalie Wasley, Beyond Nuclear Initiative, Alice Springs