Friday, 20 July, 2007

No Waste Alliance

Local environmentalists warn that a nuclear pact between Australia and the U.S.A. would take the NT one step closer towards an international nuclear waste dump.

Mr Justin Tutty, spokesperson for the No Waste Alliance, warns that the proposed agreement could lock Australia into accepting the nuclear waste inevitably produced by any uranium exports.

“President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Plan encompasses proposals for Total Product Stewardship, or uranium leasing”

“Just as the Howard government sees areas of our Territory as ‘the middle of nowhere’, the international community looks to Australia as a sufficiently remote and unpopulated destination for their unwanted long-lived nuclear waste.”

Mr Tutty says promises to the contrary cannot be accepted at face value.

“The federal politicians promising we’ll never take nuclear waste, are the same liars who promised there would never be an NT dump in the first place.”

“Australian law currently prohibits the import of foreign waste, but we’ve seen this federal government overturn long standing Land Rights and Environmental Protection legislation in order to ram through their nuclear waste agenda.”

“When the time comes, we can’t be surprised if these politicians change their tune, and our laws, to turn our Territory into an international nuclear dumping ground.”