Sunday, 10 June, 2007

by Arid Lands Environment Centre
Media Release

NT Radioactive Waste Dump Campaign
National Speaking Tour: June 12-26

Throughout June, Indigenous traditional owners and community members from across the NT are travelling to Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney to express opposition to being targeted for the Federal radioactive waste dump. With assessment of three Department of Defense sites completed and Muckaty recently nominated by the Northern Land Council as another potential site, the tour provides an opportunity for national audiences to hear how the proposal and process are impacting communities, and the strong solidarity that has developed between people at all of the targeted sites.

Speakers confirmed for the tour include:

• Mt Everard traditional owners Audrey McCormack and Benedict Stevens
• Harts Range community members Priscilla Williams and Mitch
• Muckaty traditional owner Dianne Stokes
• Kalumpurlpa community member Steve Atkinson
• Top End Aboriginal Conservation Alliance (TEACA) coordinator Donna Jackson
• Katherine No Dump Action Group members Vina Hornsby and Petrina Ariston.

As well as meeting with politicians, social justice groups and environmental NGO’s, the group is holding a public meeting in each city, incorporating speakers, an exhibition of artworks, photos of the proposed dump sites and nearby communities and a short film.

The speaking tour aims to confront and dispel the myth used to justify nuclear activities in Australia; that remote areas are uninhabited and lifeless places. Federal Science Minister Julie Bishop suggested that the proposed Department of Defense sites are "some distance from any form of civilisation" when in fact, there are communities living and running successful enterprises three, five, eight and eighteen kilometres away from these sites.

This is a unique opportunity for people interstate to hear first hand, the impact of the Federal radioactive waste dump proposal on remote and indigenous communities. With Australia poised to expand involvement in the global nuclear industry, the public forums will encourage discussion of domestic radioactive waste management issues, social and environment concerns regarding the NT dump proposal and ways people interstate can engage with and support the NT community campaign.


Audrey McCormack, Mt Everard Traditional Owner
"I live just about 5ks from the proposed dump, and I'd like to keep the place clean for my children, my grandchildren and further generations, and 'cause we go out hunting there, we go for our bush tuckers."


Mitch, Engawala Commmunity (18km from the Harts Range site)
"If this nuclear waste is so safe, why can't they keep it at the Lucas Heights nuclear plant in Sydney, where it is produced and where the nuclear experts work? We stand strong in our own culture as Indigenous people, and want the land and water to be protected for all children, black and white. We have enough issues of our own to deal with without having to deal with the nuclear waste."


Vina Hornsby, Katherine Nuclear Dump Action Group
"It's going to impact on all our areas our agriculture, our tourism, our cattle industry and our lifestyles, I mean, would you chose to move to a town that was only 43 kilometres from a nuclear dump? Certainly none of us would have chosen to live here, if that dump was there in the first place."


Dianne Stokes, Muckaty Traditional Owner
"Top to bottom we got bush tucker right through the country. Whoever is taking this waste dump into our country needs to come back and talk to the Traditional Owners. We're not happy to have all of this stuff. We don’t want it, it's not our spirit. Our spirit is our country, our country where our ancestors been born. Before towns, before hospitals, before cities. We want our country to be safe."