Thursday, 1 March, 2007

NT News

ABORIGINAL custodians from Muckaty Station yesterday called on the Northern Land Council to hold a meeting of all traditional owners to decide if a nuclear waste facility should be built on their land.

Several speakers told a meeting in Tennant Creek they opposed the depository.

"We don ’t want this stuff on our country," Yapayapa woman Dianne Stokes said.

"There is a big lawn at Parliament House they should keep the waste there if it is so safe." Nobody spoke in favour of the facility being built at indigenous-owned Muckaty, north of Tennant.

The land council has been secretly negotiating with some Muckaty traditional owners about the nuclear waste facility.

It said it was legally obliged to consult land owners about the depository, and said opponents were "dissidents".