Thursday, 1 February, 2007

by Tara Ravens
National Indigenous Times

DARWIN, February 1, 2007: Federal Science Minister Julie Bishop is being urged to visit outback communities to dispel her belief that nobody lives near the three proposed sites for a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.

Ms Bishop made the comments earlier this week at the closure of Australia's first nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, in Sydney's south.

It is being decommissioned to make way for a new research reactor called OPAL.

"All the sites in the NT are well away from houses," she told ABC Radio, adding they were "some distance from any form of civilisation".

The federal government is currently considering three sites in the Northern Territory for a radioactive waste dump - Harts Range and Mt Everard, near Alice Springs, and Fishers Ridge near Katherine.

Natalie Wasley from the Arid Land Environment Centre (ALEC) said all three sites had communities within a 10km radius, contrary to Ms Bishop's claims.

"There are communities extremely close to each of the areas under investigation, all of which have strongly and frequently said no to the proposal," she said.

Nearby communities were urging Ms Bishop to come and visit them to see first hand the implications of her government's policy, she said.

"As Julie Bishop seems unaware that people live so close to the sites, traditional owners have suggested that she come to the territory and visit communities in the immediate vicinity of the potential dump sites," Ms Wasley said.

Traditional owner Steven McCormack, from Were Therre community 40km north-west of Alice Springs, said there were houses as close as three kilometres from the Mt Everard Department of Defence site.

"This land is not empty - people live right nearby," he said in a press release from ALEC.

"We hunt and collect bush tucker here and I am the custodian of a sacred site within the boundaries of the defence land."

The Harts Range site, 165km north-east of Alice Springs, is home to the Engawala community and the Aboriginal-owned Alcoota cattle station, which Ms Wasley said was situated eight kilometres north of the proposed development.

"Other pastoralists have also expressed concern over the perception by the public that the beef will be contaminated," said William Tilmouth, chairman of the Alcoota Aboriginal Corporation.

"The cattle industry out here prides itself on being clean and green."

NT Labor MP Warren Snowdon said Ms Bishop's remarks "revealed a lamentable ignorance".

"The minister is obviously blissfully unaware that Aboriginal communities and pastoral families have lived close to each of the proposed sites long before this government picked them out of a hat," he said.

"This illustrates only too clearly that this is a government that keeps making decisions without any reference to the people who might be affected by them."

Ms Wasley said people living near the sites had long voiced their opposition, but the government had chosen to ignore their appeals.

"They have made it clear that they oppose the dump, (but) the minister has failed to realise that the plan to dump commonwealth radioactive waste in the territory actively undermines a range of values and land uses in areas where people practice the oldest living culture on earth," she said. - AAP