STORY: NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP

Monday 14 November 2005
Living Black, SBS

Welcome to Living Black. Hello. I'm Karla Grant. It's been a busy time in Canberra with the Federal Government pushing through two
of its most controversial pieces of legislation. While the focus has
been on changes to anti-terror laws and industrial relations reforms, another bill has gone almost unnoticed. legislation to build a nuclear waste dump in the NT has already passed through the lower house of Federal Parliament and will be debated in the Senate later this month. However, traditional owners stringently oppose these plans as Kris Flanders report.

William Tilmouth: We will fight this and we will say no because it threatens generations of Aboriginal people that are yet to come and we have to make a responsible decision now and that decision is no. They don't want poison on their country they don't want to hand the next generation country that is poisoned.

William Tilmouth runs a cattle property and is concerned about the possible danger a nuclear waste dump will have on the land and the people.

Tilmouth: Many of these Aboriginal people are trying to get off the
welfare dependency line and starting industries themselves. Tourist
industry, we run a cattle property and for the last 10 years we've been successful. We're very concerned of the effects it'll have on that, if there ever is a spillage or an accident you know we all suffer for it. We also know that nuclear waste is poison.

V/O: The Central Land Council in Alice Springs supports the
traditional owners' stance on the matter and travelled with them to
voice their opinions in Canberra.

David Ross: People live close to these areas and rely on bush
tucker and go hunting around those areas. There are also sacred sites that are used for ceremonial activities and things of that nature. So Aboriginal people have huge concerns about what why and how they came to these decisions. Responsibly you'd have to say how the hell did the Government make this decision. It's Aboriginal people that are the people who have been here for thousands of years and are going to be here for the next hundreds of thousands of years living with some idiots poison.

V/O: The Government has legislation in place that allows them to
choose one of the three proposed sites. After the Canberra trip by NT delegates, the decision has now gone back to a Senate committee for further analysis.

Syd Stirling: I took 9,000 signatures on petitions presented them to the Greens senators, Democratic senators. Our senator Crossin and to Warren Snowden calling on Government to go back to the drawing board and not to persist with this and have another look.

If we get to that point where come hell or high water this is going to be inflicted on the Northern Territory, then we go back to the science and we demand a full rigorous scientific assessment of the best possible site in terms of geology, science, storage and security. All of those issues that are concerning people.

V/O: Under the shade of a tree and with the cicadas in full song, Lindsay Bookie expressed his concerns about the possible damage to wildlife and the land.

Lindsay Bookie: We don't want it. That's what we said when we went to Canberra to see the politicians there; we went tot tell them the message from the bush what the people out here are concerned about. It's going to ruin our country with that stuff. We've got bush tucker the pure stuff that I've got in my hand, they're seeds that people get and some of them still use it. When we go our great grandkids are going to live on the land then. What are they going to have? They'll have nothing.

David Ross: The Government will have the numbers and get up whatever they want and do whatever they damn well please, well Aboriginal people aren't going to lay back and cop it sweet. They're going to scream which is what people have been doing.

Kris Flanders with that report. With mounting pressure on the Federal Government from traditional owners and Territory politicians opposing this move, another side of the debate has emerged. The Northern Land Council, whose region includes Fishers Ridge, one of the proposed sites for the waste dump, has offered to negotiate with the Government on other possible sites. Here to discuss this with me is the NLC's chief executive officer, Norman Fry. He joins me now from Darwin.

STORY: NORMAN FRY INTERVIEW

Karla Grant: Norman, welcome to Living Black.

Norman Fry: Good afternoon, thank you.

KG: Well, why are the NLC supporting the decision to place a nuclear waste site in the Northern Territory?

NF: Well, the Northern Land Council's not so much about supporting the decision to bring the nuclear waste repository here to the Northern Territory. What we've come to a conclusion on with our full council meeting, we had a very large meeting about this matter, was that if it was going to come to the Northern Territory then we wanted to make sure that traditional Aboriginal owners here in the Northern Territory, and especially in the Northern Land Council's region had the opportunity should Fisher's Ridge, for instance, in our jurisdiction not be suitabl, afforded the opportunity to sit at the table with the Commonwealth people so that in fact a site with their permission and their blessing could be ascertained.

Now, that's not saying that the land council is welcoming such a thing to the Territory, but we do realise the political reality of the Northern Territory being a Territory and not a State and to date all State Governments have refused to take on the waste repository issue and as we all know in SA, where the South Australian Government had agreed to take this at Woomera, there was a political backflip done and at the end of the day a site which had won an award from the Institute of Australian Engineers for its best practice and its EIS and design was abandoned and the weakest jurisdiction in the federation is the Northern Territory and those of us who live here and come from here we've seen in it the past where our laws have been overridden and in any case, we don't believe that this nuclear waste facility is anywhere near as dangerous as being purported and reported by various people out there.

KG: So what are the alternative sites traditional owners have nominated for the dump?

NF: Well, we're not putting forward any sites for the Federal Government. The Federal Government's going to come and talk to us about Fishers Ridge because that's in our jurisdiction. Traditional owners in the Katherine area have already indicated they don't particularly want it to be located at Fishers Ridge. However, the Commonwealth is adamant that something will happen in the Northern Territory and we want to make sure that if Fishers Ridge is going to be the place where it's going to end up then wherever a proposed site is going to be we want to make sure the traditional land owners are represented and they're at the table and they can sit down and do an agreement with the Commonwealth Government on this particular matter.

KG: Well the NLC are calling for the Federal Government to amend its radioactive waste management bill what changes are you pushing for?

NF: Well we've pushed in that amendment that the sacred sites and cultural heritage protection and environmental laws in the
current regime here in the Territory are adhered to or the
Commonwealth's regime is adhered to because traditional Aboriginal people here in the Territory want to make sure that sacred sites are protected and our cultural heritage are protected. As well as that we certainly want to know, like all Australians anywhere, that the environment is going to be protected and that this thing will be safely housed and stored here in the Northern Territory. You've got to remember that the current material - sorry the material that we're talking about that they're talking about housing in this particular nuclear waste repository we house in the hospitals around Australia and in other various sites. So it's a pretty irresponsible status quo position that we currently have and Federal Governments have been trying to deal with this particular issue, which is in the political too-hard basket for too long and what's happened is that the Commonwealth Government of Australia have said enough is enough and this process has now got to the point where it is more than likely that it will come to the Northern Territory.

KG: So what's the next step in this process for the NLC and the traditional owners?

NF: Well, when the Commonwealth people and the Australian National Science and Technology Organisation - ANSTO - come back to us, we'll be talking with them and if there are any proposed - new proposed sites then we will talk to them, but at the end of the day the Northern Land Council is making it very, very clear that traditional owners have to be on side with this. The backdrop to this is that there's a lot of scaremongering that's taking on gigantic proportions here in the Northern Territory about this particular matter. What needs to be made very clear is that the stuff that has been proposed that's going to be housed in this repository is currently in the Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine and Nhulunbuy hospitals. So it currently is an unsatisfactory situation that we have to deal with.

KG: OK, well unfortunately we're going to have to leave it there but Norman Fry, thanks very much for joining us today.

NF: Thank you.

And that was Norman Fry, CEO of the Northern Land Council in
Darwin.