THE Federal Government has betrayed Territorians with its decision to put a nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station, writes Greens Senator SCOTT LUDLAM 

 

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd's proposed `solution' to our 60-year radioactive waste legacy has lit the fuse on a major confrontation between the Australian Government and everyone else. 

 

Labor lied to Territorians, promising to scrap the previous Howard Ggovernment's aggressive imposition of a radioactive waste dump, then coming up with an even more coercive regime. 

 

It preserves the existing site nomination at Muckaty cattle station near Tennant Creek, and framing it within language of quiet deceit. "Decide", "Announce", "Defend" is the strategy. 

 

After waiting more than two years for the ALP to fulfil its election pledge to repeal the previous legislation, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson's new National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 is essentially a copy and paste job. 

 

Like the existing Act, it explicitly overrides any state or territory laws that would hinder site selection, eliminates Aboriginal heritage and environment protection laws. 

 

It is a legislative battering ram that squarely lines up the Northern Territory as the target for the nation's nuclear waste, with the remaining provisions vesting total discretion in the hands of the Minister to pursue the sole current nomination at Muckaty Station. 

 

It is a strategy that's raising the temperature in Tennant Creek and the Barkly region, which was evident for all to see at this week's Senate committee hearing in Darwin. 

 

A perceptible ripple goes through the room when the traditional owners make their entrance in black T-shirts painted in two ancient Milwayi designs, evoking the dreaming of the land targeted for Australia's 60-year inventory of radioactive waste. 

 

They are more than a thousand kilometres from home, but having made the decision to speak out they now won't be denied. 

 

"The senators can see from the drawings where we belong and what the country means to us," said spokeswoman Diane Stokes. She speaks quietly but forcefully, backed by senior law men and women from all the family groups represented on the Muckaty land trust. 

 

Elders from the Ngapa, Milwayi, Ngarrka, Yapayapa and Wirntiku clans have come all this way to reject the Government's claim that any one person has the exclusive rights to say yes or no to the waste dump. 

 

They give first-hand accounts of the evasive process leading to the Muckaty nomination. They outline how their people were carefully excluded from the decision making process which is customary on important decisions to do with culture and country. 

 

Earlier in the day, a fiery rally on the steps of Parliament heard from union officials, a local doctor, MPs and Aboriginal campaigners and elders. Concurrent demonstrations as far away as Melbourne and Hobart draw the connections to Labor/Green marginal seats far from Darwin's stormy humidity. 

 

The Government thinks it can quarantine an election year radioactive waste battle to a few seats it is prepared to write off in the NT. This is the shape of the campaign to come. Meanwhile, behind the scenes a team of experienced lawyers are researching legal options for throwing this case back into the teeth of the ALP. 

 

"We want a better life for our children ... have schools, have employment, have health (services) out on our land itself." These words stand as an accusation to all of us, not just successive Governments that have failed to address third-world Aboriginal poverty. They were spoken at the Canberra Senate hearings by Ngapa woman Amy Lauder, on whose shoulders the Government's entire strategy rests. 

 

She's holding out for promises of $12 million and a local school in exchange for millennial custodianship of reprocessed nuclear fuel rods and decommissioned reactor cores that will still be ticking several ice ages from now. 

 

Employment opportunities: check. Six lonely security guards garrisoned to watch over this concrete tomb for all time. 

 

Economic development: check. $12 million dollars divided over the three hundred years, roughly 10 half lives of the key radionuclides in the low-level waste, amounting to about $40,000 a year. 

 

Long term outlook: check. Three hundred years is really just the down payment. Fully grasping the scope of this facility requires a deep time perspective that collapses three year electoral cycles into insignificance. 

 

International 'best practice' such as it is -- dictates that a central dump should be as close as possible to the source of the waste production processes to eliminate risk from transportation. 

 

It should stay under the active care and maintenance of those best qualified to keep it secure. It is somewhat different in concept to a shed surrounded by barbed wire on one of the most remote cattle stations in the country. 

 

The Rudd/Abbott government, charting a course of international world's worst practice, is asking some of the most disadvantaged communities in Australia to 'volunteer' themselves to host this toxic time capsule, in exchange for 21st century beads and blankets. It begins to explain the cool fury of the law men and women who presented their case to the Senators in Darwin. 

 

The Greens will continue to stand alongside Territorians in fighting the Commonwealth's politically expedient remote solution. We will continue to insist on a proper scientific, transparent and consultative process to deal with the long-term problem of nuclear waste.