Aboriginal traditional owners opposed to a nuclear waste dump on their land at Muckaty Station are continuing to stand strong and gather support as their legal challenge moves forward, a public meeting in Darwin will be told this evening 30 May, 2012.

Social justice practice lawyer Elizabeth O'Shea, and one of the lawyers involved in a Federal Court challenge, will address the public meeting at 6pm at the Crowne Plaza.

"This week marks the fifth anniversary of the nomination of the land for Australia's first nuclear waste dump. The Traditional Owners were not adequately consulted by the Northern Land Council ( NLC), nor did they give consent to the Federal Government nomination of this land and this has not changed in five years.

It is also 20 years since the High Court of Australia handed down its decision in Mabo dealing with the duties owed to Traditional Owners of land.  Those duties will be examined and tested when traditional owners assert in the Federal Court that the NLC did not follow the correct processes or comply with its duties when it gave the green light for this land to be used.

"Having moved passed procedural challenges we are now in discovery phase of the legal proceedings, with respondents being required to hand over documents relating to the nomination of the land for the dump. We have committed and determined clients and some impressive witnesses on our side," said Ms O'Shea.  

Traditional  Owners are continuing to speak out at meetings and rallies, and are being heard.  Some of Australia's most powerful unions have thrown their weight behind the campaign against the nuclear waste dump and the ACTU Congress recently passed a resolution condemning the "secretive, top down decide-announce-defend approach to such an important national issue… Rather than spending another decade attempting to force a waste dump on an unwilling community and jurisdiction, the government must now hear and heed the call for a comprehensive commission in radioactive waste management in Australia".

Traditional elders have pledged to come to Melbourne to the next hearing of the case on 25 June.

Legal proceedings against the Federal Government and the NLC began in June 2010 and a mediation held in 2011 failed to reach agreement over the land. Ron Merkel QC is appearing for the traditional owners.

Maurice Blackburn is conducting this matter on a pro bono basis through its social justice practice.