Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to a question without notice asked by Senator Ludlam today relating to a nuclear waste dump.

I rise to take note of the answer that was given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Carr, a short time ago on behalf of the Minister for Resources and Energy, Mr Martin Ferguson, who we are told will tomorrow introduce legislation, presumably into the House of Representatives, repealing the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 and the amendments to it that were passed in 2006. Both the original act and the amendments in 2006 were opposed by the Labor Party, who were in opposition at the time. I can remember their words well. I was working for Senator Siewert at the time and we were gobsmacked that the Howard government was moving with such speed to coercively land a radioactive waste dump, which is the responsibility of the entire country, on a series of politically vulnerable communities in the Northern Territory. I can remember very clearly the positions that were taken at the time by ALP senators in this place, who spoke with heart and conviction I believe on the absolutely unjust tactics that were being used against politically vulnerable communities in the Northern Territory. It is entirely the wrong way to go about dealing with some of the most intractable and most dangerous categories of waste that industrial society has ever produced.

It is profoundly sad to see how close Minister Carr could have come to getting it right with the announcement that we have seen today. The government has announced that it is opening the process up to take another look and to take nominations for other sites, and that is an acknowledgement that the former process was really going nowhere. But it leaves live the nomination of a site on Muckaty Station—an Aboriginal managed cattle station outside Tennant Creek—and that is absolutely unconscionable. It was based on a nomination that was flawed. It was based on legislation that members of the present government opposed when it was passed. They said that it ran ‘roughshod over affected Indigenous communities’ and that it was legislation ‘driven at the behest of one land council in the Northern Territory’ that effectively shut out traditional owners. The government thinks that it will somehow be able to let that nomination—which has been put forward under the 2006 amendments to the act—stand, built on that foundation that was condemned at the time by the Australian Greens, by the Democrats and by the Labor Party.

A little bit of history: I think it would really have helped if the minister had read the unanimous report that the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee produced at the end of 2008. Senator Birmingham, who is in the room at the moment, attended those hearings, and I am sure that it made as strong an impression on him and other senators as it did on me to hear the evidence from the people most closely affected at Muckaty—people with traditional responsibilities for the lands around Muckaty Station who gave clear and unambiguous evidence at the time that the nomination around that area was absolutely contested and not shared by the five families who make up the Muckaty Land Trust. I read one quote—and I wish the minister had read it or been in the room at the time that it was said—from Ms Marlene Bennett. She tendered this evidence to the committee in Alice Springs on 17 November 2008, and she travelled a long way to be there. She said:

I am also very disappointed in the NLC consultation process. The NLC is the Aboriginal people’s voice, and they failed to represent them.

She went on:

I think the consultation process was very flawed and that the time for trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes is past. Open and honest discussion should be happening involving all the right people, not just with certain elements of the people.

All they are asking for is inclusion and for the opportunity for their voice to be heard. When the committee visited Alice Springs—we have never been to Muckaty Station—it was the first time that those people had been invited to have their voice heard in this debate. I thought that was shameful at the time. They really appreciated the opportunity to do that and I hope that that same committee, or whichever committee the Senate chooses to refer the bill to when it is finally introduced into this place, will be given time to sit down with the people most intimately concerned rather than with bureaucrats sitting in offices thousands of kilometres away and making these decisions which have profound implications for the lives of people with responsibilities for culture and country a long way from this building.

Finally, I touch on the fact that there is no engineering or scientific reason why we prefer remote sites, for why we continually choose remote Aboriginal communities as repositories for this waste. We heard from Mr Bradley Smith from the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, who said:

It would appear that politically the pragmatics seem to be that that is the only viable site at the moment that I am aware of for a Commonwealth facility.

Similarly, Mr Steven Mackintosh, from ANSTO, when asked ‘Why does Australia mainly look at remote sites?’ answered:

I believe it is for political reasons, Senator.

There is a lot more of this story yet to tell.

Question agreed to.