Michael Anderson, chairman of an Aboriginal Summit Task Force recently elected in the capital, Canberra, says in a media release: “Nothing will move down the former American Vice-President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton railway line from Darwin to Alice Springs.”
Mr. Anderson was responding on behalf of a majority of traditional land owners to an announcement by Resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, that the government will pursue the first Australian radioactive waste repository at Muckaty Station, about 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek.
Mr. Anderson condemned the Bureau of Northern Land Council for “ignoring the majority of the traditional land owners who do not want their country, Muckaty Station, used for nuclear waste dumping”.

He said the general Australian public fails to understand how much influence the federal government has over supposedly Aboriginal organisations such as the Northern Land Council, whose CEO is appointed by government.

“Aboriginal people are under siege from the tyranny of a Labor government who have no consideration whatsoever for our rights,” Mr. Anderson charges.

“The arrangements that are being made are illegal and the government and the Northern Land Council know full well that the traditional owners have little to no chance of fighting against this dictatorship.

“But don’t underestimate our resolve as a resistance group. It is time the Australian government woke up and understands that they are pushing us into a corner and we will come out fighting with all that we have.

“Our communications thus far with the traditional owners suggest that a fight is looming, and maybe then the Australian public will get the picture.”

Mr Anderson, the last survivor of four Black Power activists who set up an Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra in 1972, says he is pleased that the unions are offering support.

“The New Way Summit Task Force has been asked for their support to bring this matter to the attention of the public. The Task Force puts the Australian government on notice that like Noonkanbah in Western Australia in 1980, we will call upon Aboriginal people to come from every part of this country and protest any movement of nuclear waste across our people’s traditional lands.”

(In August 1980 there were violent confrontations between police and protesters when oil drilling rigs forced their way through community picket lines onto sacred Aboriginal land.)

“If the Europeans, Americans and China along with the rest of the world want to use nuclear power, then dump your rubbish on your own soil. You take it from us against our will and you now want to return it against our wishes.”

Muckaty Station is the country of the mother of Barbara Shaw Alice Springs activist and a member of the Summit Task Force. Ms Shaw commented on uranium mining in the Northern Territory at the Canberra summit from 30 January to 1 February.

She said only some people agreed to the dump “because they saw the dollar sign”. Although Elders had long warned that the radiation is dangerous, a lot more awareness needed to be created in the area. Listen to the extract at  http://www.4shared.com/file/228500371/e1144837/Barbara_Shaw_MINING.html.

Before the 2007 federal election Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party promised its approach to nuclear waste would be based on a "consensual process of site selection" with "agreed scientific grounds for determining suitability" and "community consultation and support".

The previous conservative government of John Howard first nominated Muckaty as one of four possible sites for a nuclear waste dump in September 2007.

It was a controversial choice then and remains so. The government secured a 'voluntary nomination' agreement from the Northern Land Council, the terms which have never been made public.

Minister Ferguson claims the nomination has the "continuing support of the Ngapa clan" even though 57 traditional owners from the Muckaty Land Trust have written to him, inviting the minister to visit their land and clearly stating they "don't want that rubbish dump to be here in Muckaty".

In Opposition, federal Labor was highly critical of the NT dump plan and promised to end a decade of division over how and where to store radioactive waste.

Labor promised to repeal the undemocratic Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act and remove the threat of imposed radioactive waste dumps in favour of an open, transparent and inclusive process.

This clear commitment has not been acted on.

Traditional owners continue to live with the threat of a nuclear dump.
The gap between federal Labor's promise and performance is growing. That gap became a chasm with the introduction this week of Minister Ferguson's National Radioactive Waste Bill (2010).

This legislation fails to honour federal Labor's clear pre- election promise and existing policy position to establish a consensual process of site selection which looks to agreed scientific grounds for determining suitability and the centrality of community consultation and support.

The secretive process by which Muckaty was chosen is out of step with growing international support for genuine community consultation and consent in decisions about nuclear facilities, articulated in this way by the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management in 2007:

"There is growing recognition that it is ethically unacceptable to impose a radioactive waste facility on an unwilling community."

“Imposing radioactive waste on the lands of Indigenous people in the 21st century is not responsible management. It is shameful political expedience,” commented Dave Sweeney, nuclear free campaigner of the
Australian Conservation Foundation.

“Anything less than full repeal of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act and a site selection process that is open, transparent and consultative would be inconsistent with Labor's 2007 election pledges and would continue the old, failed approach to nuclear waste and Indigenous communities.

“It is now time for the Rudd Government to honour its 2007 election commitments on radioactive waste and for our leaders to stop playing political football with a human and environmental threat that will last far beyond their limited tenure.”

The Taskforce can be contacted through Michael Anderson at 02 68296355 landline, 04272 92 492 mobile, 02 68296375 fax,  ngurampaa@bigpond.com.au