Battle
There are at least two problems with Labor’s position. Firstly, the government has vastly greater resources to contest a legal challenge. Indeed, the government has spent A$13 million (£6.8 million) fighting Barngarla traditional owners in the federal court.
Barngarla traditional owners have spent significantly less than A$500,000 – needless to say, they have many pressing demands on their limited resources. There is no other example in recent Australian history of this level of legal attack on an Aboriginal group.
Secondly, the relevant laws are stacked against the interests of traditional owners. In 2007, the conservative Coalition government passed legislation ‒ the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act ‒ allowing the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land with no consultation, and no consent from traditional owners.
At the time, Labor parliamentarians described the legislation as “extreme”, “arrogant”, “draconian”, “sordid”, and “profoundly shameful”.
But when the Labor government returned to the legislation in 2012 ‒ and renamed it the National Radioactive Waste Management Act ‒ the amendments were superficial and still allowed for the imposition of a nuclear waste dump with no consultation or consent from Traditional Owners.
Immoral
Regardless of the federal court’s decision, the plan to impose a nuclear dump despite the unanimous opposition of Barngarla traditional owners is immoral. It contradicts the spirit of the Voice to Parliament currently being championed by the Labor government.
Jayne Stinson, chair of the South Australian parliament’s environment, resources and development committee, said: “In this day and age, when we’re talking about ‘voice, treaty and truth‘, we can’t just turn around and say, ‘Oh well, those are our values but in this particular instance, we’re going to ignore the voice of Aboriginal people’.
“I think that’s just preposterous and it’s inconsistent with what most South Australians would think.”
The plan to dump on Barngarla country makes a mockery of Labor’s professed support for the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states that “no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent”.
There is no informed consent from Barngarla traditional owners: there is informed unanimous opposition.
‘Dreadful’
Dr Susan Close, now the Labor deputy premier of South Australia, has consistently opposed the dump. She said in 2019 that it was a “dreadful process from start to finish” that led to the nomination of the proposed Kimba dump site and that SA Labor is “utterly opposed” to the “appalling” process which led to Kimba being targeted.
Dr Close noted in a 2020 statement, titled ‘Kimba site selection process flawed, waste dump plans must be scrapped’, that SA Labor “has committed to traditional owners having a right of veto over any nuclear waste sites, yet the federal government has shown no respect to the local Aboriginal people.”
She has called for her federal Labor colleagues to abandon the Kimba dump proposal once and for all in the wake of the recent federal court decision.
In February 2008, Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd highlighted the life-story of Lorna Fejo ‒ a member of the stolen generation ‒ in the historic National Apology to Aboriginal People in Parliament House.
At the same time, the Rudd government was attempting to impose a nuclear waste dump on Fejo’s country in the Northern Territory. Lorna said: “I’m really sad. The thing is ‒ when are we going to have a fair go? Australia is supposed to be the land of the fair go. I’ve been stolen from my mother and now they’re stealing my land off me.”
Resistance
Federal Labor’s “nuclear racism” is disgraceful and it diminishes all Australians. And Labor’s nuclear racism is always supported by the conservative Coalition parties, who are still today arguing for a ‘no’ vote in the upcoming referendum on a Voice to Parliament.
But nuclear racism has always met with resistance. Remarkably, community campaigns led by Aboriginal people have stopped five nuclear dump proposals since the turn of the century.
Plans for a national nuclear waste dump in SA have been defeated in 2004, 2019 and 2023 (touch wood), a planned national nuclear dump in the Northern Territory was defeated in 2014, and a plan to turn SA into the world’s high-level nuclear waste dump was defeated in 2016.
Three of the five successful campaigns involved legal challenges that made it much more difficult for governments to override community resistance.
The federal Labor government should abandon the Kimba dump site and apologise for attempting to foist a dump on Barngarla country despite the unanimous opposition of traditional owners.
Veto
The federal Labor government should also adopt SA Labor’s policy that traditional owners should have a right of veto over any proposed nuclear dumps.
That would give traditional owners across the country some confidence that their voice will be heard as the government progresses plans to store and dispose of waste arising from nuclear-powered submarines in the coming decades.
Finally, Labor must commit to amend the shameful and racist National Radioactive Waste Management Act.
This Author
Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia.
More information:
Radioactive waste and the nuclear war on Australia’s Aboriginal people
Barngarla: Help us Have a Say on Kimba (facebook)
