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Australia looks for Pacific solution to nuclear waste problem

14 July 2004 - SYDNEY (AFP) - Prime Minister John Howard proposed Wednesday sending Australia's low-level nuclear waste to an offshore island after being forced to abandon plans for a radioactive waste dump on a remote mainland site.

The repository was to have been built on a sheep farm acquired for the purpose near Woomera in South Australia, but after years of wrangling with state authorities, Prime Minister John Howard said his government had dropped the plan.

The decision came after Howard's Liberal colleagues expressed fears over the electoral implications of foisting the dump on South Australia in which three key marginal seats are under threat at the election due by the end of this year.

Howard blamed a recent Federal Court ruling against the forced acquisition of the land and the failure of the states to cooperate with Canberra in finding a national solution.

He handed responsibility for waste storage back to the states, saying they had all accepted the need for safe and secure disposal, "but no-one wants it in their back yard."

He said the national government was committed to taking responsibility for its own low-level radioactive waste and would try to find a suitable site, by going offshore if necessary, to one of the hundreds of islands dotted around the coast.

"We'll conduct a search to see if we can find some Commonwealth (Federal Australian) land either onshore or offshore and we'll put the Commonwealth low-level waste there," he said.

But he warned the states that if they were refusing to cooperate, and adopting a "destructive attitude", then he would thrust back on them the responsibility for looking after their own waste.

"If they want to play sovereign state politics, not-in-my-state politics, okay, they can do that, but they will have to look after their own waste."

Howard's proposal was attacked by the Labor opposition as a desperate attempt to solve the nuclear waste problem by creating "Pacific solution II" -- a reference to the so-called Pacific solution by which unwanted asylum seekers were shipped to Pacific islands.

"The very idea of storing nuclear waste on a Pacific atoll or in a country like Nauru is dangerously ridiculous and ought be condemned," said shadow industry minister, Senator Kim Carr.

"Export of Australian waste to Pacific Forum countries is prohibited by international treaty.

He said that just as Australia did not want to be the dumping ground for waste from other countries, "nor should we be exporting our waste to others. We have a responsibility to store our own radioactive waste.

"We generate it, we have to clean it up, we have to look after it."

Howard's conservative government purchased the South Australian land over the objections of the Labor-controlled state government, the land's owner and local Aboriginal communities.

The state government appealed against the acquisition and the Federal Court upheld the appeal, finding there was no "urgent necessity for the acquisition".

It rejected federal government arguments that it would have been contrary to public interest for the purchase to be delayed.

Source: AFP

Resistance stopped Australian nuclear dump

von Diet Simon

21 July 2004 - The national Australian government has given up plans for a low-level nuclear waste dump in the South Australian desert – because it feared losing marginal seats in the imminent federal election.

Finance Minister Nick Minchin, who spearheaded the federal government's plans for a national dump near Woomera, guaranteed that the plans were abandoned for all time.

He gave South Australians "an absolute, unqualified, rolled-gold guarantee" that interstate nuclear waste never will be dumped in the state.

But careful: the government in Canberra is used to breaking promises. A website ( http://www.johnhowardlies.com/) was started recently listing the government lies. It’s worth a visit! And worth copying in all countries.

The minister said the federal government will now pursue the states to ensure they create dumps for their own waste.

In the 1950s and 60s more than a dozen nuclear bombs were exploded in the Woomera area, which is believed to have been exposed to further radioactive contamination by another series of tests known as the "minor trials", when at least another 300 nuclear devices were detonated at nearby Maralinga.

All of this went on without informing the Aboriginal people living in the areas. Many died and many still suffer from the effects.

There are also three uranium mines in South Australia, two of which are in close proximity to Woomera. All three have had recent radioactive accidents and spills.

All three export uranium to fuel nuclear power plants, some of which ends up in atomic weapons. Indigenous peoples concerned by the impact on their traditional lands oppose all three.

More on this in a local newspaper at http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6406997%255E26839,00.html.

A group of old Aboriginal women, the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – the senior Aboriginal Women's council from northern SA - have spearheaded the struggle against the Woomera dump.

Read about their joy at the abandonment of the plan at http://www.iratiwanti.org/iratiwanti.php3?page=news&id=242.

The campaign is coordinated by Nina Brown ( http://www.iratiwanti.org/iratiwanti.php3?page=photo_journal&id=86&start=15). Nina and the granddaughter of one of the Kungka Tjutas took part in the Gorleben waste transport protests last year ( http://de.indymedia.org/2003/12/69292.shtml) and said it was “an inspiring crash course” on organising protest.

A group of Gorlebeners caused quite a stir in Australia when they travelled along the route the nuclear waste would have used if the dump had gone ahead ( http://de.indymedia.org//2004/03/78577.shtml).

© Diet Simon, 2004

Why Howard dumped the dump

By Paul Starick and Leanne Craig

17 July 2004 - It took less than 48 hours for the political reversal which spared South Australia a nuclear dump.

On Monday morning, federal Cabinet ministers arrived in Canberra for an important meeting.
Prime Minister John Howard had signalled the week before that the Government would decide the future of plans for a waste dump near Woomera.

This was the last item on Cabinet's agenda and there was robust debate.

The Government had to deal with a Federal Court ruling that the Government's land acquisition process for the dump site had been flawed.

The clock was ticking, because an appeal to the High Court had to be lodged by Thursday next week.

Legal advice was 50-50 on the prospects of success and any appeal might take months. On Monday, the only official comment was that Cabinet had concluded without making a decision.

But Government sources revealed some of SA's contingent of four Cabinet ministers had ditched their long-term support for the dump and were now arguing the plans be abandoned.

Ministers from outside SA were not convinced and did not want a political headache in their state.

One idea was to force the states to store their own waste and create a dump exclusively for federal use.

Later that night and early on Tuesday, two of Prime Minister John Howard's closest confidantes started arguing the case to him.

Finance Minister Nick Minchin, who had spearheaded the case for a dump in SA, and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer were arguing the electoral risk would be too great to keep pursuing the dump.

Almost exactly a year ago, Mr Howard had accused the State Government of "pathetically parochial argument" and "jingoism" for trying to stop the dump.

Political reality had forced him to reconsider the Federal Government's hardline stance. Adelaide has five marginal seats, three of them Liberal-held, which could decide the outcome of this year's election. The dramatic shift in the Government's thinking started during Mr Howard's visit to Adelaide last week.

As he pressed the flesh in four key marginal seats, Mr Howard became acutely aware of the resentment in the community over a nuclear dump being forced on the state and the potential electoral fallout.

Having declared repeatedly that his government is only eight seats from oblivion, Mr Howard needed to shake off the dump as an electoral liability.

But the hardline position was hard to shed.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Howard was said to be favouring the option of forcing states to build their own dumps but not ruling out SA as the site for a low-level federal dump. Senator Minchin and Mr Downer scrambled furiously behind the scenes.

Mr Howard had briefings on the issue from his own department, then flew to Melbourne for a speech at the opening of Toyota Australia's head office. By the early evening, a decision had been made to abandon plans for a national repository and to rule out SA as the site for dumping federal waste. SA would be spared the dump. On Wednesday, Senator Minchin was able to issue an "absolute, unqualified, rolled-gold guarantee" plans for a repository in SA had been dumped for good.

The decision capped one of the most protracted and bitter political stoushes of the past decade, with warring politicians branded everything from Dr Strangelove in reference to 1960s anti-nuclear bomb movie starring Peter Sellers to Daffy Duck.

When SA first became the "preferred area" for the dump in 1998, Premier of the day John Olsen made his feelings crystal clear.

He certainly didn't want it and sent the clear message to his federal colleagues.

"I just don't want it here," he told State Parliament in November 1999.

"I just don't believe within SA we ought to be accepting the waste from other locations."

Then opposition leader Mike Rann said the idea of dumping radioactive waste from Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor in the SA Outback was an "outrage".

At the time, Senator Minchin, then federal resources minister, said 20,000 South Australians a year benefited from the use of medical isotopes produced at Lucas Heights, as did mining and horticulture.

"We must deal with the waste from the fuel rods in 2015 and we must locate it somewhere," he said.

"I can assure the premier and the SA Government that when we begin the process of selecting a site, which could be in any one of the six states, we will consult fully with the State Government and the community."

With the 2002 State Election looming, Labor pledged to ban low and intermediate-level waste dumps in SA if elected.

By this time, the Olsen Government's stance had softened with then Environment Minister Iain Evans asking "isn't it better to have low-level waste stored in a purpose-built facility?".

On becoming Premier in March 2002, Mr Rann immediately moved legislation to ban the location of low, medium or high radioactive waste facilities in the state.

But, for many months, the State Government eluded questions over where SA's radioactive waste would be stored if the national repository went ahead. It ignored federal challenges to categorically rule out using the repository and State Liberal questions on the cost of building SA's own purpose-built storage. Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran said Mr Rann should "stop equivocating" and wasting time.

 THE failed bid to set up a nuclear waste dump cost taxpayers more than $17.5 million, it has been claimed.

Labor and independent MPs have calculated the hefty bills from a decade of court cases, use of public relations consultants and scientists, and government reports compiled to identify land near Woomera as the site for the national facility.

Opponents have branded the cost a waste of taxpayers' money, but a spokesman for Finance Minister Nick Minchin – the architect of the dump plan – has disputed the figures. "Our advice is that the cost is closer to $12 million," he said.

Labor says an estimated $10 million has been spent on the environmental impact statement for the site.

It has been estimated that $620,000 was spent on public relations and marketing consultants to try and win support for the dump.

South Australian Labor Senator Penny Wong said money wasted on the dump was a "disgrace".

"For the cost of the EIS . . . and the use of PR consultants, John Howard could have funded 400,000 doctors' consultations," she said.

Source: The Adelaide Advertiser

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