An intensely graphic protest was successfully prosecuted at Flinders Street Station to an afternoon audience of tens of thousands of people. The protest included a huge white elephant, an equally large pile of fluorescent green (radioactive) elephant crap, and a giant papier mache effigy of the head of Martin Furguson. Although the head and the poo were placed in close proximity, people were advised the poo was the green stuff and Furguson was the paper pulp, paint and glue stuff. (just in case you thought the poo actually was Furguson).
The key issue is: Four sites in the Northern Territory are under consideration for a national nuclear waste dump. Government calls it a ‘repository’ with the same eloquence as Gunns call their chemical plant a ‘pulp mill’. A kind of convenient lie. Anyway the member for Batman and minister of Resources and Energy (Furguson) has repeatedly refused to meet traditional owners who are justifiably concerned about nuclear waste being dumped onto their land. Furguson says he will meet with the relevant group when the site is finally selected.
The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA) allows for the dumping of nuclear waste on Aboriginal Land in the absence of consultation or consent. (The land is theirs because we ‘gave’ it to them, until we have what we consider to be a better use for it and then we take it back – or just use it as we want and pay them money). Something like that.
In a similar gesture to the odious and abhorrent Section 11 of the Pulp Mill Assessment Act (which surgically removes the rights of anyone to anything concerning the consequences of operation by the proposed Gunns Mill) the CRWMA undercuts public health and environmental standards, removes rights to procedural fairness, curtails legal appeal rights and overrides Northern Territory legislation to banning and imposition of a national dump.
Labor voted against the CRWMA in 2005/6, and in doing so variously castigated the repugnant act as “extreme, arrogant, draconian, sorry, sordid and profoundly shameful”.
Last year, Labor members if a Senate Committee said the CRWMA was “unfair and discriminatory” and should be repealed in early 2009.
Furguson however has not shown any interest in repeal. Instead he has been using the CRWMA as the legislative basis for ongoing site selection studies in the NT. One keeps hearing Woodie Guthrie’s beautiful song of national pride and community “This land is your land, this land is my land” and can imagine Furguson humming it to suit his own sense of ministerial entitlement. “This land is my land….this land is my land…”
With perhaps Guthrie’s chorus ringing in his ears, the Minister is expected to announce that an area in the Muckaty Land Trust, some 120 kms north of Tennant Creek will be the site for the Nuclear Waste dump. This site was nominated in controversial circumstances by the Northern Territory Land Council despite concern and opposition from many traditional owners. Although some support the proposal the overwhelming majority do not. Dianne Stokes – a traditional owner from Muckaty told a senate committee hearing in Alice Springs last year
“We want to keep talking about it and continue to fight it until we are listened to. The big capital N. O. The Ngapa Clan and the rest of the other totems in that land trust are all connected. We have connections to each other and are related to each other. We are the same tribe, the one ancestral cultural group of people who are the strong voice, and one voice, in that country”.
I suppose it is worth asking why we are surprised at this incongruence. Furguson will choose the land that disconnected white folk need to dump their nuclear waste. Garrett will be there with his grade 6 calculator without batteries, a clip board with nothing on it and appear to intensely tick all the boxes, an speak of how intense, intense his office has been over all this. There is even a sense of imperialism seeping into the former head-bangers diction. Im sure the royal “we” will be used by the minister for industry AND the environment soon. Oh yes – its all there. The well rehearsed language and the mock sincerity – a product from years of learning how to appear sincere whilst caring for nothing except the process of compliance with pre-determined industrial outcomes – will be the same as the same as the same.
Gillard will front with a pink hard hat and say something learned from years climbing the ladder at Mallesons. Tough, clear. Granite and always so very on song. All will smile – beam even – although Furgusons smile conveys the same mixed messages as a snarling guard-dog wanting to lick your hand. There will be reassurances of confident safe-guards, safety above all else and justification that the land is not considered valuable or important on any basis. Garrett will confirm that “the most strident….the most strident and exacting processes have all been followed..” Yeah, right. It makes sense that such an air head would pen the song Blue Sky Mine.
With Rudd’s highly self promoting gee-up of the G20 and the positioning of Australia as a major influencing force in global climate change, an ABC commentator yesterday observed that we all may have underestimated Rudds capability for international diplomacy, but profoundly overestimated his capacity to lead the operation of even a school tuck shop back home.
The place (Australia) is in a mess. We are no different to the worst polluters anywhere, because per capita we ARE the worst polluters, and we have Government at state and federal level who simply use a vapid hollow rhetoric AND DO NOTHING. The game has slipped away, and the stakes are too high. Government is without the prior knowledge , current capacity or strategic vision to produce the goods. Successive government does not know how respect individuals, communities and the land. So much for the ministerial oath they all swore on entrance to what could be the most important jobs in the country if taken past politics. That’s (the oath) be the one promising to care for Australia, its land and its people.
What of alternatives. What would “the opposition” (oxymoron) be any different ? In considering this I am reminded that Tony Abbott, on national radio recently said …”well look there is what is Right in politics – but Politics is also about being elected..”
A magnificent career choice for a man clearly of his times. Watch this space.
