Australia: global nuclear waste dump

Fuck! I am enraged! I haven’t posted for some time as I have been working my butt off teaching and trying to finish a draft of my final chapter, so that I can have a draft of my thesis. But this isn’t what has enraged me. It has exhausted me, but not angered me. No, I am angry because I live in a world that is absolutely predicated on racial segregation and marginalisation. All this talk of liberalism overcoming racial discrimination – able to accommodate and allow difference to florish – is bullshit.  In the course of researching for my work, I came across some information on plans to build a number of nuclear waste sites in remote Australia. Australia, as many people would know, is made up of a hell of a lot of desert area. In fact, at least 20% of Australia is classified as desert (I got this figure from the Federal government website), and the Desert Peoples Centre actually puts it closer to two thirds of our total land mass. Anyway, many Indigenous communities live here, with some 290 odd communities, comprising around 40, 000 people scattered across the red earth. In the Northern Territory there are a number of Aboriginal land councils (such as the Central Land Council and the Northern Land Council) that must negotiate the interests of the territory government and the federal government and the Traditional Owners of the land. So anyway, the point of this post is simply to highlight the violent effects of Australia’s plan to expand its nuclear power resources in order to combat climate change (nuclear power is a “cleaner” energy resource than others) for some of these communities. I am just going to cut and paste a small section of some draft material:

“Denaturalising the relationship between sovereignty and the nation-state and subsequently recognising the contingency of the nation-state as a central organising principle, and decision-making institutional apparatus in our times, is especially urgent in light of the continued attacks on Indigenous communities and land rights in the Northern Territory. In addition to the Northern Territory intervention in 2007 and individual cases involving disputes over mines (such as the McArthur River Mine), land rights in the Northern Territory have been undermined by plans initiated in 2005 by the Liberal Coalition government to authorise the dumping of nuclear waste in Australia under the “Global Nuclear Waste Dump” scheme. A legislative package including the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 (CRWMB) and amendments in 2006, as well as the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 make it legal to deposit foreign nuclear waste in designated sites around Australia. A number of these sites are planned to be in the Northern Territory, where as earlier noted, approximately 50 per cent of land is owned by Indigenous Australians under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA). The Rudd Labor Government made an election promise to repeal this legislation, but at the time of writing this had not yet occurred. The legislation overrides the provisions of the ALRA, by subordinating Indigenous interests to national interests and economic demand. Interestingly, a discourse of environmentalism is deployed by government figures and advocates from the business community to promote the development and expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil for energy production; dumping waste on Indigenous lands becomes part of the solution to global warming. In a press release reviewing the government commissioned report Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia, former Prime Minister, John Howard, contended that nuclear power could provide “an effective response to our domestic and international environmental responsibilities” in terms of achieving a “lower emissions future”.

In “Section 3A, Part 1A – Nomination of Sites” of the CRWMB 2005, the decision making process is clearly indicated as hierarchal and residing – ultimately – with the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. At first, the clause states that only Crown land can be nominated by the Chief Minister, not Aboriginal Land, but this is immediately undermined with the sub-section noting that as long as written notification is given to the relevant Land Council the NT government can nominate any land. Again, white sovereignty places severe limitations on a land rights paradigm, subordinating it as a secondary mode of ownership and refusing the rights of the local communities in favour of the sovereignty of the nation-state:

(1) The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory may nominate land in the Northern Territory (other than Aboriginal land) as a potential site.

(1A) The Chief Minster of the Northern Territory must not nominate land under subsection (1) unless the Chief Minister, at least 3 months before making the nomination, given written notice to the Land council for the area in which the land is situated of the Chief Minister’s intention to nominate the land.

(2) A Land Council may nominate Aboriginal land in the area of the Land Council

as a potential site. “