Saturday, June 02, 2007

Pots and kettles

Here's a tale of bastardy on bastardy.
The Federal Government had been looking for a site to dump nuclear waste from our one nuclear reactor for some time.
They tried it on with South Australia, but the State Government - with an eye on the votes - wouldn't have it.
In fact no State wanted to be saddled with it.
They had a sort of evaluation by a committee of experts of 41 potential sites.
The six they chose as most likely were all in safe Government seats.
So they were canned in a hurry and suddenly the committee's conclusions became 'obsolete', according to a minder of the then Science Minister.
What to do?
Out of the blue they found three sites in the Northern Territory, all of them owned by the Defence Department and therefore unencumbered.
One of them - Fishers Ridge, near Katherine - had already been investigated by the experts and dismissed as 'unsuitable on hydrological grounds'.
The other two are in pretty remote parts of Central Australia.
But, like Fishers Ridge, they are close to people.
Mt Everard and Harts Range have small Aboriginal outstation communities; Fishers Ridge adjoins a pastoral property and is also near good freshwater fishing and fish breeding grounds.
All, it is said, will undergo rigorous scientific assessment.
Before the last Federal election in 2004, the Government's Senator for the Northern Territory - one Nigel Scullion, a former commercial fisherman with one of those sexual harasser moustaches - found some spine and said 'Not on my watch!'
The thing is, they chose the sites in the Territory because they can.
We're not a State yet and we don't have the Constitutional power to refuse a proposal for Federal land.
Once safely re-elected, Scullion's spine miraculously disappeared and he became an ardent supporter of the proposal.
And there the plot thickens.
Scullion apparently had some discussions with the Northern Land Council, the representative body under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 for Traditional Owners of Aboriginal land in the top half of the Territory.
He then comes up with an amendment to the forthcoming Radioactive Waste Management Bill that's before Parliament to make it possible for Traditional Owners - or anyone else for that matter - to nominate a site for consideration.
Remember the concept of rigorous scientific assessment?
The name Muckaty Station - north of Tennant Creek and in the remote scrub of the Barkly - hits the news and not for the first time.
In the 80s it was widely rumoured to be up for sale to Japanese interests.
It has since become Aboriginal land but, like a lot of cattle country in the Territory, it's pretty impoverished.
The Land Council denied Muckaty was the site they'd be proposing for a nuclear waste dump, but the rumours persisted.
One group of Traditional Owners gets duchessed to Lucas Heights to see how safe a nuclear reactor is and how harmless the waste would be once treated.
And another hits the trail to protest against the idea.
So at one stroke the Land Council - the body that's supposed to represent Aboriginal interests and which is bound by law to consider the wishes of all people affected by a development proposal - seems to have been very successful in engendering division.
It might be churlish, perhaps even libellous, to suggest that its enthusiasm for the site had something to do with the fact that the husband of one of the Traditional Owners was a member of the Land Council's executive.
But they've pursued it behind closed doors with a vigour.
Nigel Scullion, in the meantime, had got his reward: a junior Ministry in the Howard Government to replace a Queenslander who was accused of corruption (and no, that's not a tautology).
One observer was heard to remark, in paraphrase, 'The Scum Also Rises'.
Finally, last Friday week, the announcement came.
Part of Muckaty was to be proposed as a site for a nuclear waste dump.
In exchange, if the site were to be chosen, the Traditional Owners would receive $11 million to go into a trust fund for housing, transport, education and culture, according to an NLC media release.
A further $1 million was to be set aside for educational scholarships.
But if the rigorous scientific assessment proves Muckaty to be unsuitable, it's all pie in the sky.
Once again Aboriginal people have to offer to give up their traditional rights in the hope opf getting something they should have, like all other citizens, as a matter of right.
This time the Federal Government's agenda was aided and abetted by the body supposed to represent the interests of Aboriginal people.
And to add insult to injury, they gave Clare Martin, our Chief Minister a kicking for it because, their chairman said, she'd ignored a national responsibility in favour of short term political gain.
She had, he said, '...misled and failed Territorians and...Aboriginal groups who benefit from development and employment opportunities on their country'.
Of all the things you'd want to take Clare Martin to task for - and the list is legion - the last thing you'd have a go at her for is sticking to the will of the majority.
Yes, I know, it's probably a first, but you can't knock her for it, can you.
You can - and I do - knock the chairman of the NLC for a thoroughly grubby little performance.
Slagging off Clare Martin does not distract attention from the stunt the Land Council has pulled on all the people of the Northern Territory, not least among them the Traditional Owners of Muckaty Station.
I suspect he and the council did it for short-term political gain, since they're perennially on the nose with government.
The piety and self-righteousness of the man in his attempt to gild utter venality is enough to make a reasonable person vomit.
Pots and kettles?
Yes, but it takes us back to blankets and beads.

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