Our nuclear waste war: where next?

Anti-nuclear ... supporters at the rally and news conference in Alice Springs after the announcement that the planned radioactive waste dump on Muckaty Station had been abandoned. Picture: Phil Williams Source: News Corp Australia

THE Federal Government always suspected a radioactive waste dump on Aboriginal land was too good to be true. Now their fears have been realised.

The Northern Land Council, after seven years heavily backing Aboriginal land at Muckaty station for the site of the nation's radioactive waste facility, has withdrawn its nomination for the site in the midst of a Federal Court case.

The Muckaty dump site is dead. Some are celebrating, but Australia has a problem. It needs a dump, yet no state or territory wants it.

The Commonwealth would not — you would think — succeed in asking a regional neighbour to store our radioactive waste, in the way they store asylum-seekers on our behalf in offshore detention.

PUSH BACK: Muckaty Station plan dumped

THE WAR: Where to put Australia's nuclear waste dump

Australia needs to find a home for reprocessed nuclear fuel rods that will be returned from France in late 2015, and something needs to be done about low-level radioactive waste currently stored in hospital car parks.

Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane has bravely expressed hope that another Aboriginal group from the Territory will now step forth to nominate their land, but it is doubtful the Commonwealth would want to risk another Muckaty.

The battle over the location of the dump, for all these years contained to the relative obscurity of the remotest parts of northern Australia, could well now shift to country towns in WA, Queensland, SA or NSW as the Commonwealth continues an urgent quest to locate suitable land.

Protecting their land ... traditional owner, Barb Shaw, at the rally in Alice Springs after the announcement that the planned radioactive waste dump on Muckaty Station had been abandoned. Picture: Phil Williams Source: News Corp Australia

They thought they had it covered in 2005 when the then chief executive of the NLC, Norman Fry, came up with a scheme to locate the dump on Aboriginal land.

The Commonwealth, startled but grateful for the proposal after they had earlier lost a case to locate the dump in SA, changed the law so that Aboriginal traditional landowners could nominate their land for the dump.

A group from Muckaty, north of Tennant, duly proposed their land, in exchange for $12.2m (of which only $200,000 has so far been paid). But there were constant questions as to who the proper traditional owners were.

Great debate ... Some Aboriginal traditional owners went to the Federal Court contesting Muckaty's nomination as the site of the nations radioactive waste facility. Other Aborigines supported the nomination Source: Supplied

A small band of antinuclear campaigners led by Nat Wasley, from the Beyond Nuclear Initiative, were bunkered down in Tennant Creek, pushing hard among traditional owners to rethink the nomination and warning of radioactive contamination seeping into their drinking water.

Labor had gone into the 2007 federal election campaign promising to overturn the laws that allowed an Aboriginal group to nominate it land.

Instead, Labor allowed enough time to drag on so that the Muckaty nomination became mired in controversy and confusion. Some traditional Muckaty landowners who claimed to speak for the site died; others began stepping up, saying they had rights to the site.

Happy with the result ... traditional owners of Muckaty Station, Doris Kelly, Gladys Brown and Elaine peckham embrace after the announcement that the planned radioactive waste dump was abandoned. Picture: Phil Williams Source: News Corp Australia

In 2012, Labor introduced changes to the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act. It broke its promise by continuing to allow Aboriginal groups to nominate land (therefore validating Muckaty) but included another significant clause.

It said if a nomination on Aboriginal land should fail, any private landholder, anywhere in Australia, could nominate their land for the waste dump, as long as vaguely specified community consultations were made.

What is likely now to happen is that some small struggling outback town — preferably one in a geologically suitable arid zone — is likely to get together and go for some of that $12m, or whatever amount the Commonwealth is prepared to offer.

The Beyond Nuclear Initiative will then likely relocate and begin another campaign. And the reality is that it will be able to raise much more substantial popular opposition than it did with remote Muckaty, which was pretty much out of sight and mind.

Take it elsewhere ... Annemarie Waistcoat doesn't want their land to be ruined by a nuclear waste dump, she wants the land to be around for her family and the next generation. Source: News Corp Australia

Behind the scenes, Muckaty has been deeply divisive. As traditional owners fought each other, it became clear that few had real traditional knowledge of land they rarely, if at all, visited.

And some in the NLC, the organisation that is supposed to represent the interests of traditional owners, wondered why they were involved in a dump nomination at all.

But the NLC pushed on and came to the conclusion, based on anthropology, that the right people to speak for the dump site was a clan called the Ngapa, led by the now-deceased Mrs A Lauder.

In 2012, other Muckaty traditional owners launched a Federal Court action opposing the Ngapa clan nomination, and accused the NLC of engaging is deceitful conduct by ignoring them.

The case got going in Melbourne several weeks ago and then moved to Tennant Creek where, last Saturday, there was explosive evidence that went widely unreported.

Long term resident ... Barry Natrass has lived in Tennant Creek for 25 years. He wants to see the nuclear waste dump come to the town, if not at Muckaty then at Juno farm. Juno farm is not Aboriginal land and is 10km from the Tennant Creek township. Source: News Corp Australia

The man the NLC had most relied on for his evidence that the dump site was on Ngapa land, senior traditional owner, Dick Foster, testified that he was mistaken: he now thought the land did not belong to Ngapa at all.

This was a major setback for the NLC and the Commonwealth. On the eve the case went to court, legal firm Maurice Blackburn, acting pro bono on behalf of Aborigines opposed to the dump, had put forward an offer for the NLC and Commonwealth to settle the case.

This would mean the Muckaty site would be abandoned and everyone could walk away and cover their own costs. Partly on the strength of Dick Foster's new evidence, the NLC decided to have another look at the settlement offer.

Protesting against change ... Muckaty supporters at the rally in Alice Springs. Picture: Phil Williams Source: News Corp Australia

On Monday evening, the NLC settled with Maurice Blackburn and announced, on Thursday morning, after consulting the Commonwealth, that it was withdrawing.

The NLC has had a two-way bet, claiming it would have won the case regardless of Foster's evidence, because it says the nomination process was conducted in good faith.

However, the new chief executive of the NLC, Joe Morrison, appeared genuinely disturbed that his organisation was engaged in a bitter courtroom battle against other Aborigines that the NLC is also supposed to represent.

Threats by old Aboriginal ladies saying they would throw themselves in front of trucks carrying radioactive waste did not sound good. Morrison turned up in court in Tennant Creek, where the NLC is not popular, to hear the evidence for himself. He did not like what he heard.

"I'm determined those relationships at Muckaty now be repaired," Morrison said on announcing the settlement. "These people are all related to each other and it's a tragedy they are now divided."

Listening to concerns ... Federal Court judge Anthony North hears evidence on Muckaty station, north of Tennant Creek. Source: Supplied

The Ngapa clan can now nominate another site on the northern part of Muckaty for a dump, and the Commonwealth has given them three months to do so.

But the same disputes about who owns that site would almost certainly curse that nomination, as it would any other nomination of Aboriginal land in the Territory.

Nat Wasley, delighted with the win, said she hoped "the federal government doesn't throw another dart at the board" and come up with another site. She is reluctant to say whether she agrees there in national need for a long-term dump.

The government is prepared to store the repatriated fuel rods at Lucas Heights near Sydney in the short term, but this case has only stalled, not ended, the search for a site.