This film contains scenes of Aboriginal people from the Northern Territory who have since died. This may cause unintended offence to some people. We thank their communities for allowing us to use their image in the making of this film.
MALE NEWSREADER: And now an update on the nuclear reactor that exploded early this morning in Indonesia. The Indonesian Government has released details of the accident which show the accident was much worse than first thought. Authorities now fear that a highly radio-active cloud fanned by prevailing trade winds is headed towards Australia. The nuclear reactor is one of four at the base of the volcano Mount Muria in western Java which erupted this morning. A spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Commission said that the trade winds bearing the highly dangerous nuclear fallout could be expected over Darwin within the next few hours. The Australian Prime Minister appealed for calm and asked all Darwin residents to stay inside their homes and follow instructions given on the mediathe media.
The uranium used in Mount Muria nuclear reactor is believed to have come from the Ranger uranium mine south of Darwin. The Indonesian Government plans to build 12 nuclear power plants…. the brainchild of Dr Jusuf HabibComputer simulations at the ANU show that northern Australia would be at substantial risk of receiving radioactive fall out.Critics say the risk of another Chernobyl is real. The Age – June 14 1996
FEMALE NEWSREADER: Police in the Northern Territory have arrested one hundred and twelve protestors at the Jabiluka uranium mine site within Kakadu National Park. Superintendent Warren O’Meara (sp?) from Jabiru Police says the protest action turned significantly more aggressive this morning. He says protestors had cut the water supply to the mine site.
SUPERINTENDENT: The protestors have locked themselves with various locking devices and put human locking devices around the dump trucks and the graders etcetera. They have also – on the outlying areas on the southern side – they’ve cut the six inch water mains that provide water on to the mine lease.
NARRATOR: Kakadu National Park – home to the Mirrarpeople, and the world’s longest living culture. But after forty thousand years – these people are fighting for their verysurvival.
Yvonne Margarula is the senior traditional owner of the Mirrar clan.
YVONNE MARGARULA: This one good tucker.NARRATOR: When her father – Toby Gangali (sp?)– died in 1988, responsibility for looking after country fell squarely on Yvonne’s shoulders as the eldest child in the family.
YVONNE MARGARULA: I was born in the bush. Ididn’t sleep….. when I was a baby I didn’t sleep with a cot – what do they call that little thing? I born in and was sleeping withthe ground, with the fire. I hadlittle… my mother made um… paperbark like this one(points) tree, the big one, that one there. We call mudjiliam, yeah and he was carrying me. Not baby blanket or sheet.
WOMAN’s VOICE OFF CAMERA: Binningway
YVONNE MARGARULA: Binningway.
NARRATOR: Binningway - black fellas way – is different to Balandaway –white fellas way.
YVONNE MARGARULA: We know we own the country. We know. We born the country and we live the country. It’s our country. Black country not white country.
NARRATOR: The value of uranium in an energy hungry world has proved irresistible to successive Australian governments for a long time. In 1979 the Ranger inquiry gave the green light for mining to start at the vast Ranger uranium mine. The Government inquiry specifically rejected the wishes of Toby Gangali and the other traditional owners opposed to mining Kakadu.
YVONNE MARGARULA: That’s what already ruined all the culture, everything. The Ranger mine. It’s going to go ahead – Jabiluka. More problem coming up.
NARRATOR: This is where the mine will go. There aresacred sites of significance throughout this valley. So significant that Yvonne cannot even talk about them topeople outside her own clan, to warn them that they are there and endangered by the proposed mine.
If it goes ahead, Jabiluka will be an underground mine, below the flood plain in an area infamous for its big wet season. The mine site is right near Kakadu’s famous wetlands which. attract three hundred thousand tourists each year.
The mining company – Energy Resources of Australia – plans to bulldoze a road through this valley – twenty-two kilometres long from the Jabiluka mine to its current Ranger mine. Here the ore will be processed into yellow cake and exported
HQNARRATOR: Uranium, the world’s most dangerous mineral The conflict between the heritage of the Mirrar people and the Government’s willingness to cash in onuranium sales overseas will embroil not only this ancient culture but the wholeAustralian nation as Jabiluka is the first of twenty-six possible uranium mines within Australia which the Howard Government will be asked to approve.
Philip Shervington – CEO Energy Resources Australia: Now we have to leave the past behind us and we have to try and improve the future together. That’s really what it’s all about. It’s about reconciliation. It’s about the two sides coming together, talking abouttheir problems and moving forward. And that’s what we are proposing to do, to meet all the concerns they have and to move ahead together so that the economic benefits which come from development, including the mine, can be used in a constructive way to benefit aboriginal lifestyle.
YVONNE MARGARULA: Money is not going to fix anything. It’s going to kill us. When we see that money…… people are happy to see money – but not for me. They can take it back. White man money, not black fella money.
NARRATOR: In their struggle to stop Jabiluka, Yvonne and her clan have enlisted the help of their relative Jacqui Katona as the executive officer of the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation.
JACQUI KATONA: Mirrar people, traditional owners, they are saying ‘No. We don’t want mining in this country. We want to keep culture strong. We have a future, for our community. We want a future, for our children.” And people are here today, because they want a better future for Australia.
PHILIP SHERVINGTON: What you’ve got to realise is that the aboriginal community in the Northern Territory has been severely disturbed over the last hundred years or so, ever since white people came into the region, starting with missionaries and buffalo hunters and so on. Many of them left the land and then came back when land rights were introduced. In fact, the people out there really are a lot better off, in one sense than people, aboriginal people in other parts of Australia, in that they have their land, they have won their land.
NARRATOR: The Land Rights act was passed by Federal Parliament in 1976. At the time it was heralded as a significant event. At last aboriginal people would be given legal guarantees to ownership of their land - or so they thought. But for the Mirrar people – legal title to their land brought with it a mining company and tourism.
JACQUI KATONA: All the intentions of the Australian public to ensure that justice was served for aboriginal people, failed during this period here in this region. And I often wonder about it as land rights being born here and land rights dying here.
TOUR BUS DRIVER: Welcome aboard the Ranger mine tour. My name’s Robert and for the next hour and half I’ll take you through the processing mill, we’ll hopefully be able to get up to the tailings dam – there’s a lot of work going on at the mine at the moment. ’79 was a very important year. The Northern Land Council was formed, Kakadu National Park was…well Kakadu was declared a National Park, and mining was given the go ahead. So in ’79 there’s three veryimportant factors there. The Northern Land Council was formed, mainly just to help the aboriginals cope with what was going on in their land.
NARRATOR: When the Fox report gave the go aheadfor mining at Ranger in 1979, the traditional ownersdared to say ‘no’ to the combined forces forces of Malcolm Fraser’s conservative Government,the Northern Territory Government, the originalmining company – Ranger Uranium – and theorganisation created by government to representaboriginal interests – the Northern Land Council. But if the Mirrar people thought that the Northern Land Council would supporttheir opposition to mining by helping them to get their land back – they were in for a big shock.
GALARRWUY YUNUPINGU: The Northern Land Council also has to know that the community which will beaffected by the mining at Ranger has had a fair chance to say what they want tosay to the Northern Land Council. This does not mean thatthe members of the Northern Land Council have to dowhat the community say.
RACHEL MARALNGURRA: His position is that heshould stand for the people. He is an Aboriginal manand we all look to him and he should stand for us andtalk for us and fight the government.
YUNUPINGU: When you make the decision, haveIt in mind that we are entitled to be pushed around byany Government in power. We will be pushed aroundtoday and we will be pushed around tomorrow. Andwe will be pushed around forever and that is a fact oflife.
TOBY GANGALI: I reckon Yunupingu, he’sgetting pushed from somewhere. Maybe Government,Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Viner or Prime Minister , whatyou call him…you know…
NARRATOR: Toby Gangali was the traditional owner of the land where the Ranger and Jabiluka mining leases are.
TOBY: Well, I took over when my father died, that’s why it’s my country. I didn’t like the mine….it’s a danger mine, very dangerous. We like the land to stay, for the rest of our lives, you know. We try to get the land back, so we go to the Land Council meetings. The Northern Land Council’s going to help us. We’re trying to get the land back, that’s all, all we’re after.
MAN: And they asked me, “What doyou want to do?” I said, “You heard Toby. He was speaking this morningclear and well. He said, ‘No. We don’t want RangerAgreement signed.’
RACHEL MARALNGURRA: It’s too soon for thepeople.. They haven’t decided. They haven’t decided yet. (subtitled from here) They were just pushing people to sign the Agreement.
WHITE MAN: The meeting does not accept theproposed Ranger Agreement at this time.
IAN VINER, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs: (indistinct)You want me to shut up this film?VOICE: And mike too will you, switch off the mike.
IAN VINER: This has been going on for a long time. Six years it’s been going on.So the question now isn’t whether or not there is going to be mining but how it is going to be carried out. We think it is a fair Agreement and we think it is a proper Agreement for theAboriginal people and for the whole of Australia. And we have now reached a time when we need to make a decision.
TOBY: I’m Toby. That’s my country up there. Give ustime to organise. We don’t have to sign the Agreementnow. We’re not saying ‘yes’ to mining now.
VINER: The Commonwealth knows that in your heartyou would prefer that mining didn’t come, that itdidn’t take place. We know that.But as I said to you earlier, the government - and Mr Justice Fox has had to listen not only to the voice of the aboriginal people but to the voice of all Australians. We can make that decision today. We can take the (indistinct) away, the heartache away from it. We can use this Ranger Uranium Agreement as a foundation, a strong foundation for you people to look to the future, for yourself and your children and to work in the future for yourself and your children.
VINER: And Toby? Thank you very much for yourtoday. (Indistinct….) We’ll I’ll be around in the parkso that you can show me around, when you’re doingthat, all the (ranging?) No, it’s going to be a greatthing. I look forward to seeing you then. OK.
NARRATOR: Toby might have signed for the Rangermine and got a silver plated pen for his trouble. what he really wanted was the title to his land. Nosooner was the ink dry on the paper than the pressure on Toby to agree to another uranium mine started all over again. This time another mining company – Pan Continental – wanted a lease for Jabiluka.
YVONNE: And they keep coming back formeeting.
WOMAN’S VOICE OFF CAMERA: All the time
YVONNE: Yeah. And he used to sleep inside and then they used to come and knock knock door and wake him up. “We want to go to a meeting tomorrow, or we want to go to a meeting now.” You know. Sometimes my Dad used to say, “No I don’t want to go to meeting tomorrow, because I’m sick”
JACQUI KATONA: The last meeting in theconsultations and the negotiations that took place overeighteen months was a meeting without consent. So, the Agreement had been negotiated, all points had beenagreed upon by the Northern Land Council and PanContinental. They saved ‘til the last meeting, the issueof consent. Yvonne’s father was very sick at that meeting. He had been worn down by the process. Hewas so worn down that he couldn’t sit at that meeting,he spent most of the meeting laying down. And finally at the end of that meeting when the question of consent was put, he got up and he addressed the legal advisors and the people attending that meeting, and he said, “I’m tired now, I can’t fight any more.” That was consent. That was officially and legally all that was required to embody legal consent for a project to go ahead.
NARRATOR: For the next six years, Toby watched asthe Ranger mine carved up his country. His healthdeclined as his drinking rapidly increased.
YVONNE MARGARULA: We went out to CasuarinaHospital. And we looked there and he was sleeping onthe floor on a mattress. He didn’t like the bed. He said,“I want to sleep on the floor.” One day later I think it was, it finish then. Dad was finished. Passed away.
JACQUI KATONA: OK. We’re going over to theJabiluka lease to have a look at a site where we’repreparing to drop a banner on World EnvironmentDay.
WOMAN: So where we going to hang this?
WOMAN’S VOICE: That’s nice and easy that place, yeah….
TOUR BUS DRIVER: This area over here. Retention Pond One they call that. It’s man-made. And that’s justto….it acts as a filter for water run off, water run-off in the wet season, off the mining area. Very healthy body of water, there’s plenty of bird life here, there’s fish, there’s plants, there’s frogs, so there’s ah… very clean drinking water.
DAVE SWEENEY, Conservation Foundation: The current operational experience at Ranger Mine has identified two main problems. One is water management, and one is tailingmanagement. There’s real problems with water there,because they have to contain water that falls on themine site because it then becomes contaminated withuranium. That’s a major problem with the Ranger mineand water management. And every year they routinelyrelease water with elevated levels of uranium,magnesium, sulphates and others into the surroundingcreek system. Every year they pour that stuff into thecreeks that feed the wetlands of Kakadu and thatactually feed the traditional aboriginal owners ofKakadu.
JOHN CHRISTOPHERSON: Given that they can’t store the water, given that they can’t evaporate the water, their next option is to pump it intothe Madjera (sp?) and at that time when they were talking about this, Aboriginal people’s concerns were at the bottom of theladder. During this whole process they held a meeting, and themeeting was held something like three days or four days before they wanted to start pumping the poison. And at the meeting they had a bloke from the Department of Mines and Energy and he spoke to the Aboriginal members of the meeting like this, pidgen English and treating us like (milds?) “You fella know me, I know you, I know you fella. This stuff they want to pump, you lookit like this. If you spit long a spoon, you can’t eat ‘im that spit, but you spit long a spoon and you put ‘im in a stew and you stir ‘im up, you can still eat ‘im that stew.” That’s how he explained it to us. What a load of bullshit.
CHRISTINE CHRISTOPHERSON: Which way now JJ? This way?
NARRATOR: ERA only acquired the Jabiluka leasefrom the original mining company – Pan Continental –in 1991. It makes an annual payment to aboriginalpeople.
JACQUI KATONA: Today’s meeting is very importantfor the Mirrar people and for the people who are supporting them in opposing Jabiluka going ahead.Today people will talk about handing back an amount of money which has been paid in royalty for the lease for the Jabiluka mine
JACQUI KATONA (addressing meeting): The company ispushing the Government now. The lease money is paid by ERA every year toJabiluka association. You mob get that four hundred dollar every year, that comes from that royalty money. Mirrar are saying they don’t want that money because it comes from the Jabiluka lease. They don’t want the Jabiluka mine to go ahead, they don’t want the money that comes from the company because it’s keeping that old agreement alive. They don’t want to keep that old agreement alive.
GREG CROUGH Economic Advisor: The mining company is saying thatthey’ve got an Agreement for that Jabiluka mine from 1982. An Agreement with the Land Council that means that they don’t have to ask permission fromtraditional owners today.
NARRATOR: Greg Crough discusses the original. consultations for the Pan Continental project.
GREG CROUGH: And we found some tapes from themeetings, a big meeting was held at Djar Djar in 1981where the Land Council talked to a lot of people. If you listen to what they are talking about at themeeting, the lawyers said, “We have to start talking to that mining company, so that mining company won’tstop that land claim going ahead.” Those lawyers saidto Binning, “We will not talk to the mining companyabout mining.”
DAVID PARSON’S VOICE – NLC lawyer: The NLC will not talk to PanCon about mining. There will be no decision made by the NLC about that mine going ahead, not going ahead, or anything about it. That would never happen until the traditional owners and everyone here says they were ready for that to happen.
GREG CROUGH: After that meeting, the Land Council went and talked to the miningcompany about mining. For the next year, the Land Council lawyers sat down with the mining company and they talkedabout a mining Agreement.” The lawyers came back to Binning and said, “Here’s this Agreement. You want to say yes or you want to say no?” And a lot of people were still saying, “We don’t want anything to do with that mining. We don’t want that PanCon mine to go ahead, that Jabiluka mine.” But they had one meeting at the end where people said, “We’re finished, we’re worn out, we can’t go on anymore, we’re getting too much humbug from the mining company.” OK
NARRATOR: : This is Jacob Nayinggul. He was thetranslator for the Northern Land Council in theirnegotiations with traditional owners for Jabiluka in 1981. He confirms that traditional owners throught they were negotiating for a land claim, not another uranium mine.
JACOB NAYINGGUL: No one understood, even I tryto interpret what the Land Council lawyer told me. But,I think it didn’t come out straight to the main traditionalowners. But for example, he keep on saying no.
INTERVIEWER: So as far as you know, the traditionalowners were not agreeing to mining?JACOB NAYINGGUL: No. No. No.
GREG CROUGH: What I think that happened was, that you got put into a process that people didn’t want. No one wanted to negotiate a mining agreement. So when it came to the finish, right at the end, it was all over, that mine was going to go ahead. It’s just lucky that mine hasn’t gone ahead.
NARRATOR: In an historic move, the meeting decidedto hand back the royalty payments for Jabiluka to the mining company, ERA.
NARRATOR: Fifteen years later and Galarrwuy Yunupingu is still chairman of theNorthern Land Council. He believes the NLC must honour the original Jabiluka mining lease the NLC signed on behalf of the aboriginal owners in 1982.
JACQUI KATONA: Well, they’re going to control themeeting. The Mirrar, with George’s help.
NARRATOR: Yvonne and her clan supporters intend togive Galarrwuy the letter signed earlier that week, tohand back the lease money for Jabiluka to ERA. The NLC has excluded Jacqui fromattending the meeting.
JACQUI KATONA: The Land Council arebeneficiaries of agreements which are reached on aboriginal land.And they are potentially beneficiaries of the JabilukaAgreement as well. They have been beneficiaries of theRanger Agreement, they receive a significantpercentage of the royalty equivalents which are paidout from that Agreement. Ah, the Northern LandCouncil’s infrastructure, the staffing, the buildings thatthey work in, all those costs are contributed to throughthe Ranger Agreement. Where a conflict has arisen with the Government’sagenda – and it exists now with Jabiluka – the Land Council not only faces a dilemma, but it faces what some people would call a conflict of interest because it is a beneficiary in the event of amine going ahead, and some people would say thatNorthern Land Council isn’t interested in fulfillingTraditional owners instructions because they wouldthen sacrifice a monetary benefit which would keep theorganisation going. So – people form the conclusion that the NorthernLand Council couldn’t represent their interests. Peopleformed the conclusion that the Northern Land Council really belonged to the Government and didn’t belong toaboriginal people out here. That’s significant in itself also. Not only to have your decision overridden, to be violated in that way, but to have continuing steps of oppression to be taken, by organisations which you were told are going to represent your interests, organisations that you are told are there to assist you, are there to ensure that your decisions are enacted. And that’s been a critical social impact down here. That people have no infrastructure with which to articulate their view, with which to develop an informed view. So the sense of powerlessness became entrenched, the sense of powerlessness pervaded all parts of everybody’s life.
NARRATOR: Mr Yunupingu declined repeatedattempts to be interviewed for this film.
JACQUI KATONA: That powerlessness that we talkabout is really embodied in the consumption of alcoholin this area. Alcohol consumption is a symptom ofpowerlessness. Alcohol has become an anaesthetic in some senses in some senses in this community. People anaesthetisethemselves to what they see around them, to theirinability to be able to control their lives. That’s lead to other poor health outcomes,poor educational outcomes, poor employmentoutcomes. It’s a lifestyle problem and people have to be given anopportunity to change their lifestyle There’s an impossible wave here that people have to beable to push against to be able to overturn the lifestylewhich has come about as a direct result of their historyin this area. You can’t expect individuals to be able to overcome those barriers.There has to be an ability given to the community,there has to be resources provided. There has to be infrastructure which advocatesindigenous values and beliefs which is able to advocateon their behalf to be able to turn this around. There’san attitude here which is displayed by non-aboriginal people, that aboriginal people can’t take control of their lives, and it’s all too hard. How do you turn it around – well we’ll just leave it. Well we can’t, that’s our responsibility.
TOUR BUS DRIVER: So far to date, the Ranger minegives the aboriginal people four point two five percentof gross sales. To date that’s a hundred and twenty fivemillion dollars, so as you can see, it is quite an amountof money. And that gets divided up into three differentcategories: the Northern Land Council, the AboriginalTrust Fund and the Gagadju people.
NARRATOR: Very little of the Ranger royalty money actually reaches aboriginal people in Kakadu. Most of it is swallowed up by bureaucracies and infrastructure. The Northern and other Land Councils take forty percent, another thirty percent stays with Aboriginal Benefit Trust Account – and never reaches Kakadu. The remaining thirty percent goes to the Gagadju (sp) Association for basic services that other citizens expect the government to provide. Much of Gagadju’s royalty money is now being used to pay back substantial bank loans from Gagadju’s business ventures. There is little real gain for. local aboriginal people from Ranger royalty money.
DARYL CRONIN Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation: Initially Gagudju has done a lot of good work around here because it provided services topeople, and it also invested in some major tourist infrastructure out here. The sort of business and investment strategies that have been pursued by Gagudju Association have had minimal benefit, minimal direct benefit for traditional owners and other affected aboriginal people here in the Kakaduregion. If you walk inside that hotel, you’re certainly not goingto see any aboriginal people working at it. If you go to the laundry you might find one or two aboriginalpeople working there, in fact you will probably find Yvonne working in there. Because Gagadju enterprises hasn’t been able toah, generate a profit, or a reasonable profit, there has been no money to be able to put back into providing socialservices for aboriginal people out here. If you look at the social and economic indicators of aboriginal people here in Kakadu, there has been no real progression even with mining, even with uranium mining here.
NARRATOR: Yvonne and Jacqui are off to Darwin to speak at a rally organised by the Northern Territory Environment Centre.
JAYNE WEEPERS: Last week, on top of this, we hadPhilip Shervington dismissing environmental concerns as merelyphilosophical. And I think we’ve sent a pretty clearmessage this week, saying 65 million tonnes of nuclearwaste – which is what will be produced, and buried andleft there forever in Kakadu – is not philosophical MrShervington. It’s very very real. And I guess the clearmessage is that if it was going to buried in hisbackyard, he wouldn't be saying that it was merelyphilosophical.
JACQUI KATONA : This is the jewel in the crown ofAustralia’s heritage listings. It’s World Heritage listed for two values: for natural values and for culturalvalues. These values can’t be sacrificed. The mine has not benefitedaboriginal people. The mine has not given us good housing. The mine hasn’t provided tertiary educated aboriginal kids. The mine hasn’t provided continuous employment for people. The mine hasn’t provided anything for our community that has raised the standard of living or improved those health statistics which are so shocking in Australia. Mining doesn’t solve anything and there’s no evidence that a new mine in that area is going to improve the standard of living for aboriginal people. If you can’t stop a uranium mine in a World Heritage listed area where traditional owners are opposed, and we believe the majority of Australians are, what’s going to stop ‘em?
TOUR BUS DRIVER: As you can see this is thetailings dam, it’s not exactly what they call a prettysite, but that’s just the waste from what’s left. A lot of the colour you can see in that is mainly just due from the lime that’s used to neutralise the tailings and it has a very high salt content – like an Epsom salts – so that’s what a lot of that white colour is there, it’s a very thick heavy mud consistency like. As you can see there’s not a lot of plant life or bird life in this area. That’s mainly due to the high salt content.
DARYL MANZIE: The impact of the present mine hasbeen absolutely negligible and has been measuredconstantly by the office of the supervising scientist. Infact it’s the most heavily monitored mine in the worldtoday, and they have consistently reported withindependent reports that there’s absolutely no impact,no impact, that can be measured outside the boundaryof the mine.
NARRATOR: : The office of the Supervising Scientistwas set up by the Government as the expert body to monitor the environmental effects of the mine. To save costs, much of its data is now provided by the mining company itself. Of all the authorities that should have spoken on thepublic record, this was surely it. But we were told that the minister had instructed theiroffice not to talk to us. The miners see the management of the mine as a simple matter. A job they do well.
PHILIP SHERVINGTON: We don’t add anyradioactivity to what’s already there naturally. All wedo is we dig up the ore, we crush it, we extract theuranium out, and then we put the ore as tailings back inthe pits - in the open pits – and when mining isfinished that will be dried out, covered with rock andtop soil and revegetated. So it will basically as it wasbefore mining began. It will be back in that nest in theground, that geological cocoon if you like, where it’sbeen for hundreds of thousands and millions of years. There’s no reason why it will be any worse there afterwe mine than it has been before over hundreds ofthousands of years.
DAVE SWEENEY: To say that digging them up makes no difference is absolute nonsense, because for the most part the ore bodies are deep underground. They are bounded. They’re together. They’re in stable geological structure. They’re reasonably impervious to movement through wind and water. For the company to say, “We’re taking away uranium,”is an absolute fiction, because what they’re doing is they are increasing the likelihood of uranium moving. Because you tear the earth up, you crush physically the ore body, you chemically separate it, and you are left with a mountain of finely pulverised particles. So what was a big patch of dirt with grass and trees and vegetation on top and everything being reasonablystable, is suddenly an upturned mountain. Tailings are the fine particles that are left at the end ofany mining process, and with regards to uraniummining, they contain around eighty percent of theradioactivity of the original ore body. There is movement of wind and dust particles. There is concerns of what happens in heavy rains, if the walls are breeched. We have an earthen wall structure which is meant to contain high volumes of radioactive waste. It’s in a tropical area, where when it rains it absolutely buckets down. The pressures on this system are great.
DR ROSALIE BERTEL: The open pit mine is agreater hazard for the people in the vicinity because theface of the ore bed is opened and there are many surfacesfor the release of the radon gas which carries theradioactivity off site. And the gas is a very mobile part of this chain. So the gas can move off of site and its decay products are radioactive lead (bismuth?) and polonium, in a radioactive form. So you’ve got a gas that moves off the site and is then it’s decaying into solids which it deposits on top of the ground or water or whatever is nearby. Now it can travel, it’s a very heavy gas, it’s about seven times heavier than air, so it stays near the earth, and if your wind say is ten kilometres an hour then in twenty four hours it can go two hundred and forty kilometres. And the half life of the radon is about three point eight days. So in one half life it can go a thousand kilometres with no trouble, with just a ten kilometre wind. If the wind is you know higher than that it’s going to go further. So this stuff is spread from the mine site, quite a distance which makes it very difficult to trace the health effects because it’s an invisible gas with no odour, so people don’t know they are being exposed to it. And again, if you breathe in the gas, then the solid particles, the lead (bismuth?) and the polonium are deposited in the lungs and go through to the bloodstream and cause internal problems in the body and can cause birth defects and terotegenic (?) damage to the child in utero. The radon gas is given off naturally there. I think oneof the…
INTERVIEWER (off camera): But what about whenit’s actually dug, it’s more exposed it’s sort of..DARYL MANZIE: Well it’s given off as part of the…Yeah but I mean, it is a gas, and it certainly will go theway of all gases, but I think that ahhh…
INTERVIEWER: Won’t that mean it gets into thewater table and ah filters through?
DARYL MANZIE: No it doesn’t, and I think any suggestion by anyone that mining is going to poison the water table, again is absolutely frivolous.
NARRATOR: Students arrive from all over Australia toadd their support to the growing opposition to the Jabiluka mine going ahead.
INTERVIEWER (off camera): Why are you doingthis?
WOMAN: Because we are going to stop the mine. We’re here in support of the Mirrar people and we’regoing to stop this mine. It’s not right.
CASSANDRA STEER: We’re here today as studentsand as part of the community, the wider community,opposing the mine. We’re standing outside the Ranger mine giving our voice here and there are people allover Australia doing the same thing today. It’s also really important to the Mirrar people who livehere, it’s their traditional land, they’ve got a spiritual link to it. You can’t just come and carve it up you know, you can’t just put a scar in the earth and then cover it up and say everything’s alright. It’s not on. It’s really important that Australians listen, that people stand up and say, we’re not going to stand for it. It’s unwanted, it can’t go on.
NARRATOR: The Minister for the Environment,Senator Robert Hill has decided to reject theopposition of the Mirrar people and an overwhelmingmajority of submissions from the Australian public to stop the mine. He says there will be no impact on Kakadu from Jabiluka. Yet his own department advises that the mining company’s environmental impact study had been deficient in key areas.
NARRATOR: So Yvonne Margarula must look further. She has taken the matter to the courts in an endeavour to strike down the mining lease,appealing her case to the full bench of the FederalCourt of Australia. She has also taken the case into the international arena and has convinced UNESCO to investigate whether the World Heritage values of Kakadu are threatened.
CHRISTINE CHRISTOPHERSON: Oh. It’s big. It’sjust so big. We underestimated the bigness…… Um,getting up there…… Now we’re finding that the paintis sticking.
PERSON ON TWO WAY RADIO: The paint is stuckto the banner, we’re having problems unfurling, it’snot going to unfurl. (indistinct sentence) It’s (falling?) ..it’s nearly there!…….(indistinct)
TWO WAY RADIO: (indistinct)… Me too. I think thisis going to work.
ITALIAN TOURIST: Hey, I am Italian from Italy.Greetings for you. Very, very,very good that youmake ..you sign your life, your culture, yoursinging…for your country.
YVONNE MARGARULA: I believe in my ownculture. Black fella way. Yeah right way, proper way.Binningway. Balanda (sp?) should listen. And believe. How manytimes we going to tell ‘im?
MALE NEWSREADER: And now an update on the nuclear reactor that exploded early this morning in Indonesia. The Indonesian Government has released details of the accident which show the accident was much worse than first thought. Authorities now fear that a highly radio-active cloud fanned by prevailing trade winds is headed towards Australia. The nuclear reactor is one of four at the base of the volcano Mount Muria in western Java which erupted this morning. A spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Commission said that the trade winds bearing the highly dangerous nuclear fallout could be expected over Darwin within the next few hours. The Australian Prime Minister appealed for calm and asked all Darwin residents to stay inside their homes and follow instructions given on the mediathe media.
The uranium used in Mount Muria nuclear reactor is believed to have come from the Ranger uranium mine south of Darwin. The Indonesian Government plans to build 12 nuclear power plants…. the brainchild of Dr Jusuf HabibComputer simulations at the ANU show that northern Australia would be at substantial risk of receiving radioactive fall out.Critics say the risk of another Chernobyl is real. The Age – June 14 1996
FEMALE NEWSREADER: Police in the Northern Territory have arrested one hundred and twelve protestors at the Jabiluka uranium mine site within Kakadu National Park. Superintendent Warren O’Meara (sp?) from Jabiru Police says the protest action turned significantly more aggressive this morning. He says protestors had cut the water supply to the mine site.
SUPERINTENDENT: The protestors have locked themselves with various locking devices and put human locking devices around the dump trucks and the graders etcetera. They have also – on the outlying areas on the southern side – they’ve cut the six inch water mains that provide water on to the mine lease.
NARRATOR: Kakadu National Park – home to the Mirrarpeople, and the world’s longest living culture. But after forty thousand years – these people are fighting for their verysurvival.
Yvonne Margarula is the senior traditional owner of the Mirrar clan.
YVONNE MARGARULA: This one good tucker.NARRATOR: When her father – Toby Gangali (sp?)– died in 1988, responsibility for looking after country fell squarely on Yvonne’s shoulders as the eldest child in the family.
YVONNE MARGARULA: I was born in the bush. Ididn’t sleep….. when I was a baby I didn’t sleep with a cot – what do they call that little thing? I born in and was sleeping withthe ground, with the fire. I hadlittle… my mother made um… paperbark like this one(points) tree, the big one, that one there. We call mudjiliam, yeah and he was carrying me. Not baby blanket or sheet.
WOMAN’s VOICE OFF CAMERA: Binningway
YVONNE MARGARULA: Binningway.
NARRATOR: Binningway - black fellas way – is different to Balandaway –white fellas way.
YVONNE MARGARULA: We know we own the country. We know. We born the country and we live the country. It’s our country. Black country not white country.
NARRATOR: The value of uranium in an energy hungry world has proved irresistible to successive Australian governments for a long time. In 1979 the Ranger inquiry gave the green light for mining to start at the vast Ranger uranium mine. The Government inquiry specifically rejected the wishes of Toby Gangali and the other traditional owners opposed to mining Kakadu.
YVONNE MARGARULA: That’s what already ruined all the culture, everything. The Ranger mine. It’s going to go ahead – Jabiluka. More problem coming up.
NARRATOR: This is where the mine will go. There aresacred sites of significance throughout this valley. So significant that Yvonne cannot even talk about them topeople outside her own clan, to warn them that they are there and endangered by the proposed mine.
If it goes ahead, Jabiluka will be an underground mine, below the flood plain in an area infamous for its big wet season. The mine site is right near Kakadu’s famous wetlands which. attract three hundred thousand tourists each year.
The mining company – Energy Resources of Australia – plans to bulldoze a road through this valley – twenty-two kilometres long from the Jabiluka mine to its current Ranger mine. Here the ore will be processed into yellow cake and exported
HQNARRATOR: Uranium, the world’s most dangerous mineral The conflict between the heritage of the Mirrar people and the Government’s willingness to cash in onuranium sales overseas will embroil not only this ancient culture but the wholeAustralian nation as Jabiluka is the first of twenty-six possible uranium mines within Australia which the Howard Government will be asked to approve.
Philip Shervington – CEO Energy Resources Australia: Now we have to leave the past behind us and we have to try and improve the future together. That’s really what it’s all about. It’s about reconciliation. It’s about the two sides coming together, talking abouttheir problems and moving forward. And that’s what we are proposing to do, to meet all the concerns they have and to move ahead together so that the economic benefits which come from development, including the mine, can be used in a constructive way to benefit aboriginal lifestyle.
YVONNE MARGARULA: Money is not going to fix anything. It’s going to kill us. When we see that money…… people are happy to see money – but not for me. They can take it back. White man money, not black fella money.
NARRATOR: In their struggle to stop Jabiluka, Yvonne and her clan have enlisted the help of their relative Jacqui Katona as the executive officer of the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation.
JACQUI KATONA: Mirrar people, traditional owners, they are saying ‘No. We don’t want mining in this country. We want to keep culture strong. We have a future, for our community. We want a future, for our children.” And people are here today, because they want a better future for Australia.
PHILIP SHERVINGTON: What you’ve got to realise is that the aboriginal community in the Northern Territory has been severely disturbed over the last hundred years or so, ever since white people came into the region, starting with missionaries and buffalo hunters and so on. Many of them left the land and then came back when land rights were introduced. In fact, the people out there really are a lot better off, in one sense than people, aboriginal people in other parts of Australia, in that they have their land, they have won their land.
NARRATOR: The Land Rights act was passed by Federal Parliament in 1976. At the time it was heralded as a significant event. At last aboriginal people would be given legal guarantees to ownership of their land - or so they thought. But for the Mirrar people – legal title to their land brought with it a mining company and tourism.
JACQUI KATONA: All the intentions of the Australian public to ensure that justice was served for aboriginal people, failed during this period here in this region. And I often wonder about it as land rights being born here and land rights dying here.
TOUR BUS DRIVER: Welcome aboard the Ranger mine tour. My name’s Robert and for the next hour and half I’ll take you through the processing mill, we’ll hopefully be able to get up to the tailings dam – there’s a lot of work going on at the mine at the moment. ’79 was a very important year. The Northern Land Council was formed, Kakadu National Park was…well Kakadu was declared a National Park, and mining was given the go ahead. So in ’79 there’s three veryimportant factors there. The Northern Land Council was formed, mainly just to help the aboriginals cope with what was going on in their land.
NARRATOR: When the Fox report gave the go aheadfor mining at Ranger in 1979, the traditional ownersdared to say ‘no’ to the combined forces forces of Malcolm Fraser’s conservative Government,the Northern Territory Government, the originalmining company – Ranger Uranium – and theorganisation created by government to representaboriginal interests – the Northern Land Council. But if the Mirrar people thought that the Northern Land Council would supporttheir opposition to mining by helping them to get their land back – they were in for a big shock.
GALARRWUY YUNUPINGU: The Northern Land Council also has to know that the community which will beaffected by the mining at Ranger has had a fair chance to say what they want tosay to the Northern Land Council. This does not mean thatthe members of the Northern Land Council have to dowhat the community say.
RACHEL MARALNGURRA: His position is that heshould stand for the people. He is an Aboriginal manand we all look to him and he should stand for us andtalk for us and fight the government.
YUNUPINGU: When you make the decision, haveIt in mind that we are entitled to be pushed around byany Government in power. We will be pushed aroundtoday and we will be pushed around tomorrow. Andwe will be pushed around forever and that is a fact oflife.
TOBY GANGALI: I reckon Yunupingu, he’sgetting pushed from somewhere. Maybe Government,Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Viner or Prime Minister , whatyou call him…you know…
NARRATOR: Toby Gangali was the traditional owner of the land where the Ranger and Jabiluka mining leases are.
TOBY: Well, I took over when my father died, that’s why it’s my country. I didn’t like the mine….it’s a danger mine, very dangerous. We like the land to stay, for the rest of our lives, you know. We try to get the land back, so we go to the Land Council meetings. The Northern Land Council’s going to help us. We’re trying to get the land back, that’s all, all we’re after.
MAN: And they asked me, “What doyou want to do?” I said, “You heard Toby. He was speaking this morningclear and well. He said, ‘No. We don’t want RangerAgreement signed.’
RACHEL MARALNGURRA: It’s too soon for thepeople.. They haven’t decided. They haven’t decided yet. (subtitled from here) They were just pushing people to sign the Agreement.
WHITE MAN: The meeting does not accept theproposed Ranger Agreement at this time.
IAN VINER, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs: (indistinct)You want me to shut up this film?VOICE: And mike too will you, switch off the mike.
IAN VINER: This has been going on for a long time. Six years it’s been going on.So the question now isn’t whether or not there is going to be mining but how it is going to be carried out. We think it is a fair Agreement and we think it is a proper Agreement for theAboriginal people and for the whole of Australia. And we have now reached a time when we need to make a decision.
TOBY: I’m Toby. That’s my country up there. Give ustime to organise. We don’t have to sign the Agreementnow. We’re not saying ‘yes’ to mining now.
VINER: The Commonwealth knows that in your heartyou would prefer that mining didn’t come, that itdidn’t take place. We know that.But as I said to you earlier, the government - and Mr Justice Fox has had to listen not only to the voice of the aboriginal people but to the voice of all Australians. We can make that decision today. We can take the (indistinct) away, the heartache away from it. We can use this Ranger Uranium Agreement as a foundation, a strong foundation for you people to look to the future, for yourself and your children and to work in the future for yourself and your children.
VINER: And Toby? Thank you very much for yourtoday. (Indistinct….) We’ll I’ll be around in the parkso that you can show me around, when you’re doingthat, all the (ranging?) No, it’s going to be a greatthing. I look forward to seeing you then. OK.
NARRATOR: Toby might have signed for the Rangermine and got a silver plated pen for his trouble. what he really wanted was the title to his land. Nosooner was the ink dry on the paper than the pressure on Toby to agree to another uranium mine started all over again. This time another mining company – Pan Continental – wanted a lease for Jabiluka.
YVONNE: And they keep coming back formeeting.
WOMAN’S VOICE OFF CAMERA: All the time
YVONNE: Yeah. And he used to sleep inside and then they used to come and knock knock door and wake him up. “We want to go to a meeting tomorrow, or we want to go to a meeting now.” You know. Sometimes my Dad used to say, “No I don’t want to go to meeting tomorrow, because I’m sick”
JACQUI KATONA: The last meeting in theconsultations and the negotiations that took place overeighteen months was a meeting without consent. So, the Agreement had been negotiated, all points had beenagreed upon by the Northern Land Council and PanContinental. They saved ‘til the last meeting, the issueof consent. Yvonne’s father was very sick at that meeting. He had been worn down by the process. Hewas so worn down that he couldn’t sit at that meeting,he spent most of the meeting laying down. And finally at the end of that meeting when the question of consent was put, he got up and he addressed the legal advisors and the people attending that meeting, and he said, “I’m tired now, I can’t fight any more.” That was consent. That was officially and legally all that was required to embody legal consent for a project to go ahead.
NARRATOR: For the next six years, Toby watched asthe Ranger mine carved up his country. His healthdeclined as his drinking rapidly increased.
YVONNE MARGARULA: We went out to CasuarinaHospital. And we looked there and he was sleeping onthe floor on a mattress. He didn’t like the bed. He said,“I want to sleep on the floor.” One day later I think it was, it finish then. Dad was finished. Passed away.
JACQUI KATONA: OK. We’re going over to theJabiluka lease to have a look at a site where we’repreparing to drop a banner on World EnvironmentDay.
WOMAN: So where we going to hang this?
WOMAN’S VOICE: That’s nice and easy that place, yeah….
TOUR BUS DRIVER: This area over here. Retention Pond One they call that. It’s man-made. And that’s justto….it acts as a filter for water run off, water run-off in the wet season, off the mining area. Very healthy body of water, there’s plenty of bird life here, there’s fish, there’s plants, there’s frogs, so there’s ah… very clean drinking water.
DAVE SWEENEY, Conservation Foundation: The current operational experience at Ranger Mine has identified two main problems. One is water management, and one is tailingmanagement. There’s real problems with water there,because they have to contain water that falls on themine site because it then becomes contaminated withuranium. That’s a major problem with the Ranger mineand water management. And every year they routinelyrelease water with elevated levels of uranium,magnesium, sulphates and others into the surroundingcreek system. Every year they pour that stuff into thecreeks that feed the wetlands of Kakadu and thatactually feed the traditional aboriginal owners ofKakadu.
JOHN CHRISTOPHERSON: Given that they can’t store the water, given that they can’t evaporate the water, their next option is to pump it intothe Madjera (sp?) and at that time when they were talking about this, Aboriginal people’s concerns were at the bottom of theladder. During this whole process they held a meeting, and themeeting was held something like three days or four days before they wanted to start pumping the poison. And at the meeting they had a bloke from the Department of Mines and Energy and he spoke to the Aboriginal members of the meeting like this, pidgen English and treating us like (milds?) “You fella know me, I know you, I know you fella. This stuff they want to pump, you lookit like this. If you spit long a spoon, you can’t eat ‘im that spit, but you spit long a spoon and you put ‘im in a stew and you stir ‘im up, you can still eat ‘im that stew.” That’s how he explained it to us. What a load of bullshit.
CHRISTINE CHRISTOPHERSON: Which way now JJ? This way?
NARRATOR: ERA only acquired the Jabiluka leasefrom the original mining company – Pan Continental –in 1991. It makes an annual payment to aboriginalpeople.
JACQUI KATONA: Today’s meeting is very importantfor the Mirrar people and for the people who are supporting them in opposing Jabiluka going ahead.Today people will talk about handing back an amount of money which has been paid in royalty for the lease for the Jabiluka mine
JACQUI KATONA (addressing meeting): The company ispushing the Government now. The lease money is paid by ERA every year toJabiluka association. You mob get that four hundred dollar every year, that comes from that royalty money. Mirrar are saying they don’t want that money because it comes from the Jabiluka lease. They don’t want the Jabiluka mine to go ahead, they don’t want the money that comes from the company because it’s keeping that old agreement alive. They don’t want to keep that old agreement alive.
GREG CROUGH Economic Advisor: The mining company is saying thatthey’ve got an Agreement for that Jabiluka mine from 1982. An Agreement with the Land Council that means that they don’t have to ask permission fromtraditional owners today.
NARRATOR: Greg Crough discusses the original. consultations for the Pan Continental project.
GREG CROUGH: And we found some tapes from themeetings, a big meeting was held at Djar Djar in 1981where the Land Council talked to a lot of people. If you listen to what they are talking about at themeeting, the lawyers said, “We have to start talking to that mining company, so that mining company won’tstop that land claim going ahead.” Those lawyers saidto Binning, “We will not talk to the mining companyabout mining.”
DAVID PARSON’S VOICE – NLC lawyer: The NLC will not talk to PanCon about mining. There will be no decision made by the NLC about that mine going ahead, not going ahead, or anything about it. That would never happen until the traditional owners and everyone here says they were ready for that to happen.
GREG CROUGH: After that meeting, the Land Council went and talked to the miningcompany about mining. For the next year, the Land Council lawyers sat down with the mining company and they talkedabout a mining Agreement.” The lawyers came back to Binning and said, “Here’s this Agreement. You want to say yes or you want to say no?” And a lot of people were still saying, “We don’t want anything to do with that mining. We don’t want that PanCon mine to go ahead, that Jabiluka mine.” But they had one meeting at the end where people said, “We’re finished, we’re worn out, we can’t go on anymore, we’re getting too much humbug from the mining company.” OK
NARRATOR: : This is Jacob Nayinggul. He was thetranslator for the Northern Land Council in theirnegotiations with traditional owners for Jabiluka in 1981. He confirms that traditional owners throught they were negotiating for a land claim, not another uranium mine.
JACOB NAYINGGUL: No one understood, even I tryto interpret what the Land Council lawyer told me. But,I think it didn’t come out straight to the main traditionalowners. But for example, he keep on saying no.
INTERVIEWER: So as far as you know, the traditionalowners were not agreeing to mining?JACOB NAYINGGUL: No. No. No.
GREG CROUGH: What I think that happened was, that you got put into a process that people didn’t want. No one wanted to negotiate a mining agreement. So when it came to the finish, right at the end, it was all over, that mine was going to go ahead. It’s just lucky that mine hasn’t gone ahead.
NARRATOR: In an historic move, the meeting decidedto hand back the royalty payments for Jabiluka to the mining company, ERA.
NARRATOR: Fifteen years later and Galarrwuy Yunupingu is still chairman of theNorthern Land Council. He believes the NLC must honour the original Jabiluka mining lease the NLC signed on behalf of the aboriginal owners in 1982.
JACQUI KATONA: Well, they’re going to control themeeting. The Mirrar, with George’s help.
NARRATOR: Yvonne and her clan supporters intend togive Galarrwuy the letter signed earlier that week, tohand back the lease money for Jabiluka to ERA. The NLC has excluded Jacqui fromattending the meeting.
JACQUI KATONA: The Land Council arebeneficiaries of agreements which are reached on aboriginal land.And they are potentially beneficiaries of the JabilukaAgreement as well. They have been beneficiaries of theRanger Agreement, they receive a significantpercentage of the royalty equivalents which are paidout from that Agreement. Ah, the Northern LandCouncil’s infrastructure, the staffing, the buildings thatthey work in, all those costs are contributed to throughthe Ranger Agreement. Where a conflict has arisen with the Government’sagenda – and it exists now with Jabiluka – the Land Council not only faces a dilemma, but it faces what some people would call a conflict of interest because it is a beneficiary in the event of amine going ahead, and some people would say thatNorthern Land Council isn’t interested in fulfillingTraditional owners instructions because they wouldthen sacrifice a monetary benefit which would keep theorganisation going. So – people form the conclusion that the NorthernLand Council couldn’t represent their interests. Peopleformed the conclusion that the Northern Land Council really belonged to the Government and didn’t belong toaboriginal people out here. That’s significant in itself also. Not only to have your decision overridden, to be violated in that way, but to have continuing steps of oppression to be taken, by organisations which you were told are going to represent your interests, organisations that you are told are there to assist you, are there to ensure that your decisions are enacted. And that’s been a critical social impact down here. That people have no infrastructure with which to articulate their view, with which to develop an informed view. So the sense of powerlessness became entrenched, the sense of powerlessness pervaded all parts of everybody’s life.
NARRATOR: Mr Yunupingu declined repeatedattempts to be interviewed for this film.
JACQUI KATONA: That powerlessness that we talkabout is really embodied in the consumption of alcoholin this area. Alcohol consumption is a symptom ofpowerlessness. Alcohol has become an anaesthetic in some senses in some senses in this community. People anaesthetisethemselves to what they see around them, to theirinability to be able to control their lives. That’s lead to other poor health outcomes,poor educational outcomes, poor employmentoutcomes. It’s a lifestyle problem and people have to be given anopportunity to change their lifestyle There’s an impossible wave here that people have to beable to push against to be able to overturn the lifestylewhich has come about as a direct result of their historyin this area. You can’t expect individuals to be able to overcome those barriers.There has to be an ability given to the community,there has to be resources provided. There has to be infrastructure which advocatesindigenous values and beliefs which is able to advocateon their behalf to be able to turn this around. There’san attitude here which is displayed by non-aboriginal people, that aboriginal people can’t take control of their lives, and it’s all too hard. How do you turn it around – well we’ll just leave it. Well we can’t, that’s our responsibility.
TOUR BUS DRIVER: So far to date, the Ranger minegives the aboriginal people four point two five percentof gross sales. To date that’s a hundred and twenty fivemillion dollars, so as you can see, it is quite an amountof money. And that gets divided up into three differentcategories: the Northern Land Council, the AboriginalTrust Fund and the Gagadju people.
NARRATOR: Very little of the Ranger royalty money actually reaches aboriginal people in Kakadu. Most of it is swallowed up by bureaucracies and infrastructure. The Northern and other Land Councils take forty percent, another thirty percent stays with Aboriginal Benefit Trust Account – and never reaches Kakadu. The remaining thirty percent goes to the Gagadju (sp) Association for basic services that other citizens expect the government to provide. Much of Gagadju’s royalty money is now being used to pay back substantial bank loans from Gagadju’s business ventures. There is little real gain for. local aboriginal people from Ranger royalty money.
DARYL CRONIN Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation: Initially Gagudju has done a lot of good work around here because it provided services topeople, and it also invested in some major tourist infrastructure out here. The sort of business and investment strategies that have been pursued by Gagudju Association have had minimal benefit, minimal direct benefit for traditional owners and other affected aboriginal people here in the Kakaduregion. If you walk inside that hotel, you’re certainly not goingto see any aboriginal people working at it. If you go to the laundry you might find one or two aboriginalpeople working there, in fact you will probably find Yvonne working in there. Because Gagadju enterprises hasn’t been able toah, generate a profit, or a reasonable profit, there has been no money to be able to put back into providing socialservices for aboriginal people out here. If you look at the social and economic indicators of aboriginal people here in Kakadu, there has been no real progression even with mining, even with uranium mining here.
NARRATOR: Yvonne and Jacqui are off to Darwin to speak at a rally organised by the Northern Territory Environment Centre.
JAYNE WEEPERS: Last week, on top of this, we hadPhilip Shervington dismissing environmental concerns as merelyphilosophical. And I think we’ve sent a pretty clearmessage this week, saying 65 million tonnes of nuclearwaste – which is what will be produced, and buried andleft there forever in Kakadu – is not philosophical MrShervington. It’s very very real. And I guess the clearmessage is that if it was going to buried in hisbackyard, he wouldn't be saying that it was merelyphilosophical.
JACQUI KATONA : This is the jewel in the crown ofAustralia’s heritage listings. It’s World Heritage listed for two values: for natural values and for culturalvalues. These values can’t be sacrificed. The mine has not benefitedaboriginal people. The mine has not given us good housing. The mine hasn’t provided tertiary educated aboriginal kids. The mine hasn’t provided continuous employment for people. The mine hasn’t provided anything for our community that has raised the standard of living or improved those health statistics which are so shocking in Australia. Mining doesn’t solve anything and there’s no evidence that a new mine in that area is going to improve the standard of living for aboriginal people. If you can’t stop a uranium mine in a World Heritage listed area where traditional owners are opposed, and we believe the majority of Australians are, what’s going to stop ‘em?
TOUR BUS DRIVER: As you can see this is thetailings dam, it’s not exactly what they call a prettysite, but that’s just the waste from what’s left. A lot of the colour you can see in that is mainly just due from the lime that’s used to neutralise the tailings and it has a very high salt content – like an Epsom salts – so that’s what a lot of that white colour is there, it’s a very thick heavy mud consistency like. As you can see there’s not a lot of plant life or bird life in this area. That’s mainly due to the high salt content.
DARYL MANZIE: The impact of the present mine hasbeen absolutely negligible and has been measuredconstantly by the office of the supervising scientist. Infact it’s the most heavily monitored mine in the worldtoday, and they have consistently reported withindependent reports that there’s absolutely no impact,no impact, that can be measured outside the boundaryof the mine.
NARRATOR: : The office of the Supervising Scientistwas set up by the Government as the expert body to monitor the environmental effects of the mine. To save costs, much of its data is now provided by the mining company itself. Of all the authorities that should have spoken on thepublic record, this was surely it. But we were told that the minister had instructed theiroffice not to talk to us. The miners see the management of the mine as a simple matter. A job they do well.
PHILIP SHERVINGTON: We don’t add anyradioactivity to what’s already there naturally. All wedo is we dig up the ore, we crush it, we extract theuranium out, and then we put the ore as tailings back inthe pits - in the open pits – and when mining isfinished that will be dried out, covered with rock andtop soil and revegetated. So it will basically as it wasbefore mining began. It will be back in that nest in theground, that geological cocoon if you like, where it’sbeen for hundreds of thousands and millions of years. There’s no reason why it will be any worse there afterwe mine than it has been before over hundreds ofthousands of years.
DAVE SWEENEY: To say that digging them up makes no difference is absolute nonsense, because for the most part the ore bodies are deep underground. They are bounded. They’re together. They’re in stable geological structure. They’re reasonably impervious to movement through wind and water. For the company to say, “We’re taking away uranium,”is an absolute fiction, because what they’re doing is they are increasing the likelihood of uranium moving. Because you tear the earth up, you crush physically the ore body, you chemically separate it, and you are left with a mountain of finely pulverised particles. So what was a big patch of dirt with grass and trees and vegetation on top and everything being reasonablystable, is suddenly an upturned mountain. Tailings are the fine particles that are left at the end ofany mining process, and with regards to uraniummining, they contain around eighty percent of theradioactivity of the original ore body. There is movement of wind and dust particles. There is concerns of what happens in heavy rains, if the walls are breeched. We have an earthen wall structure which is meant to contain high volumes of radioactive waste. It’s in a tropical area, where when it rains it absolutely buckets down. The pressures on this system are great.
DR ROSALIE BERTEL: The open pit mine is agreater hazard for the people in the vicinity because theface of the ore bed is opened and there are many surfacesfor the release of the radon gas which carries theradioactivity off site. And the gas is a very mobile part of this chain. So the gas can move off of site and its decay products are radioactive lead (bismuth?) and polonium, in a radioactive form. So you’ve got a gas that moves off the site and is then it’s decaying into solids which it deposits on top of the ground or water or whatever is nearby. Now it can travel, it’s a very heavy gas, it’s about seven times heavier than air, so it stays near the earth, and if your wind say is ten kilometres an hour then in twenty four hours it can go two hundred and forty kilometres. And the half life of the radon is about three point eight days. So in one half life it can go a thousand kilometres with no trouble, with just a ten kilometre wind. If the wind is you know higher than that it’s going to go further. So this stuff is spread from the mine site, quite a distance which makes it very difficult to trace the health effects because it’s an invisible gas with no odour, so people don’t know they are being exposed to it. And again, if you breathe in the gas, then the solid particles, the lead (bismuth?) and the polonium are deposited in the lungs and go through to the bloodstream and cause internal problems in the body and can cause birth defects and terotegenic (?) damage to the child in utero. The radon gas is given off naturally there. I think oneof the…
INTERVIEWER (off camera): But what about whenit’s actually dug, it’s more exposed it’s sort of..DARYL MANZIE: Well it’s given off as part of the…Yeah but I mean, it is a gas, and it certainly will go theway of all gases, but I think that ahhh…
INTERVIEWER: Won’t that mean it gets into thewater table and ah filters through?
DARYL MANZIE: No it doesn’t, and I think any suggestion by anyone that mining is going to poison the water table, again is absolutely frivolous.
NARRATOR: Students arrive from all over Australia toadd their support to the growing opposition to the Jabiluka mine going ahead.
INTERVIEWER (off camera): Why are you doingthis?
WOMAN: Because we are going to stop the mine. We’re here in support of the Mirrar people and we’regoing to stop this mine. It’s not right.
CASSANDRA STEER: We’re here today as studentsand as part of the community, the wider community,opposing the mine. We’re standing outside the Ranger mine giving our voice here and there are people allover Australia doing the same thing today. It’s also really important to the Mirrar people who livehere, it’s their traditional land, they’ve got a spiritual link to it. You can’t just come and carve it up you know, you can’t just put a scar in the earth and then cover it up and say everything’s alright. It’s not on. It’s really important that Australians listen, that people stand up and say, we’re not going to stand for it. It’s unwanted, it can’t go on.
NARRATOR: The Minister for the Environment,Senator Robert Hill has decided to reject theopposition of the Mirrar people and an overwhelmingmajority of submissions from the Australian public to stop the mine. He says there will be no impact on Kakadu from Jabiluka. Yet his own department advises that the mining company’s environmental impact study had been deficient in key areas.
NARRATOR: So Yvonne Margarula must look further. She has taken the matter to the courts in an endeavour to strike down the mining lease,appealing her case to the full bench of the FederalCourt of Australia. She has also taken the case into the international arena and has convinced UNESCO to investigate whether the World Heritage values of Kakadu are threatened.
CHRISTINE CHRISTOPHERSON: Oh. It’s big. It’sjust so big. We underestimated the bigness…… Um,getting up there…… Now we’re finding that the paintis sticking.
PERSON ON TWO WAY RADIO: The paint is stuckto the banner, we’re having problems unfurling, it’snot going to unfurl. (indistinct sentence) It’s (falling?) ..it’s nearly there!…….(indistinct)
TWO WAY RADIO: (indistinct)… Me too. I think thisis going to work.
ITALIAN TOURIST: Hey, I am Italian from Italy.Greetings for you. Very, very,very good that youmake ..you sign your life, your culture, yoursinging…for your country.
YVONNE MARGARULA: I believe in my ownculture. Black fella way. Yeah right way, proper way.Binningway. Balanda (sp?) should listen. And believe. How manytimes we going to tell ‘im?