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Monday, 27 February 2012
Page: 753

Senator DI NATALE (Victoria) (12:23): I have an interest in this bill for several reasons. I was lucky enough to spend several years in Tennant Creek. I mentioned it in my first speech, in fact. I worked there as a doctor in an Aboriginal health service. It is a place that is very dear to my heart.

If you have ever been to Tennant Creek—some of you may have—it is probably because you have driven up the highway from Alice Springs to Darwin. You might have stopped at Tennant Creek to get some petrol on the way. At first instance it looks like a fairly bleak place. Often the temperatures there are up into the forties. A lot of the shopfronts are boarded up and there are bars on some of the windows. So people can sometimes get the wrong impression—that it is a community that is in decline.

But once you move beyond that you find a very rich, very complex and deep culture, with a community that has a profound connection to the land on which the people live. We have had some of our fondest experiences in the region. In fact, some of the old women sang a song to me and my wife. They told us that as a result of the song we would get married and have babies. Sure enough, my wife—who happens to be here today, by coincidence—and I have two young kids. I often think back about the song in the back of the Land Cruiser on the way out to get bush tucker. Every now and then when the kids drive me mad I think of what might have happened if that song had not been sung that day!

Tennant Creek is a place that has its problems. There is no question that, like many areas of Indigenous disadvantage, there are people there who are struggling. I am not going to go into all the causes of Indigenous disadvantage; it is a long and complex story and I know that successive governments have done at least a little to try and address the problems. But if there is any support for this proposal—I have to say the support is quite scant—it comes from a place of desperation. It comes because successive governments have not done enough. We have Indigenous communities who are desperate. They are desperate because they cannot get their toilets or their plumbing fixed. In any other public housing situation anywhere in the country we would expect it to be fixed but if you live in a remote Indigenous community or in one of the town camps and your loo stops working or your taps stop running it can take weeks before someone will come and fix that really important piece of infrastructure that makes a big difference to people's health.

So there is a question of Indigenous disadvantage and the desperation that comes from that, that may have led some people—very few—in the region to have expressed at least some basic level of support for the proposal. But my understanding is that the level of support for this proposal is next to non-existent. In fact, one of the recommendations from the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee was to hear from some of the traditional owners. In fact it said:

The committee recommends that as soon as possible the Minister for Resources Energy and Tourism undertake consultations with all parties with an interest in or who would be affected by a decision to select the Muckaty Station site as the location for the national radioactive waste facility.

My understanding is that the minister has ignored the recommendation from the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I think that is disrespectful not just to this institution but to the many people of that community who have warmly invited the minister to visit them. I will quote from a letter sent to the minister as far back as 2009, from some of the traditional owners of the area. They said:

Try and make an effort to come down and talk to us. We want to invite you ... to come out here and come face to face with Traditional Owners.

… … …

We want to show you what we are talking about and why are we talking about it.

… … …

The old Warlmanpa people really want to see government people come out so we can talk face to face with them without writing letters, because we don't even know what Martin Ferguson looks like.

We want you to come face to face—you don't even know what we look like, we've only seen each other on TV or whatever, but we want to see each other face to fact where we can have a few questions to ask why you are not listening to the biggest forum of people.

… … …

As the Arlmanpa group, we want to tell you what the country means with the designs and with the paints we have on our body. We want to do the body painting to tell the story about the land ...

We want you to now that Traditional Owners are waiting to show you that the country means something to them.

In another letter to the minister, the traditional owners say:

We need our opposition to the nuclear waste dump to be understood and respected by Government and especially Minster Martin Ferguson.

All our tribes in Tennant Creek have been talking to each other and we will all get together to protest by doing traditional dance showing the design that represents the land Karakara in Muckaty Land Trust.

Our message is always: We don’t want the nuclear waste dump anywhere in the Muckaty Land Trust.

These are our concerns:

* We told the government that Karakara is sacred land.

* Only Men talk about the land. No women talk for Karakara in the Muckaty Land Trust.

* The site for the proposed nuclear waste dump is in an earthquake tremor zone. What if an earthquake opens the nuclear waste storage and radioactive waste falls into our groundwater basin? We don't get our water from the city, town or from the coast. It comes from right below us.

The Warlmanpa elders always said that the Karakara is not Milwayi country. Milwayi is a snake dreaming travelling through Karakara and Muckaty Land Trust to Helen Springs. Milwayi is the totem for the ancestors' ground. Is the government going to regret everything later when a disaster happens like what is happening in Japan right now?

The government should rethink about the whole nuclear cycle and leave our traditional cultural, spiritual homeland alone.

That is just one of the letters that has been received that the government, and the Minister for Resources and Energy in particular, needs to take heed of. The minister needs to have the courage to face these people and hear from them directly. My question is: has the minister visited the Muckaty site and spoken with the traditional owners of that area, as the committee recommended in 2010 and as he has been invited to do on numerous occasions?