(497.4914) Mirrar Gundjehmi - The Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), the uranium giant supported by the Howard government since the 1996 election, has been unable to prove that tailings from the processing of uranium at Jabiluka would be managed safely. Environment Minister Hill's own department, Environment Australia, said in its advice that there was uncertainty whether radioactive material would leak into the waterways of the surrounding Kakadu National Park and World Heritage Area.
Hill had two main problems. First, he had let construction proceed at Jabiluka, pending the outcome of the Jabiluka Mill Public Environmental Report. Now it seemed there was no safe way to process the ore at the Jabiluka mine site.
Second, any delay in the approval of Jabiluka would hand the Australian Labour Party (ALP) the highest profile environmental issue on a platter.
ALP shadow Minister Duncan Kerr had long been in the tenuous position of refusing to state whether Jabiluka was a "mine" under Labour's "no new mines" policy. However, if Hill was forced to reject the Jabiluka mill, Kerr could safely promise to stop Jabiluka and secure much of the Green vote for Labour.
It was the last thing that Hill and the government needed just weeks out from an election. Worse still, Hill was due to make an announcement on the Public Environmental Report examining milling at Jabiluka on August 3, just days after receiving Environment Australia's assessment. In a move which went strangely unchallenged by the opposition and minor parties, Hill asked the ERA if he could have three more weeks to consider the report. The ERA agreed. The media barely noticed.
Yet from very early on the Traditional Owners opposed to the mine, the Mirrar, knew that the ERA had problems with milling uranium at Jabiluka. The township of Jabiru, just 20 km from the Jabiluka mine site, is a small community. Most of the majority white population work for the ERA at the nearby Ranger uranium mine. The ERA senior executives were aware of information leaks, but could not hide their tension from the rank and file. The Jabiluka proposal had a tailings management problem which threatened the entire future of the company.
With the Ranger uranium deposit due to be mined out in five years, the ERA has placed all its corporate eggs in the Jabiluka basket. Its original plan was to retain mill operations at Ranger by trucking uranium ore from Jabiluka. For nearly two years, the ERA had proceeded with the Jabiluka proposal on this basis.
Yet earlier this year, the ERA encountered a major legal problem. The Jabiluka mine is proceeding under a 1982 mineral lease agreement which required Aboriginal consent - consent which the Mirrar now claim was gained by deceit and duress.
The ERA bought the original lease from a company called Pancontinental which had planned to construct its own mill at Jabiluka. Under the 1982 agreement and an associated deed of transfer, the ERA requires the ongoing consent of the Mirrar to make changes to the agreement. In a blatantly strategic move, the Mirrar refused consent for the agreement to be changed so that ore could be milled at Ranger.
The ERA was furious. Their original environmental impact study, which had gained the aproval of the minister, had not covered the option of milling ore at Jabiluka. The company was forced to undergo another lengthy approval process. The Mirrar had bought themselves more time as an election drew closer.
Environment Minister Hill ordered the ERA to prepare a Public Environmental Report (PER), the lowest form of Commonwealth environment assessment, on the Jabiluka Mill alternative. The report was available for public comment for a month and around 2000 submissions were received, most of them condemning the proposal.
The Mirrar sniffed success in a battle which had constantly been writtten off as lost. When Hill asked for a three-week extension of time to consider the PER, the Mirrar went on the attack. In a press statement at the time, they claimed that the extension was actually for the ERA and not the minister. They also claimed that the ERA had serious environmental problems with the proposal. It seems recent events may have proved them correct.
We now know from Hill's own advice to Resources Minister Parer that as soon as Hill received his three-week extension he commissioned a confidential report from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) on the ERA's proposed method of tailings management. The Public Environmental Report had become rather private. The taxpayer-funded UNSW report confirmed the concerns expressed by Hill's department. The ERA's proposal to dispose of half of the radioactive tailings at Jabiluka in an evaporation pit and place the other half back into the mining shaft after mixing it with a cement paste was "scientifically uncertain".
However, in the meantime, the ERA had quickly developed another proposal to place 10% of the radioactive tailings back into the mining shaft. The new proposal the "100% in the hole" option, was rushed to Environment Australia which conducted a hurried assessment at the minister's request. The response was equivocal. Environment Australia found that the new proposal was safer than the original but still required some assessment.
On August 26, with his three-week extension at an end, Hill decided to take a gamble. He rejected the ERA's original proposal as advised by his department, but reccommended to Resources Minister Parer that the Jabiluka mill be 'approved' subject to the ERA's "100% in the hole" proposal undergoing further environmental assessment by the Commonwealth supervising scientist, and the New Territory government. If the ALP wanted to claim that Jabiluka was a mine without final approval, it would be left to explain the complicated process to an already confused public.
The next day, August 27, Parer gave approval to the ERA's revised proposal subject to conditions similar to those in Hills recommendations, but increasing the role of the territory and reducing that of the supervising scientist. The ERA had 16 requirements to fulfill before approval could take effect, including entering into a legally binding agreement to ensure that the Jabiluka project would cause no harm to the environment for 10,000 years (!).
The Mirrar, backed by the environment movement, condemned Hill and Parer's approval and claimed that construction should be halted at least until the ERA had fulfilled the 16 requirements, a task which could take months. The Mirrar argued that it was an abuse of process to grant approval when the Jabiluka mill was yet to be fully assessed.
The ALP responded by claiming that to grant approval with so many matters outstanding was inconsistent, misleading and legally doubtful. Their policy on Jabiluka remained open. But on September 3, the ALP promised to scrap the Jabiluka mine if elected in the federal elections on October 3.
With the government and the ERA working so closely together, the odds are clearly stacked against the Mirrar. Yet it seems certain that Jabiluka would remain an election issue for the duration of the campaign. Just how volatile it will be lies in the hands of the courts, the ALP election machine, and the Australian public.
Sources:
- Backgrounder by Gundjehmi Abriginal Corporation, 31 August 1998
- Reuters, 3 September 1998
Tel: +61-8-8979 2200; Fax: +61-8-8979 2299
Email: mirrar@topend.com.au
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