Howard's assault into indigenous communities - Land Grab

July 16, 2007: The Howard Government's assault into indigenous communities in the Northern Territory is to access valuable uranium deposits, and not to protect children from abuse, a rally was told in Melbourne last week. More than a hundred community organisations have since criticised the government's plan.

They have described it as a land grab...

Robbie Thorpe, who was also part of the Black GST and Camp Sovereignty protests during the Stolenwealth Games in Melbourne last year, says the Howard is not interested in the welfare of indigenous children.

"It's the only bit of land the commonwealth government hasn't got access to and there are minerals like uranium there," Mr Thorpe told the rally. "That's what it's about. How can you believe Howard? He don't give a f**k about our kids."

He said Indigenous Australians had suffered from 100 years of abuse. "You have taken our people to the brink. "There has been 100 years of human rights' crimes against our people," he said. "Things are not going to change until there is a treaty in this country."

500 people joined the rally. The protest was part of a national day of action being held in capital cities and Alice Springs. In Perth, 120 people rallied. The crowd heard from Ray Jackson from the Indigenous Social Justice Association, Mark Newhouse from the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee and Mark Lawrence from Friends of Australian Rock Art.

About 200 people of all ages and races took part in a demonstration through Canberra to protest against the intervention in Northern Territory communities, likening it to the "Children Overboard" scandal of 2001, or as a land grab or election stunt.

One of the founding members of the Aboriginal tent embassy, Isabell Coe, said the days of Aboriginal people being used as a "political football" had to come to an end. "...what he is doing is disgusting, it is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen," she said about John Howard's invasion of Aboriginal Lands.

In Sydney, protesters were angry about the compulsory acquisition of remote indigenous communities and the abolition of the permit system, which they consider a land grab. Aboriginal leader Pat Turner said a six-month intervention would be acceptable but had to be done in partnership with local Aborigines.

Mick Dobson says the federal government does not need to seize land from indigenous communities to combat child abuse in the Northern Territory. He said today he feared the government's seizure of 73 communities in the NT was a land grab. "That's what I'm worried about," Prof Dodson said.

"I don't for the life of me understand what the connection between child abuse and land tenure is, why the land tenure has to be given up, albeit for a short period of time according to the prime minister. The two things are not connected," he said to corporate media. "Why steal the land to deal with child sexual abuse?"

Prof Dodson said he, like his brother Pat Dodson, was finding it hard to trust the government on indigenous issues.

SOURCES:
News Ltd
GLW
Canberra Times
Sydney Morning Herald

Julie Bishop's nuclear waste dump in earthquake zone

July 18, 2007 - The Northern Territory site recently nominated for a national nuclear waste facility by the Federal government is near one of the nation's earthquake hotspots. Muckaty Station is about 120km north of Tennant Creek - one of the most seismologically active areas in Australia...

There have been 239 earthquakes in that area in the past decade and 1298 earthquakes since 1988. Tennant Creek had a 6.3 quake in 1988, according to Geoscience Australia, which tore up the town.

Anti-nuclear waste dump campaigners have long condemned the nomination of Muckaty Station as a site.

The Environment Centre NT says it's "political expediency rather than proper scientific evaluation in terms of siting a waste dump," she said. Seismologists say the frequent quakes are due to a fault line running through the area. "The quakes are frequent, due to a weak fault-line running through the area," Geoscience Australia said. Two small quakes have hit the Tennant Creek area in the past three weeks.

The proposed nuclear waste dump site has been opposed by environmentalists, the NT Government and traditional owners. Despite overwhelming community opposition, the Federal Government seems determined to let nothing stand in its way to procure a site in the Northern Territory to dump its radioactive waste.

ASEN* say that despite giving an "absolute categorical assurance" that the NT would not be targeted for a Commonwealth dump, in June 2005 the Howard government announced that three defence sites in the NT would be assessed for suitability. All sites have people living within 10 kilometres. None of the sites were short listed when the Federal Government undertook a scientific study to find a site.

At a media conference in June 2005, then Science Minister Brendan Nelson expressed the reasoning behind targeting the NT, asking "why on earth can't people in the middle of nowhere have low level and intermediate level waste?"

The Northern Land Council has offered overt support for the NT dump proposal. Yet, according to ASEN* many Elders have spoken out to strongly oppose a dump on their own country, and have travelled to NT parliament and interstate to voice their concerns.

The NLC also supported Science Minister Julie Bishop’s recent amendments to the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, which further restrict opportunities for public input into site selection for the dump. The changes to the legislation mean that a nomination of a site by a Land Council will no longer require:

+ consultation with the traditional owners
+ that the nomination be understood by the traditional owners
+ that the traditional owners have consented as a group
+ that any community that may be affected has been consulted and had adequate opportunity to express its views

The proposed changes also remove the right of any group to appeal site nomination on the grounds of procedural fairness.

The risk of transporting radioactive waste is also major concern for communities living along potential routes.

NUCLEAR PLOY
Recently, Dr Helen Caldicott, an anti-nuclear activist of more than 20 years, said she feared Prime Minister John Howard would turn Australia into the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste. She said the takeover of Aboriginal land titles, part of the government's assault on Indigenous communities, is a ruse to clear the way for the dumping of waste in remote areas.

"The land grab from the Aborigines is actually about uranium and nuclear waste," Dr Caldicott said. "It is obvious - you don't take land away from people just because their children are being sexually abused." Dr Caldicott said Australia should reject nuclear power, ban uranium mining and concentrate on developing renewable energies such as wind, solar and hot rocks.

She said the health consequences of uranium mining, nuclear power and nuclear power plants were serious and would induce epidemics of disease, malignancy and deformity that would be experienced for generations.

"Australia is in great danger of becoming a major nuclear nation now," she said. "I think it is very, very, very dangerous medically. I am worried that people making decisions do not understand medicine or genetics. They (the government) are being pushed by the economy and wealthy corporations, like Western Mining and BHP Billiton, who seem to have no regard for the health and well-being of this generation and all future generations."

KE07

*Terrorising the Territory with Toxic Trash - ASEN, jan07.

Sources:
Herald Sun
Terrorising the Territory with Toxic Trash - ASEN
NUCLEAR DUMP DANGEROUS FOR TERRITORY - Foe
Geoscience Australia
National Indigenous Times: NT takeover ploy for nuclear waste dump
Wikinews - Opposing_a_nuclear_waste_dump_in_the_Northern_Territory
Australian government paves way for nuclear waste dump in Northern Territory

WA Police "brutal" attack on peaceful protesters over nuke dump

From the newswire: On Friday 13th June 2007, around 40 people from across Australia converged in Subiaco, to deliver a letter to Federal Science minister Julie Bishop over her proposed NT nuclear waste dump. During the peaceful action, witnesses say WA Police used "brutal" and "excessive force" to break up the action. Two anonymous witnesses, both veterans of dozens of local NVDA demonstrations, told Perth Indymedia on Friday afternoon that the police action was "horrific", the "worst behaviour by members of the WA Police they had ever seen at any protest in Perth..."


READ MORE: Pepper Spray and Batons Used at Bishop’s Office

After an initial discussion with the Minister outside her office, the group walked into the foyer to deliver their letter. As the group were asked to vacate, without warning police used batons and pepper spray to attack the campaigners inside the minister's office. Witnesses say one officer grabbed a woman by the hair before producing his baton and using it on random people.

Described by witnesses as "brutal" and "disgusting", officers targetted people with cameras including an elderly woman who was pushed to the ground. A young woman was pinned to the ground by an officer, her video camera seized and confiscated by police for evidence. It is understood five people were charged with disorderly conduct, obstructing police and assault - despite the excessive force sisplayed by police. Three people were hospitalised as many others were treated on the scene by paramedics.

The group, representing dozens of environmental and student organisations from around Australia, were delivering a letter to Ms Bishop requesting she visit the communities affected by her Nuclear waste dump.
A participant in the national action, Toby Lee, told corporate media that police launched an "unprovoked attack" on the congregation. "As I was leaving," he said, "I was directly sprayed with capsicum spray into my eyes 10 centimeters from my face without warning". Another activist, Natalie Wasley, told corporate media she was negotiating a peaceful exit with police officers as inside they began using their batons. Read More...

"We didn't get a chance to leave peacefully. The police just started pepper spraying people, hitting them with batons and throwing them to the floor. It was absolutely shameful." Ms Walsey denied the group provoked the violence. Protesters left the office with eyes streaming and burnt faces, after being struck with batons and pepper sprayed...

READ MORE/Comment...

BE THE MEDIA: Publish your media/got photos/video/audio...?

Interviews on Perth Indymedia Radio - Weds 7-8PM RTRFM 92.1

Howard admits to killing Iraqis for oil security

July 5, 2007: Despite the denials of 2003, the Howard Government has now admitted that oil security is indeed a major factor in Australia's perpetual military involvement in Iraq. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says oil was a factor in Australia's contribution to the extremely unpopular war. He said "energy security" in the Middle East would be crucial to the nation's future. Dr Nelson said defence was about protecting the economy.

Dr Nelson also said it was important to support the "prestige" of the US and UK...

"The entire (Middle East) region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world. Australians and all of us need to think well what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq?" said Dr Nelson.

In a major speech outlining the Government's defence priorities, Mr Howard said Australian troops need to stay in Iraq to ensure a continued supply of oil, as well as to assist the United States.

In 2003, as Australia followed the US invasion into Iraq, Mr Howard told Australians it was because Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction".

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said the conflict had killed 600,000 Iraqis while pushing their country into civil war, jeopardising global oil supplies and strengthening Iran's threat to Iraq. Mr Rudd said: "When Mr Howard was asked back in 2003 whether this war had anything to do with oil, Mr Howard said in no way did it have anything to do with oil. This Government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq."

As a "magnet, inspiration and training ground for international jihadists", the Iraq war has boosted Australia up the ranks of countries targeted by terrorism, Mr Rudd said. It had been a mistake to send troops into Iraq, he said.

"Australia's involvement in the Iraq war continues to make Australia a greater terrorism target than we'd otherwise be. The uncomfortable fact for Australia is that we have now become a greater terrorist target as a consequence of our military involvement in Iraq, a fact acknowledged by many experts in the field," said Mr Rudd.

Greens Leader Bob Brown said the Prime Minister's belated admission that the invasion of Iraq is linked to 'the major stake of energy dependency' underlines his dishonesty in 2003. "Saddam Hussein's oil, not weapons of mass destruction, was in the Bush-Blair-Howard mindset in this monumental mistake which has cost a
reported 67,000 civilian lives (the Lancet estimates 655,000 deaths)," Senator Brown said.

"It has boosted global terrorism and undermined Australia's homeland security. Mr Howard has put oil corporations' interests ahead of Australians domestic security," Senator Brown said.

Democrats leader Senator Lyn Allison said the government had been denying the link between oil and the war for years. "After years of denials the Howard government has finally conceded that oil and powerful mates were behind sending Australian troops to a bloody war in Iraq," she said. "This has been a despicable fraud. Countless lives have been lost and a society torn apart based on lies. And yet the prime minister's repeated refrain is 'trust me'. How can we believe anything this man says about anything?"

"The reality is money and oil and powerful mates were always key reasons for going into Iraq despite ruses about weapons of mass destruction. Now he says the international terror threat is one reason for staying the course but that terror threat would not have been so great had it not been for catastrophic policy decisions like the ones the Howard Government has made," said Senator Allison.

Meanwhile a new report suggests that Australia is not directly threatened by terror. A national security review has found Australia faces no direct conventional threat but ought to be ready anyway for unforeseen events. The review, Australia’s National Security: A Defence Update 2007, was released today by prime minister John Howard at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Global Forces 2007 conference.

An increase of 47 percent in the Defence budget since the Howard government came to power has provided the Australian Defence Forces with a greatly enhanced military capability. Howard, who has committed Australia's military to a $43bn build-up, said Canberra had buried the "self-defeating" idea that Australia's military should be based on home defence.

Australia has about 1,500 troops in and around Iraq.

SOURCES:
The Age
The Australian
The Australian
ABC Radio
Aljazeera
Courier Mail
Independent Broadcast Network
ABC News

Howard's indigenous land-grab military-invasion opens door to nuclear waste dump

July 4, 2007: Prim Minister John Howard's electioneering intervention in the Northern Territory is a ploy to allow the dumping of nuclear waste in the outback, anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott says.

Radical measures announced by Mr Howard last week include welfare restrictions, compulsory health checks for children, bans on alcohol and pornography, abolition of the Aboriginal lands permit system and extra police and defence forces to restore order.

Feminist Germaine Greer said she believes the suspension of the permit system by which outsiders' movements to and from communities was the worst aspect of the intervention...

Dr Helen Caldicott, an anti-nuclear activist of more than 20 years, said she feared Prime Minister John Howard would turn Australia into the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste. She said the takeover of Aboriginal land titles, part of the Government's crackdown of child sexual abuse in indigenous communities, was a ruse to clear the way for the dumping of waste in remote areas.

"The land grab from the Aborigines is actually about uranium and nuclear waste," Dr Caldicott said at the Australian Medical Students' Association conference in Adelaide this week. "It is obvious - you don't take land away from people just because their children are being sexually abused."

Dr Caldicott said Australia should reject nuclear power, ban uranium mining and concentrate on developing renewable energies such as wind, solar and hot rocks. She said the health consequences of uranium mining, nuclear power and nuclear power plants were serious and would induce epidemics of disease, malignancy and deformity that would be experienced for generations.

"Australia is in great danger of becoming a major nuclear nation now," she said. "I think it is very, very, very dangerous medically. I am worried that people making decisions do not understand medicine or genetics. They (the Government) are being pushed by the economy and wealthy corporations, like Western Mining and BHP Billiton, who seem to have no regard for the health and well-being of this generation and all future generations. We as doctors now have to teach the politicians the implications of the ramifications of what they are currently considering."

Meanwhile, feminist writer Germaine Greer says Howard’s emergency measures to deal with child abuse in the Northern Territory are a land grab which he knows will be a certain vote-winner. Ms Greer said the move was a mask to remove native title rights to allow freer access to mining companies.

"Howard has never been happy with the fact that small groups of illiterate hunter-gatherers can still hamper and delay exploitation of Australia’s mineral wealth for as long as they did in the case of the Ranger uranium mine and Jabiluka," Ms Greer says in The Bulletin.

Ms Greer, who supports a treaty with Aboriginal people, said authorities had known about the abuse of Aboriginal women and children for 30 years. "Indeed, the Little Children Are Sacred report adds little in the way of hard facts to what we knew already," she said. "Where the report plays into Howard's hands is in its slightly hysterical demand for immediate, decisive, unspecified action."

"If native title means Australian industries are uncompetitive, then native title must go. The real importance of Howard’s bizarre interpretation of the urgings to immediate action contained in the Little Children Are Sacred report is that it provides kneejerk justification for massive erosion of Aboriginal title — Howard knows, none better, that this will be a sure vote-winner," said Ms Greer.

The Guardian Newspaper also reports that it’s a Federal "land grab". The Prime Minister’s Department has already had talks with mining companies. The Guardian asks: Why should anyone believe that these talks were "increasing employment for Indigenous people" or protecting the environment or sacred sites.

Of all the plans and policies implemented by the Howard Government, this attack on the Indigenous people is the most disgusting, says the Guardian - the most cynical and the most evil and dishonest. Anyone who claims that it is out of care for children is at best extremely naïve and ignorant, but much more likely complicit in Howard’s schemes.

It is another in the long list of lies — invasion of Iraq, children overboard, no GST, and all of the others. It is being used as an excuse to destroy native title and land rights, and as a pre-election ploy from a government that could not even say the word “Sorry” for the Stolen Generations — the thousands of children removed from their parents and communities.

Howard has refused to guarantee that Aboriginal land leased for five years by the Commonwealth will be handed back to the communities. In the meantime, it may be sub-leased to a mining company or any other company. Mining operations could be up and running within five years and by then the damage will have been done. The Howard Government has always been an enthusiastic servant of these corporations.

Dr Sally Cockburn, a Melbourne GP and medical commentator says: "Let them prove this is not shallow electioneering. Let them put in place a proper collaborative, sustainable response against child abuse throughout Australia," she writes in the Herald Sun. "Child sexual abuse in our country is an election issue because any party without a sustainable plan for dealing with it does not deserve to win office."

Pat Turner, former head of the now-defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, warned yesterday that the takeover could lead to indigenous people losing their lands altogether. "Redressing child abuse and enabling our children to live safely and healthily in our communities has absolutely nothing to do with land tenure," she said. "I believe that's why the Prime Minister called it a national emergency, because the Land Rights Act has a national interest clause,' she said.

Ms Turner said the Government's claim it had to take over the land so it wouldn't waste time negotiating with councils to make repairs and collect rents was a farce. "Rubbish," she said, "it's rubbish. If the Government is serious about this it can negotiate an arrangement and no community is going to say 'no, we don't want you to come in here and build us houses'.

A Galaxy poll this week found 58 per cent of voters believe the reforms are a vote-grabbing move while just 25 per cent think Prime Minister John Howard launched the scheme because he really cares about the problem.

SOURCES:
Brisbane Times
The Age
Border Mail
The Guardian
Herald Sun
The Australian
The Australian

Howards military plan causing panic in Indigenous communitues

"...they think the army is coming to grab their kids and the police are coming to help them. The women and the kids are scared and they are running to the sand hills..."

June 26, 2007 - A group of 60 Aboriginal and community groups will deliver a letter to Prime Minister John Howard urging him to rethink his military plan to stamp out indigenous child abuse in the Northern Territory. The delegation from all states and territories call for Mr Howard to consult with indigenous people on ways to tackle the root causes of the abuse rather than send in the troops.

Mr Howard says he will abolish the Aboriginal permit system and mobilise extra police and defence forces into remote Indigenous communities. The Federal Government says it may compulsorily acquire as many as 70 Northern Territory Indigenous communities.

Aboriginal mothers in the NT are taking their children and fleeing into the sandhills because of fears the government will take them away...
Federal Police officers began arriving in the Northern Territory this week with other states to follow. The Federal Justice Minister David Johnston says the Prime Minister can force states to send officers to join the invasion.

Olga Havnen, a prominent Aboriginal leader in the Northern Territory, warned the intervention model announced by the government, could do more harm than good. "It's crazy stuff. I don't think people have thought through the unintentional consequences," said Ms Havnen, the deputy chief executive of the Northern Land Council. "People there are scared stiff," she told a corporate media source.

"They want to flee, to get out of there. That's the level of panic and fear that this has caused out in the communities." She said the plan for every child to have a compulsory health check was met with "shock and horror". "It's pretty draconian and drastic, one would have thought," Ms Havnen said.

Mutitjulu Elder Vince Forrester says the changes are unnecessary and are causing widespread fear in Central Australia. Police and the defence force are expected to be deployed to Mutitjulu next week and Mr Forrester says many Aboriginal mothers are taking their children into the sandhills because of fears the government will take them away.

The community says the Howard Government declared an emergency at the local health clinic more than two years ago. It says since then Mutitjulu has been without a doctor, has had health and youth programs cut and the council has been sacked. The leaders say community members must be consulted to ensure the success of any program.

Greens leader Bob Brown says years of inaction by Mr Howard have forced the Government into dangerous racial discrimination territory. "It is a pre-election push which is action on a scale that is absolutely not needed," he said.

Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett says it is an outrageous authoritarian crackdown, and he is outraged Mr Howard did not first consult the Indigenous communities. "If they aren't involved in developing the solutions, then the solutions aren't going to work," he said.

Mutitjulu locals accuse the commonwealth of treating their community as a "political football", saying it should concentrate on health, education and social services instead of sending troops.

They charge that government neglect had brought the situation to a crisis point. "We have been begging for an alcohol counsellor and a rehabilitation worker so that we can help alcoholics and substance abusers but those pleas have been ignored," they said.

"When your bringing armed forces into the communities obviously people's minds are going to start playing tricks on them," Vince Forrester said. "You don't bring an army into the community, this is just intimidation of the aboriginal community in the Northern Territory."

Mutitjulu resident Mario Giuseppe says the community is in "terror". "I thought the government was here to protect the women and children and they are scaring the living daylights out of them," he told the ABC. "This is bringing back a lot of memories and opening a lot of scars for these old people here, they are running to the hills and hiding."

Women were scared that police were being sent out to the community to take away their children, Mr Giuseppe said. "They think the army is coming to grab their kids and the police are coming to help them. The women and the kids are scared and they are running to the sand hills."

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who calls the measures "a throwback to paternalism," along with indigenous leader Lowitja O'Donoghue, also criticise the Commonwealth proposal. They say the Government measures show a lack of consultation and funding. "Without respect, without discussion and agreement it is difficult to see any measures working as effectively as we would all want..." they said. They pointed also to the disbanding of ATSIC, saying Australia was alone among the western democracies in not having elected representation for its indigenous people.

Mick Dodson, professor at ANU noted the Little Children are Sacred report had emphasised that "the majority of perpetrators in Aboriginal communities are non-indigenous men people who come into the communities to work".

The Federal Government has established a panel including WA magistrate Sue Gordon, the Australian Federal Police's Shane Castles, former Woolworths boss Roger Corbett and former AMA boss Bill Glasson. Mr Howard confirmed cabinet would soon extend the quarantining of welfare payments for Aboriginal people.

The West Australian Premier, Alan Carpenter, says the action is an election-year stunt, declaring there was no doubt this was Howard's "new Tampa". WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan says he has no plans of sending officers to the Northern Territory. Mr O'Callaghan says police working in regional areas of Western Australia already have their hands full.

Professor George Williams from the University of NSW says it is the most significant takeover of territory power since self-government, and it highlights the paternalistic relationship between the Commonwealth and the NT. "We've never seen such extensive intervention, nor such an intervention that would affect so many people within the Territory," he said.

Aboriginal leaders in the territory want to know whether the Federal Government will provide the money needed for housing, education and health in remote areas. "If the Government does not provide the funds it will be seen to be playing politics with Aboriginal people's lives," said Tracker Tilmouth, a former head of the Central Land Council.

The Territory needs 4000 houses, at a cost of $1.4 billion. Even if Canberra put up the money it would be impossible to find workers and materials to build them immediately.

The need for schools is estimated at $60 million a year over 10 years just to provide teachers and facilities for school-age children if they all turned up for classes each day. A further $50 million a year for the next 10 years is needed to fix health services.

SOURCES:
News.com.au
Indigenous mothers running scared: Elder
SMH
ABC News
Mutitjulu in eye of storm
Canberra Times
Statement from the Stolen Generations Alliance
ABC
Australia: military occupies aboriginal communities

All WA police to carry stun guns

June 26, 2007: The West Australian Police Commissioner, Karl O'Callaghan, says all officers on duty will be equipped with stun guns. The WA police force has purchased another 1,100 Tasers. Shaped like a gun but battery-operated, a Taser fires two fishhooklike barbs into a person's skin and disrupts a person's muscle control for five seconds.

The darts have a range of up to 21 feet; the tool also can be pressed directly against a person to use in stun mode. The pain can be excruciating, "freezing" someone on the spot

The Commissioner says officers will have a one-day training course on how to use the guns during the next six months. In the USA, 2000 approximately 5000 officers were been issued with tasers. By 2004 about 100,000 officers in over 5500 police forces across the United states have been issued with them.

Over 60 people have died in the United States after being tasered...

Tasers are powerful electrical weapons used by over 7,000 of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the USA. They are designed to incapacitate by conducting 50,000 volts of electricity into your body. The electrical pulses induce skeletal muscle spasms that immobilise and incapacitate, causing you to collapse to the ground.

More than 150 people have died in the US after being struck by tasers since June 2001 - 61 in 2005 alone - and numbers are continuing to rise. Most who died were subjected to multiple or prolonged shocks. In 2006, Nickolos Cyrus, a 29-year-old man diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was shocked 12 times with a Taser stun gun after a Wisconsin police officer caught him trespassing on a construction site.

Also in 2006, an American teenager carrying a Bible who shouted "I want Jesus" was killed after being shot twice by a police stun gun. Police in Missouri said 17-year-old Roger Holyfield would not acknowledge officers who approached him and he continued yelling.

In Seattle in 2004, deputies pulled over Valinda Otis, who told them she was 3 months pregnant and needed to use the bathroom. When police wouldn't let her go to a nearby restroom, she walked toward it anyway, and was quickly handcuffed and placed in a patrol car. She screamed and kicked the car door. That's when a deputy with the King County Sheriff's Office pulled out a Taser, pressed it against her thigh and jolted her with 50,000 volts of electricity.

"It was a sharp pain," said Otis, 24, who was three months pregnant at the time of the incident. "I kept asking, 'Is it gonna mess up my baby?'"

As well, deputies fired Tasers at a teenager who ran after not paying a $1 bus fare, a 71-year-old man who refused to get into a police car, and a partially deaf man who couldn't hear deputies ordering him to stop, reports show. About three out of four of those shocked by Seattle police were unarmed.

Civil rights advocates in the United States argue Tasers are being drawn too quickly and in cases in which such extreme force isn't necessary. They worry about potential abuses as more officers rely on the tool to subdue people who they say pose no serious threat to themselves or others.

In November 2004 Amnesty International published a comprehensive report detailing it's concerns over the use of tasers in the USA, calling for a suspension on their use and transfer pending an independent, rigorous and impartial inquiry into their use.




---

Arguments Against Tasers Being Issued To All Operational Police

* Expense including costs of training is better used for training about handling people in mentally affected states, in particular people with mental illness.

* Accountability while advocates argue that the tasers have inbuilt chips which record use, details of police use of weaponry is not made available to the public and as no organisation is funded to routinely obtain these detail, they remain hidden from the public.

* Threats: There is no way of keeping track of how often or in what circumstances a taser has been used to obtain compliance without being fired ('threatened use'). It is one of Taser's strengths that it can defuse a situation without actually being used, but also one of its weaknesses. The threat of a being shocked can and will be used to obtain compliance when violence was not an issue.

* Safety: 150 people in the United States have died since 2001 after being tasered and concerns are mounting as the number of deaths increases. After 6 deaths in Canada, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, in August this year, requested a "unique and comprehensive review of scientific research, field reports, and data on the use of Tasers in police work in Canada and around the World" (RCMP News Report 18/8/04).

* Lack of scientific research: There is a paucity of independent and rigorous research into the effects and safety of the tasers. There have been no tests published in scholarly peer-review scientific journals. Taser relies on two studies, one of a single pig in 1996 and on five dogs in 1999 conducted by company paid researchers. They also cite many examples of police voluntarily being tasered as evidence of safety, but for the most part they receive a shock one tenth that given to suspects. Medical experts warn to be wary of labelling tasers safe.

* Vulnerable groups: There are people who are particularly at risk when tasered. These are pregnant women and those with cardiovascular disease, people who are drug affected, young people, older people and those with mental illness. Some of these people such as those drug affected and with a mental illness are more likely to be tasered.

* Increased use: As the use of tasers become more accepted their use will increase, so that they are used in situations where they are not an alternative to deadly force but to ensure compliance. A 2002 study found 85% of people shocked with tasers were unarmed.

* Abuse: Reports of abuse of tasers when issued to all police are growing along with deaths.

o In Canada an officer has been charges with tasering a man while police handcuffed him; a peaceful protester was tasered as he lay on the ground in passive resistance; in May 2003 10 Algerians facing deportation from Canada were repeatedly tasered for refusing to leave the immigration ministers office.

o In the United States, suspects already in custody are tasered; a hand cuffed 9 year old girl was tasered; a 66 year old woman was tasered; in at least three dozen cases from Denver, police tasered the person multiple times in one incident; one man was tasered twice after he was handcuffed and in the car.

* Logistics: the weight of police belts exceeds 4 kg causing back problems and slowing police down. Another piece of kit will obviously add to this...

--

Sources:
News.com.au
Lawyers warn against Taser guns
ABC NEWS
Police are too quick to grab for Taser
USA: Taser-related deaths pass 150 mark
2004 Amnesty International
Taser death a cause for alarm
Death by Taser: The Killer Alternative to Guns
taser.com/

Stop offshore asylum processing - tear down the fences

Thursday, June 14, 2007: A petition of 10,000 signatures has been presented to Federal Parliament opposing the offshore processing of asylum seekers. The petition calls for the processing centres on Christmas Island and Nauru to be shut down will be tabled in parliament next week...

Labor backbencher Carmen Lawrence says asylum seekers do not have proper access to the medical and legal help they need when they are processed away from the Australian mainland.

"I'd like to add my voice very strongly to the petitioners who have spoken on behalf of a great many more Australians, who I'm sure would have signed it had they known of its existence," she said. "I've been impressed by just how strong community attitude remains in opposition to these obscenities we call offshore processing."

The signatures, collected over the past three months by refugee advocate groups A Just Australia, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the National Council of Churches, were handed to MPs on Thursday.

The establishment of the high security detention centre on Christmas Island, which is near completion, has so far cost taxpayers $400 million. Petition coordinator Kate Gauthier said the cost demonstrated the economic irrationalism of offshore processing.

"It's an incredible mismanagement of funds when you also allow into the fact that they've spent around $100 million on Nauru and processing ... we've had about slightly under 2,000 people go through that process (so) it equals about $400,000 per person," she said. "Human rights advocates are not asking the government to spend more money on asylum seekers - ironically in this case we are pleading with them to spend less."

Labor MP Dr Carmen Lawrence, who accepted the petition, said the cost was an obscene waste of taxpayers money. "The $400 million that has been spent on Christmas Island in fact remains an obstacle for future governments: what do you do with this facility now that it has been constructed?" she said. "Obscene amounts of taxpayers' money has been spent ... on damaging people, that's the frustrating thing."

Australian Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett compared the cost to the amount of money suggested to be the cost to reduce the life expectancy gap of indigenous Australians that currently remains 17 years below that of other Australians.

"The Australian Medical Association has been campaigning for years saying the amount that's needed for address the gap of indigenous health in Australia is around about $400 million," he said. "That's a good contrast of where this government's priorities lie, $400 million for a centre when we don't have any people to put in it to purely send a message to somebody, or reducing the 17 year life expectancy gap."

A Senate committee report - the Migration Review Tribunal and Refugee Review Tribunal on mandatory detention - will be tabled in parliament soon.

Senator Bartlett, who recently returned from a visit to the asylum seekers’ camp on Nauru warning that there must be a much quicker resolution to all claims to avoid the major harm and costs that have occurred in the past.

Senator Bartlett said the conditions the refugees are being kept in are an improvement on past years, but the key dangers remain the same – the potential for long delays and a lack of legal protections in determining claims, along with difficulties with isolation and adequate access to legal assistance.

“We know beyond doubt that prolonged uncertainty and insecurity about the future, along with the underlying fear of being sent back to unsafe situation, causes immense harm to many asylum seekers,” Senator Bartlett said.

“The group of Burmese refugees have already been on Nauru for seven months and are yet to have an initial assessment interview. This is simply unacceptable.

“Whilst there has been opportunity for asylum seekers to receive some legal assistance, the difficulties with accessibility mean that full and proper help has not been provided. This not only impairs fairness, it almost inevitably means a more drawn out process, risking greater harm for asylum seekers and greater cost to the Australian public,” Senator Bartlett concluded.

There are 90 asylum seekers currently on Nauru – 82 Tamils who have been there for about a month, and 8 Rohingya from Burma who arrived in Australian in August and were transferred to Nauru in September.

Senator Bartlett met with many of the ninety asylum seekers currently being kept on Nauru and inspected the facility where they are staying.

SOURCES:
Senator Bartlett
ABC NEWS
The Age
A Just Australia
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
National Council of Churches in Australia

Massive Anvil Hill coal mine approved by NSW Government

June 7, 2007: Despite ongoing community protests, the NSW Government has approved the controversial Anvil Hill coal mine development in the Hunter Valley.

NSW Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, says he made the decision after 10 months of assessment. He says the total value of the coal reserve at the site is estimated to be about $9 billion. "It was time to resolve the issues and give certainty to land owners and other potentially affected by the mine," said Mr Sartor. But environmentalists say the decision shows that the coal industry is in the climate change policy driving seat...

The Anvil Hill coal mine at Wybong, about 20km west of Muswellbrook, is expected to produce up to 10.5 million tonnes of coal a year over 21 years for the domestic and export markets. It will have a capital investment of about $240 million and will support about 250 construction jobs and about 240 operational jobs.

Minister Sartor says 84 "strict conditions" had been imposed on the mine to deal with dust and noise issues.

Rising Tide Newcastle say the area is home to at least 178 animal species, including 4 threatened bat species, the squirrel glider, the koala, 14 threatened bird species and many more protected under international covenant. It is also home to at least 420 species of native flora, many of which are threatened and 3 of which are endemic to the area, including one newly discovered species of orchid found only at this site.

"This mine would have massive impacts on threatened species in the Hunter Valley, destroying one of the largest tracts of bushland remaining in the region," say RisingTide. "It would destroy a large area of water catchment for the already stressed Hunter River. The 10 million tonnes of coal from Anvil Hill will wreak irreparable damage on the global climate, tipping the planet further towards dangerous, runaway climate change. In the face of such massive impacts, the Iemma government still couldn't find the guts to say no to the coal lobby."

Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says the decision is a disaster and shows the NSW Government is not serious about climate change. "The Anvil Hill coal mine will add enormously to the climate change burden," he said. "Today's decision is a sell-out, not just of proper measures to deal with climate change, but is also of the Hunter community."

Senator Kerry Nettle also condemned the federal and state governments for the decision to approve the giant Anvil Hill coal mine. "The federal government is responsible for this mine as much as the state Labor government. The federal Environment Minister failed to even assess the impact on climate change of this mine," said Senator Nettle.

"The federal government and federal Labor support the expansion of the coal industry. Neither can be taken seriously on climate change if they agree to the expansion of the coal mining industry. The approval highlights the shocking inadequacy of the federal government and federal Labor climate change policies. You can't reduce greenhouse gas emissions by supporting a new coal mine that will produce 27 million tonnes of CO2 each year. The approval of this massive coal mine shows both Labor and Liberal's polices on climate change are worthless."

The approval of the new coal mine is sparking outrage. Greenpeace head of campaigns Stephen Campbell said: "The planning process is a farce. The Department of Planning has ignored advice on the environmental and climate impacts of this mine and ‘rubber stamped’ it... This is an absolute disaster for Hunter communities and for the climate."

About 500 environmentalists protested at the site last weekend, standing in formation to spell out Save Anvil Hill. The protest against the Hunter Valley coal mine has shown people from all walks of life, and not just "environmental jihadists", are worried about climate change.

Greenpeace campaign manager Stephen Campbell said about 500 people made the journey from around the state to show their commitment to dealing with climate change and opposition to new coal mines. "You've got people you'd expect to see at protests, like students and the Greens, but there's other people here who are associated with the mining industry, people who are associated with the horse and wine industry - not the kind of people who normally come to a rally such as this and they came today."

Mr Campbell said such diverse community representation demonstrated how deep and widespread concern about the expansion of the coal industry was. "The coal industry, the Labor party and others try to portray anyone who is opposed to the coal industry as some sort of mad man or environmental jihadist, and what we're showing is that is simply not the case," he said. "People from all over NSW are very concerned about the expansion of the coal industry, they're concerned about the local, social and environmental impacts.

Greenpeace spokesman Ben Pearson said: "People have had enough of new coal mines," Mr Pearson said. "They're ripping up the Hunter Valley. They're contributing to climate change. We know how great the threat of climate change is, but frankly if we're serious about climate change how can we justify opening massive new coal mines?"

SOURCES:
ABC
NQ Register
Daily Telegraph
Sydney Morning Herald
SMH
Rising Tide
Peace Bus
Rising Tide: Media Release

Warning: A barrage of Howard bullshit on Climate Change

June 7, 2007 - Australians are being warned to prepare for a "barrage of lies" from the Howard Government on climate change in the lead-up to the Federal election. Last night Treasurer Peter Costello deliberately misinformed television viewers in an attempt to claim credit for stopping landclearing in Australia as a practical measure to reduce greenhouse emissions, when it was an initiative of the climate action campaigners and the Beattie Government who did the work.

Yet, when a team of German researchers asked hundreds of experts around the world to score industrialised countries according to their commitment to tackle climate change, Australia ranked second last, with only the US doing worse...

Australian Greens climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne says: "This lie is offensive in the extreme to the many campaigners and the Queensland Government who worked hard to slow landclearing in order to protect Australia's biodiversity well before the election of the Howard Government."

"The Howard Government took advantage of other people's great work to negotiate an easy target at Kyoto. But their wilful negligence in the years since then has seen ongoing old growth logging, ongoing landclearing, and unrestricted growth in emissions from energy, all dwarfing the landclearing gains and putting our Kyoto targets out of reach," Senator Milne said in a media release today.

"Treasurer Costello's lie follows the Prime Minister's outrageous lie that reducing Australia's emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 would require us to close down every power station in the country and take every car off the road," said Senator Milne. "The Howard Government is clearly desperate on climate change and is willing to do anything to neutralise the issue - except take real action. Prepare for a barrage of lies."

Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett has accused John Howard of being "all talk and no action" on climate change. Mr Garrett says Mr Howard is simply trying to prove he is a leader on climate change before this year's election... [He has] a set of convoluted ideas it seems, but without any real commitments for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions which is so sorely needed at this point in time," he said.

"This speech is all about Mr Howard positioning himself [before] the election as someone who can take an active leadership role on climate change. I think this is more about the politics of the upcoming election than it is about a substantial attempt at reducing emissions worldwide," said Mr Garrett.

Propaganda often works through "fabrications so audacious that it is hard to know how to respond," argues Clive Hamilton - executive director of the Australia Institute, and author of Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change. This technique has been adopted by the federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, in his frequent claim that Australia is "leading the world" in the response to the climate crisis.

Clive Hamilton writes that since the Howard Government came to power, Australia's emissions have increased by 19 per cent, a growth rate more than double the average of all other industrialised countries. Hamilton says the Government expects them to grow by another 25 per cent by 2020. This is at a time when the world's climate scientists say we must reduce our emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

"When deploying the "big-lie technique" there are rules to be followed: be audacious; never admit fault; never accept the possibility of alternatives; and repeat the falsehood so often that people end up accepting it as truth," writes Clive Hamilton in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Government has repeatedly displaced responsibility from itself, first by fingering developing countries as being "exempted" from Kyoto (itself a lie, as almost all developing counties have ratified the treaty).

Most recently, the bizarre policy of allocating $200 million to reduce logging in the Third World is another attempt to shift responsibility from the need to reduce fossil emissions at home. Australia, which along with the United States has refused to be part of the Kyoto initiative, announced in April that it would put up $200 million to keep tropical tree cover in Indonesia.

The science behind that assertion is published in the journal Science co-authored by Pep Canadell from the government's CSIRO research body. Canadell worked with colleagues in the US, Britain, Brazil and France to show the benefits of keeping forests as carbon sinks. They found forests do not release carbon back into atmosphere as some have suggested. Canadell estimated deforestation accounts for 20 per cent of the carbon emissions attributed to human activity.

More recently the Howard Government has shifted the blame to China, stating there is no point acting if China "pollutes the environment to its heart's content", in the words of Alexander Downer. Ten years lost in the battle against Climate Change will translate into enormous additional human misery later this century, says Clive Hamilton.

It seems John Howard's task group on climate change is still playing for time, writes Tim Colebatch in The Age. The task group report, written by business and departmental chiefs led by the secretary of the Prime Minister's Department, Peter Shergold, set out the kind of emissions trading scheme it (and the prime minister) wants to see. The report was silent on the size of emissions cuts needed, and the carbon prices required, saying that should wait for more modelling.

Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the Howard Government has the cool heads and steady hands to ensure our response is both environmentally effective and economically responsible. Turnbull says in a opinion piece for The Age newspaper: "Deforestation is the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after electricity generation. If we were only to halve the rate of deforestation we would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent."

Meanwhile, it seems the world has more than enough sustainable energy and technology to curb climate change, but only if key decisions are made within the next five years, according to new research by World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The world has never been more aware of climate change, or the urgent need to slow its advance," said James Leape, WWF International's Director General. "The question for leaders and governments everywhere is how to rein in dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide emissions without stunting development and reducing living standards."

"The Climate Solutions report shows not only that this can be done, it shows how we can do it. We have a small window of time in which we can plant the seeds of change, and that is the next five years. We cannot afford to waste them."

SOURCES:
These lies will end in our misery - Clive Hamilton SMH
ABC News Stuff
Senator Milne - Media Releases
WWF
Monsters and Critics
The Age

Fuck off Pell - Go to hell!

June 7, 2007: It is against the law to coerce a member of parliament! Sydney's Catholic Archbishop George Pell is under attack after interferring in a New South Wales parliamentary vote. He's also been likened to outspoken Mufti, Sheikh Taj El Din Al Hilali. Cardinal Pell warned MPs that if they voted to allow therapeutic cloning there would be consequences for their life in the Church...

Cardinal Pell has urged all members of the NSW parliament to vote against the bill that would scrap the current ban on stem cell research, also known as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer.

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown is warning Archbishop Pell against threatening federal members of parliament.

"Cardinal Pell's threats that there would be religious 'consequences' for Catholic MPs who voted for the stem cell legislation are completely unacceptable," Senator Brown said.

"Attempting to coerce Catholic members of the NSW state parliament is a serious matter. Cardinal Pell should understand that it could be a criminal matter if similar remarks were used to coerce federal politicians," said Senator Brown.

The Criminal Code Act 1995 provides a penalty of up to 12 years imprisonment for threatening commonwealth public officials and for both the giver and receiver of inducements for commonwealth public officials (including federal politicians) to change their behaviour.

"I urge Cardinal Pell to refrain from bullying Catholic MPs with religious 'consequences' when the Senate votes on my voluntary euthanasia bill, or any other matter of conscience," Senator Brown said.

NSW Shadow Health Minister Jillian Skinner feels very strongly about the importance of separation of Church and State. She says Members of Parliament should be able to make up their mind according to their conscience. Liberal Frontbencher Chris Hartcher says the Cardinal's comments are unambiguous and he's critical of practising Catholics dipping in and out of the Church.

Emergency Services Minister Nathan Rees today called Cardinal Pell a hypocrite, saying a politician would not interfere with the teachings of the church in exchange for funding. He said the cardinal was out of step and owed Catholic MPs an apology. Mr Rees says he considers Cardinal Pell's incursion a "clear and arguably contemptuous incursion into the deliberations of the elected members of this Parliament. And I think he's got three options; he can apologise, he can run for Parliament; or he can invite further comparisons with that serial boofhead Sheikh Hilali," said Mr Rees.

Sheik Alhilali's friend and confidant Keysar Trad said it was a "disgrace" the mufti had been dragged into the debate on stem cell research. The mufti was shocked at the insult and thought it showed great disrespect to Mr Rees' electorate of Toongabbie, he said. "Muslims are sick of being used as an example of ridicule. It is shameful," he said.

"I would like to see the premier show leadership on this issue and come out strongly condemning these remarks and to discipline this person. If he's (Rees) big enough then I would expect to see him at the mufti's office delivering an apology in person over the next few days."

"Oddly enough, if he was to research the mufti's opinion on this issue, he might be pleasantly surprised," Mr Trad said. "His fatwa (ruling) on this is that if it is for scientific research and does not risk the life of another human being and does not harm another living thing then it's fine."

George Pell's suggestion to in some way exclude Catholic politicians who vote for the legislation is nothing short of reprehensible, says Dom Knight. "It is fundamentally undemocratic for elected representatives to make judgements of this nature on the basis of their individual religious beliefs, rather than the position of the voters that elected them and the broader society that they represent," said Mr Knoght on his SMH blog. "If he wants to live in a state that's run according to his church's principles, I would strongly encourage him to move to the Vatican City."

NSW Labor MP Tony Stewart said he would risk his shot at the afterlife before he voted against the Bill. "Maybe I'll go to hell but if I go to hell I'm going to do so by saving a lot of lives, because that's what this Bill is about," the Catholic MP said. Mr Stewart said Cardinal Pell was entitled to his views but should keep out of politics saying the bill will make a difference to people with life-threatening diseases. "We don't need a religious leader telling members of parliament what should be done," he said.

Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey also object to the Cardinal's threat. Mr Hockey, also a Catholic, said Cardinal Pell should use his position to educate Catholics, not threaten them. "I don't object to him expressing that opinion, but I do object to any suggestion that there are consequences," Mr Hockey said.

The Bill would bring NSW into line with the Commonwealth, which has already approved therapeutic cloning. The bill is currently being debated in the Legislative Assembly, with a conscience vote now expected later this week.

Cardinal Pell refused to say whether Catholic MPs would be excommunicated from the church if they voted in favour of the legislation. The church would deal with that issue if it arose, he said.

"Cloning is not quite the same as abortion and the legislation for such a thing as cloning is different from actually performing cloning," Cardinal Pell told reporters. "But it is a serious moral matter and Catholic politicians who vote for this legislation must realise that their voting has consequences for their place in the life of the church." Cardinal Pell said the legislation had been rushed into parliament, with the public and MPs given little or no information about the issue.

Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey also came under fire after saying Catholics who did not condemn the cloning of human embryos for medical research were acting against the teachings of the Catholic faith and may face excommunication.

Prime Minister John Howard says he did not believe either man was trying to direct MPs on political matters. "I think that Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Hickey are both church leaders, they are entitled to express their views and I respect both of them."

--

UPDATE: The Stem cell research legislation passed its first stages in NSW Parliament with MPs exercising their conscience vote this morning. On Thurday the MPs voted 65 to 26 for the Bill to overturn a ban on therapeutic cloning.
The Bill is not expected to be finally passed until the next sitting of Parliament in a week’s time.

--

SOURCES:
PM - ABC
Village Voice
News Limited
SMH
The Age
The Australian
Herald Sun
Sunday Times
Dom Knight

End Olympic Dam special treatment

June 6, 2007: Greens want to end Olympic Dam's special treatment - The Greens will move in the South Australian Parliament to scrap exemptions to state laws given to BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam mine in outback SA. The $7 billion BHP Billiton Olympic Dam project is planned to become the world’s biggest uranium producer, the third or fourth largest copper mine, and one of Australia’s largest gold mines...

Greens MLC Mark Parnell will introduce a private member's bill to remove the mining company's exemptions from laws on Aboriginal heritage, environment protection and natural resource management. He says the exemptions were granted 25 years ago and times have changed.

Mr Parnell is also concerned that BHP Billiton is not bound by the same water use laws as other companies, giving it an unfair advantage. "I think that there are certainly problems with water resources. This mine does not have to comply with the same regime as everyone else and they're also not bound by the same pollution laws that other companies have to operate under," he said. "If the company is as good as the Government says then there should be no problem in removing these special exemptions.

"I think now that the only fair way is to make sure that all industrial players in this state operate under the same rules. You shouldn't have special rules for your favourite companies and other laws for the rest."

A spokesman for BHP Billiton says the indenture legislation does not allow the company to evade its legal obligations and the Olympic Dam mine is the most intensively regulated operation in SA.

BHP Billiton is considering a further major expansion of Olympic Dam to more than double its current production capacity - proposing to expand its mining and processing from around 200,000 tonnes per year of copper to approximately 500,000 tonnes per year. BHP Billiton would then be the world's biggest spender on an open cut mine. It would be a bigger hole than Kalgoorlie's "Super Pit", with more than a pit 3.6km x 3.65km and 1km deep.

Olympic Dam has long term contracts for the sale of uranium oxide concentrates to customers in the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada and the United States.

It is expected that at least 160 million tonnes of radioactive waste will be produced over the life-span of Olympic Dam mine. The waste includes radioactive wash water known as tailings which are stored in 75 hectare retention ponds with levees 30 metres high.

The Olympic Dam operations secured exemptions to the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988, the Development Act 1993, the Environmental Protection Act 1993, the Freedom of Information Act 1991, the Mining Act 1971, Natural Resources Act 2004 (including the Water Resources Act 1997)

This raft of exemptions embodied in the Roxby Downs Indenture Act effectively places this mine outside the law protecting accepted social, environmental and cultural values, and makes the company’s commitments to complying with strict standards manifestly unbelievable.

Radioactive and highly acidic tailings are a by-product of the milling process at Olympic Dam. Currently these are stored in a Tailings Dam called the Tailings Retention System (TRS). This system is vast, covering more than 500 hectares and standing 10 metres in height. More than 10 million tonnes of tailings per year are added to this massive reservoir.

In 1994 a massive leak from the TRS was reported. Over four years, three million cubic metres of liquid leaked through the aquifer.

Meanwhile, Safework SA is investigating an explosion at the Olympic Dam site in May. Contact was made with explosive during drilling work, causing the explosion. A worker was treated for injuries caused by rock debris.

In July 2005, a worker died while blasting a tunnel at the Olympic Dam mine.

SOURCES:
ABC News
Mine Web
ABC News
BHP
BHP: olympic dam eis
Wikipedia - Olympic_Dam
Olympic Dam Mine
MPI
ANAWA

Australia not ready for nuclear; WA to ban uranium mining/power plants

June 5, 2007 - The head of ANSTO, Australia's peak nuclear science body, Dr Ziggy Switkowski, says Australians are not yet convinced of the need for a nuclear energy industry. He says building a nuclear energy industry in Australia would take at least 15 years to implement. Despite 50 years into the best funded development of any energy technology - nuclear energy is still beset with problems.

WA Premier Alan Carpenter has said the WA Government’s position is very clear: "we are against uranium mining and nuclear energy. I will do all I can to ensure WA remains free of nuclear power facilities."
Dr Ziggy Switkowski says building a nuclear energy industry in Australia would take at least 15 years to set up a regulatory regime, do the appropriate environmental checks and vendor selection process - "getting into the queue, ordering reactors and building them, which we know takes a number of years... 10 at the earliest, 15 more likely," he told ABC television.

Dr Switkowski - chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), reported to Prime Minister Howard last year on the viability of a nuclear industry in Australia. He also cast doubt on the effectiveness of a planned government advertising campaign to push nuclear power.

"It would be unprecedented to take a national community, such as we have in Australia, that starts out feeling wary about nuclear power and making them positive about nuclear power within a year or two," Dr Switkowski said. "This is a journey that countries usually take over several years and I think it will take more than one electoral cycle..."

As the nuclear power issue radiates across the country, some say Howard is deliberately diverting funds and attention away from real solutions - by insisting that Australia consider domestic nuclear power generation.

Mr Howard seems intent on pushing something currently illegal, inordinately expensive, reliant on massive government subsidies and far too slow to respond to the immediate challenges of climate change. Indeed, the Federal Government continues to force the issue of nuclear power into the States and Territories, having recently claimed it could override the States on the development of nuclear reactors.

However, the WA Premier says nuclear power stations will be banned in Western Australia under new legislation to be introduced. The Premier said the legislation would also include a referendum trigger if the Commonwealth Government ever tried to override the new State laws. Premier Carpenter said the "anti-nuclear legislation", to be introduced when Parliament resumes in June, would:

"prohibit the construction or operation of a nuclear facility in WA; prohibit the transportation of certain material to a nuclear facility site; and prohibit the connecting of nuclear generation works to an electricity transmission or distribution system..."

"To thwart any attempt by John Howard to override WA, there will be a trigger in the new laws which will see a referendum held if the Commonwealth tries to override the State’s anti-nuclear stance," he said. "“The people of WA will then be able to have their say on the issue if the Commonwealth moves to develop nuclear power facilities in this State. In other words, it could be at the Commonwealth’s political peril if they ever proceeded with such a move."

Mr Carpenter said the State Government is committed to developing natural gas, clean coal and renewable energy sources including geothermal, solar, wave and wind as future energy sources.

Elsewhere in Australia, the possibility of nuclear power is hindered. In Victoria the Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act 1983 prohibits the construction or operation of any nuclear reactor, and consequential amendments to other Acts reinforce this. In NSW the Uranium Mining and Nuclear Facilities (Prohibitions) Act 1986 is similar. In 2007 the Queensland government enacted the Nuclear Facilities Prohibition Act 2006, which is similar (but allows uranium mining).

Other countries using nuclear energy are discovering problems with the industry. In the USA, direct subsidies to nuclear energy totalled $115 billion between 1947 and 1999, with a further $145 billion in indirect subsidies.

In contrast, subsidies to wind/solar combined during the same period amounted to only $5.5 billion. During the first 15 years of development, nuclear subsidies amounted to $15.30 per kWh generated. The comparable figure for wind energy was 46 cents per kWh during its first 15 years of development.

Professor Ian Lowe - Australian Consevation Foundation President - says that despite being 50 years into the best funded development of any energy technology, nuclear energy is still beset with problems.

"Reactors go over budget by billions, decommissioning plants is so difficult and expensive that power stations are kept operating past their useful life, and there is still no solution for radioactive waste. So there is no economic case for nuclear power," said Professor Lowe in 2005.

Dr Jim Green - national nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth - says the problem of radioactive waste management is nowhere near resolution. "Not a single repository exists for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste, which is produced at an annual rate of about 10,000 tonnes in nuclear power reactors worldwide," says Dr Green.

"Technologies exist to encapsulate or immobilise radionuclides to a greater or lesser degree, but encapsulated radioactive waste still represents a potential public health and environmental threat that will last for millennia," says Dr Green.

A recent study, conducted by a research team from Georgetown University, Stanford University and UC Berkeley, analysed the costs of electricity from existing US nuclear reactors. It reports that no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States in nearly 30 years years, in part because they've proved to be poor investments, producing far more expensive electricity than originally promised.

The US nuclear industry provides a direct link to the perils of nuclear weapons. "During my eight years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was connected to a nuclear reactor program," says former US Vice President, Al Gore. In 2005, about 19 percent of U.S. electricity generation was produced by 104 nuclear reactors.

Neverhteless, renewable energy is a growing industry. According to Dr Jim Green, renewable energy, mostly hydroelectricity, already supplies 19 per cent of world electricity - compared to nuclear's 16 per cent.

"The share of renewables is increasing," he says, "while nuclear's share is decreasing. Wind power and solar power are growing by 20-30 per cent every year.
In 2004, renewable energy added nearly three times as much net generating capacity as nuclear power," says Dr Green. "In Australia, only 8 per cent of electricity is from renewable energy - down from 10 per cent in 1999."

SOURCES:
WA Premier Media Release
The Age
Sunday Times
The Australian
Lateline - ABC
UIC - Briefing Paper 44
ACF
Azom
Beyond Nuclear - PDFNuclear power: no solution to climate change

Stolen Wages taskforce a win for WA Aboriginals

Stolen Wages taskforce a win for WA Aboriginals

May 31, 2007 - The WA Government has announced that it will establish a taskforce to investigate wages and Commonwealth benefits stolen from Aboriginal people. In some cases, up to 75 per cent of their income was held in Government managed trust funds but never repaid. Brian Wyatt from the Goldfields Land and Sea Council says the compensation owed to Indigenous workers in the Goldfields alone could be up to $150 million...

The announcement coincided with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum that changed the Commonwealth Constitution to allow the Commonwealth Parliament to make special laws regarding indigenous people and enable indigenous people to be included in the national census.

The term 'stolen wages' refers to entitlements and other moneys that should have been paid to indigenous workers but were not. Regulations allowed the Government of the day to hold in trust up to 75 per cent of an indigenous person's wages. There is evidence that some of the workers did not receive their full entitlements.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert welcomed the announcement having pushed hard for the state to act on the findings of a Senate inquiry: "The West Australian economy was built on the back of the unpaid and under-paid labour of our Aboriginal people," Senator Siewert said. "They were systematically excluded from the benefits of the wealth they created."

"The Senate inquiry found ample evidence of monies being withheld, monies diverted in WA to missions and station coffers, and widespread rorting of trust funds by trustees," said Senator Siewert.

But there is concerned by the announced timeframe as many of the people affected are now elderly and another year of delay will see more of them passing away before justice is achieved.

Brian Wyatt from the Goldfields Land and Sea Council says justice must be done for the people who suffered. "Indications are that the annual indigenous payroll for Goldfields pastoral properties in the 1960s was in the order of $9 million, said Mr Wyatt.

"There were curfews in towns, you know. You had to be out of town by six o'clock, you had to live on designated areas outside of towns and, on top of that, you worked for next to nothing, particularly in the pastoral industry. So it was very, very demeaning I would have thought," he said. "At one mission, in return for a ten shilling a week government accommodation subsidy, Aboriginal people were provided bush shelters and tents with no toilet facilities, and were expected to hunt their own food."

Indigenous Affairs Minister Michelle Roberts said the task force would investigate and make recommendations to try and correct some of the injustices of the past. Mrs Roberts said many of the people affected were likely to have died and a broad repayment scheme, potentially encompassing the families of deceased workers.

The NSW Government set up a trust fund scheme in 2005 to repay wages which were lost between 1900 and 1968 to living claimants and their descendants. In Queensland, Aboriginal people lodged a multi-milliondollar claim for lost wages and entitlements in 2002 and the Government set up a $55.5 million fund which capped claims at $4000 a person.

Mrs Roberts said stolen wages remained an issue for indigenous people. “This is not a report we would be setting up unless we were prepared to take some action and prepared to extend some money at the end of the process,” she said.

Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Dennis Eggington said the inquiry was overdue and the Government needed to provide meaningful relief by acting on its findings.

----

Recommendation 4 of the Senate Unfinished business inquiry

The committee recommends that:
(a) the Western Australian Government:
(i) urgently consult with Indigenous people in relation to the stolen wages issue; and
(ii) establish a compensation scheme in relation to withholding, underpayment and non-payment of Indigenous wages and welfare entitlements using the New South Wales scheme as a model, and
(b) the Commonwealth Government conduct preliminary research of its archival material in relation to the stolen wages issues in Western Australia.

---

Sources:
Greens Media
GLSC Media
Inquiry into Stolen Wages - Senate
Sunday Times
The West
ABC
PERTH INDYMEDIA

Secret NT nuke waste deal cuts into dreaming

May 29, 2007: Northern Territorians should feel let down by the consultation process for a nuclear waste site at Muckaty Station - eight kilometres from where people live at the station homestead. The Northern Land Council has nominated the site, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, as a national nuclear waste repository.

"Our dreamings cross right into that land where they want to put that dump...

If the Federal Government approves the site, the site's traditional owners will hand over control of the land for about 200 years and receive a one-off $12 million payment. Only a handful of people were consulted and the voices of the overwhelming majority are not being listened too.

The only way in which a modern government like the Howard Government should be addressing this issue is to ensure that it has the full consent of communities involved in every way when it comes to the location of a facility, like a radioactive waste dump.

This process has still got a very long way to travel and we haven't seen the details of what has actually been agreed between the NLC, the relevant traditional owners and the Minister - we've only got the reports that we've seen on the wire and heard on the radio.

The secretly negotiated deal has bitterly divided traditional owners of the 2241- square-kilometre Muckaty Station, where the Government wants to build a dump storing 5000 cubic metres of nuclear waste.

Bindi Jakamarra Martin, a Warlmanpa man from the Ngapa clan, said building the dump on a 1.5-square-kilometre would "poison our beautiful land" and "change our dreamings". "Our dreamings cross right into that land where they want to put that dump," he said.

The deal was revealed on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the landmark 1967 referendum granting Aboriginal citizenship rights. The agreement allows the Federal Government to take the Ngapa clan's land for up to 200 years to store nuclear waste from all the states and territories.

Truckloads of radioactive material would be driven from Sydney's Lucas Heights and Woomera in South Australia to the site, which is 10 kilometres from the busy Stuart Highway and eight kilometres from where people live at the station homestead.

Experts will now study the sparsely vegetated site to see if it is scientifically suitable to store nuclear waste.

The Muckaty deal has angered the Northern Territory Government, whose legislation against developing a dump in the territory can be overridden by Canberra. "This potential facility could compromise the social, cultural and traditional ties of Aboriginal people to their country," said Elliott McAdam, a minister in the NT Labor Government. Environmentalists have called on federal Science Minister Julie Bishop to reject the site.

A traditional owner of another site under consideration for a nuclear waste dump has questioned whether all residents of Muckaty Station agree with the nomination. Kathleen Martin from Mount Everard, north-west of Alice Springs, says there was some division over the proposal in the community.

"I'm asking, was that in agreeance with everybody on Muckaty?" she said. "Because the message that came down a couple of weeks ago was that the older people - the older men - had told some of the people there, you sell the land, you sell your soul."

Martin said they decided to vote against the dump after attending several meetings with the Northern Land Council and elders were taken to Sydney to tour Lucas Heights.

William Jakamarra Graham, another traditional owner, said: "We don't care about the money — $12 million is nothing to us. But we care about our land and what will happen to the children of the future. We don't want to leave them a nuclear dump."

Natalie Wasley from the Arid Lands Environement Centre, who has been campaigning against all of the sites proposed, says many of the traditional owners do not support the proposal. "I've spoken with a Ngapa elder this morning, Bindi Martin from the Muckaty area, and he said he still has strong opposition to the dump proposal," she said. "I believe this is a view held by other elders as well.

"I think the Science Minister Julie Bishop will have a hard time showing that there is consent within the Ngapa group let alone the whole Muckaty community for this nomination for the waste dump."

Dave Sweeney, nuclear campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, said Muckaty Station was not selected on a scientific basis and turning it into a dump would be "environmentally irresponsible and socially divisive".

The Northern Land Council says it has all 70 traditional owners' support.

SOURCES:
The Age
ABC NEWS
ABC
The Age

Racist plan to force English for Indigenous people - Mal Brough is not God

May 25, 2007 - Compulsory English 'pure racism'

"There's no need for him to preach to us. Mal Brough is not God."

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough's plan to make English compulsory for Aboriginal children has drawn stern reaction from the indigenous community. He says he considering quarantining welfare payments to ensure Aboriginal parents send their children to school.

Australian Aboriginal folks have labelled the Howard Government's push to force Indigenous children to learn English as "racist". Native Title holder Rosalie Kunoth-Monks says Mr Brough needs a reminder that he is not God. Aboriginal activist Sam Watson says the Government is pinning the blame on the victims instead of helping them. "I'm absolutely infuriated by this," he said. "The Howard Government seems to be inventing new ways and means of perpetually blaming Aboriginal people and showing cultural disrespect to Aboriginal people."

Aboriginal people are concerned about losing traditional Aboriginal languages, a problem that is not being addressed. They say Mr Brough's proposal could lead to "cultural death"...
Prominent Aboriginal activist Sam Watson said the plan was "pure racism" and dismissed it as a political stunt. "They (politicians) are desperate for anything that will give them any kind of minor political advantage," he said.

"Holding children and their families to ransom for the government's systemic failure to provide the essentials is appalling and an abuse of human rights."

Former ALP national president and Labor candidate Warren Mundine said it was important that Aboriginal children learn to read and write their traditional languages, and learn about their cultural heritage, in addition to learning English, maths and science. "Learning about their culture gives them self esteem and that makes people want to get educated," he said.

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown says indigenous languages were in danger of dying out. "Of more than 250 indigenous languages in 1788, as few as 60 remain alive and in use as a first tongue," Senator Brown said. "The Howard government's neglect of this national heritage parallels the push to extinction of Gaelic languages in Britain and Ireland in past centuries."

Reconciliation Australia board member Fred Chaney says the Government needs to offer more than rhetoric. "You're going to need to increase resources, you're going to need to do the job better, you're going to need to make sure you've got high quality staff on location," he said. "It's not a case of Aboriginal people having to change. I think the systems that deliver services to Aboriginal people have to become much more skilled and better resourced."

Central Australian Indigenous politician Alison Anderson says it should be up to parents to decide whether their children learn English. The Labor Member for MacDonnell says while she supports all children learning English, it should not be tied to welfare payments. "It's important for Indigenous kids to understand their foundation of who they are and first and foremost they're Aboriginals," she said. "Yes, we do have to learn English to participate in this society and it's up to individual parents. I don't think it should be enforced by governments, but we have to have rules and regulations and children going to school every day so they can participate in society."

Tauto Sansbury from the Aboriginal Justice Advocacy Committee says the Federal Government's move will take attitudes to Aborigines back 60 years. He says the plan is insulting and reinforces old-fashioned stereotypes. "They still want to treat Aboriginal people back in the 30s and 40s, where they're the master and we're the servant and our attitude is 'yes boss, we'll do what you want'," he said.

Central Australian Native Title holder Rosalie Kunoth-Monks says Mr Brough needs a reminder that he is not God. She says Mr Brough should stop putting Aboriginal people down. "To have the freedom in an affluent democratic country to speak your language as well as access that which is outside that will enable you to get jobs and so forth, we're well and truly aware of that," she said.

Australian Education Union says Mr Brough's attitude to Indigenous education verges on racism. Spokesman Adam Lampe says the "big stick" approach is culturally insensitive. Mr Lampe says a model that focuses on punishing individuals for not succeeding in certain areas of knowledge is reminiscent of a 19th-century approach.

New South Wales' first Indigenous MP, Linda Burney, says Mr Brough seems to lack a fundamental understanding of Aboriginality. "I think that he needs to understand that culture and country is incredibly important to Aboriginal people and they will be protected at all costs," she said. "Aboriginal kids do need to be bilingual but it's a bit rich coming from a person who actually is part of a Government that took away funding for bilingual programs in the Northern Territory."

Ms Burney says one of the biggest tragedies is losing traditional Aboriginal languages, a problem that is not being addressed. She says Mr Brough's proposal could lead to "cultural death". "Now, it is important to be bilingual - there's no two ways about it - but it can't be at the expense of your mother tongue."

Labor Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says the Government should first improve the resources available to teach Indigenous children "to actually act to improve the English language of Aboriginal children, not just talk in empty political rhetoric".

Prime Minister John Howard has strongly supported the push, telling Southern Cross Radio that Indigenous children should learn English, just as the children of migrants have to.

SOURCES:
ABC
The Age
ABC Radio
Message Stick
ABC