Battle over nuclear waste dump

Photo / Thinkstock

Landowners opposing a plan to build Australia's first nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory say they were not consulted before the site was offered to the Government.

With the Senate preparing to debate legislation this week enabling the dump to be constructed, lawyers for four local clans said they had uncovered documents showing that members of a fifth family group, the Ngapa, were not sole owners of the land at Muckaty Station, 120km north of Tennant Creek.

The Northern Land Council (NLC), which represents traditional owners, nominated the site after the Ngapa group offered it in exchange for more than A$12 million ($16.3 million). But the four other clans have vowed to prevent the dump going ahead.

"People have given away land that doesn't belong to them," Dianne Stokes, a traditional owner from the Warlmanpa tribe, said at a rally in Tennant Creek at the weekend attended by environmentalists and Aboriginal opponents of the dump.

Martin Hyde, one of the lawyers involved, said the newly unearthed documents represented "vital information for the case". Traditional owners have launched a legal challenge to the dump, which is due to return to the Federal Court in August.

But Kim Hill, chief executive of the NLC, said the documents did not contain fresh evidence and had already been taken into consideration when the site was nominated.

Successive federal governments have been hunting since 1988 for a suitable site for a purpose-built dump for radioactive waste.

Mark Lane Jangala, one of the elders bringing the court case, says the land is a male initiation site. There are also concerns that it lies in an earthquake and flood-prone area, meaning the waste might not be secure.