Would Labor stop Jabiluka?
By Francesca Davis
and Pip Hinman
If there was a single environment and indigenous rights issue which could have become a significant factor in this election, it is the Jabiluka uranium mine. One poll shows that 70% of people oppose the mine, yet Jabiluka has failed to get on the main agenda. What has gone wrong?
While the Coalition is strongly in favour of the mine, Labor is yet to unconditionally commit itself to stopping it.
No wonder Energy Resources of Australia chief Philip Shirvington does not seem concerned if Labor wins on October 3, according to the September 21 Business Review Weekly (BRW). Neither is NT deputy chief minister Mike Reed. He was reported to have said in the same article: "Labor's policy for those opposed to the mine is that Labor will stop the ... project ... Labor's policy for those who support the mine is that Labor will give the mine the go-ahead."
Labor's position is that if Jabiluka is not deemed an "existing mine" it will not get the go-ahead. Jabiluka is not an existing mine, it says, because, as far as it knows, "all relevant approvals are not in place nor finalised in a way which would require it to be regarded as an existing mine".
According to Labor's election policy announced on September 22, it "will not approve any proposal in respect of Jabiluka or any other new uranium mine made during the caretaker period of office, commencing with the formal election announcement, because any such decision would be clearly inappropriate".
While this is more than it has previously committed, Labor's position is still equivocal. Yet the leadership of the Jabiluka campaign, the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation and the peak environment bodies, decided in August on a pro-Labor marginal seats campaign — about the same time as Labor leader Kim Beazley was quoted in the Courier Mail as saying that if Jabiluka had received all approvals it would go ahead.
Which approvals constitute an "existing mine" is unclear. At one point it was thought that securing export licences was the crucial requirement. Then, it was the completion of environmental impact statements for a mill at the site.
In June, Beazley told reporters in Darwin that an "existing mine" was one that had "meaningful" contracts. He defined these as "the contracts to get the mine going — simply putting down the odd shaft here and there is not it".
ERA claims it has already got the 15 sales contracts and that it has won part approval for the on-site mill.
The peak environment bodies say that not all the environmental conditions have been satisfied by the company, and that the export licences for the uranium have yet to be granted.
If these conditions have yet to be satisfied and Labor says it will not recognise any approvals given during the election campaign, the peak bodies say this is tantamount to Labor pledging not to allow the mine to go ahead.
However, Labor has not been quite as straightforward as the peak bodies are trying to make out. According to BRW, in the first week of the election campaign, Labor's environment spokesperson Duncan Kerr wrote to Yvonne Margarula, the Mirrar people's senior traditional owner, to say that Jabiluka had not won the approvals to be considered an existing mine.
Kerr promised to stop Jabiluka "on the basis of the publicly available information" provided there was no "compelling material or legal determination", and only after ERA had been offered "natural justice".
The key issue here seems to be a possible future Labor government's legal liability. Beazley suggested on September 17, "There has not been a sufficient level of commitment of the commonwealth's obligations in contracting arrangements to prevent us from stopping that Jabiluka mine".
However, environment minister Senator Robert Hill says a government which stopped the mine could be exposed to a large damages bill. The project is worth some $14 billion.
Shirvington summed up Labor's position in the BRW interview: "I think Labor deliberately made the rules rather obscure and that gives them somewhere to hide."
Election proposal
In August, a proposal was sent out from the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation to all Jabiluka Action Groups (JAG) groups to adopt an election campaign strategy focused on getting Labor back into government. It was costed at around $100,000 and included printing, travel for state coordinators and the national director, wages for the national director ($500 a week), phones, advertising and equipment hire.
A number of urban marginal seats "with some green swingability" were targeted. According to the proposal: "The objective will be to force local [ALP] candidates to include a statement on Jabiluka in their own election material."
While the proposal admits at one point that "the ALP position is not ideal", two pages later it says, "An ALP win would stop the mine".
This theme is repeated in election material produced by the Jabiluka Electoral Alliance (JEA), comprising individuals from the Gundjehmi corporation, Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Wilderness Society, NT Environment Centre and Friends of the Earth.
On one flyer it says: "Beazley is right. Wrong mine, wrong place, wrong product". The material urges voters to "Put Democrats, Greens and Labor ahead of Liberals".
James Warden, Jabiluka election campaign coordinator, told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly that the idea behind this pro-Labor approach is "to develop the community's perception that the ALP will stop the mine". He said that given the choice for government, there was a need to "talk up" Labor's opposition to Jabiluka, despite the fact that "they've left themselves a big exit".
Warden believes the campaign may have to continue after the election, but he said that if people expect Labor to stop it if it is elected, the ALP will be in a very difficult position if it doesn't.
While the JEA election leaflets have caused some disagreements, JEA activist Mark Wakeman feels that the campaign hasn't propped up any particular party or compromised too much. Independents and smaller progressive parties such as the Nuclear Disarmament Party and the Democratic Socialists (both oppose all uranium mining) were not included on the leaflet, he said, because of budget constraints.
Not surprisingly given Labor's equivocal record on uranium mining, the Jabiluka election campaign proposal has caused concern among some JAG activists. In Adelaide, activists told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly they had been dumped with thousands of pro-Labor leaflets which they did not feel happy about handing out.
Other concerns have been raised with the order of preferences encouraged on the leaflets. By urging a vote for the Democrats, the Jabiluka campaign material will ensure that, due to the Democrats' split preference policy, some votes will go to the Coalition.
Ongoing campaign?
Another proposal, from some of the Jabiluka blockaders, to run "Stop Jabiluka Mine" candidates in marginal lower house seats "to provide an avenue for a pro-active, long-term, public awareness and education campaign in a way which does not focus on a two-party system approach" never saw the light of day.
The activists who raised this proposal stated that this type of election campaign was aimed at involving more people, rather than simply lobbying the major parties. "The focus of the campaign would not be to get votes, but to publicly put pressure on other parties, promote progressive parties, raise public awareness and get publicity for the issue", the proposal states.
Asked why this approach had not been discussed nationally, Warden said it came down to a lack of time and money.
While Labor says it will try to stop Jabiluka, it will have to be pressured to keep this promise.
Dave Sweeney, a Jabiluka campaigner from the ACF, agrees, but told 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ that the optimum scenario would be for a Labor government to launch a comprehensive inquiry, along the lines of the Ranger inquiry in the 1970s, and to conclude on the basis of some 18 months of investigation that, given the commonwealth's environmental, human rights and international treaty obligations, Jabiluka must be stopped.
But he concedes that this strategy is not without its problems: "The only down side would be that the campaign would lose momentum."
Giving Labor the benefit of the doubt, as the leadership of the Jabiluka movement has done, has meant that Jabiluka has not become a central issue in the election campaign.
If the strategy had involved independent mass actions and rallies pressuring all parties to stop the Jabiluka mine, Labor, if elected, would be under much greater pressure to comply with the wishes of the 70% of the population who oppose the mine. At the same time, the Coalition would have lost many more votes.