State Election Strategy Meeting – No Nuclear Waste Dump on Adnyamathanha Yarta

FoE Members & interested allies are invited to come to the community room at Christie Walk on Wednesday 26th July at 5pm to discuss strategy in the lead up to the next State election.

The Second Citizen’s Jury into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission’s Report demonstrated there is widespread support for Indigenous sovereignty and against the expansion of permissions at state level for activities relating to nuclear industry activity in South Australia.

“We won that battle but the fight isn’t over yet.” The Federal Government is targeting three sites in SA to become the national nuclear waste dump. These plans have been on foot for quite sometime. In 2004, South Australians won a 6-year fight against the same proposal. This produced the SA Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000 (SA) which aims to “protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of South Australia and to protect the environment in which they live by prohibiting the establishment of certain nuclear waste storage facilities in this State.”

The current Federal Government has demonstrated that they are not interested in community consultation, and we need to get current & aspiring state politicians to understand that this is a critical issue for all people in South Australia. The nuclear industry is not winding-down and in the last few days[*], it has been announced that we have commenced exports of uranium to India. Although the agreement to supply uranium was signed in 2014, it was first reported in the media about twelve months later. We need to continue to be pro-active in our opposition to all things nuclear, and ensure that waste storage never gets a foot in the door.

[*] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-19/australia-quietly-makes-first-uranium-shipment-to-india/8722108

`In war, everything is simple, and everything simple is hard.’ This strategy gem from the Prussian staff officer and military thinker embodies his principle of decision making under pressure called `friction.’ The coinage reflected his fascination with contemporary 19th century physics, part and parcel of his attempt to discuss Napoleonic era military experience at the highest Hegelian dialectical philosophical level. Strategic principles are transferable from war to politics. So next time you are frustrated in a meeting with friends and comrades, heave a sigh and reflect that friction is a normal part of arriving at consensus.

A groundbreaking archaeological discovery in Australia’s north has extended the known length of time Aboriginal people have inhabited the continent to at least 65,000 years.
The findings on about 11,000 artefacts from Kakadu national park, published on Thursday in the journal Nature, prove Indigenous people have been in Australia for far longer than the much-contested estimates of between 47,000 and 60,000 years, the researchers said.

Some of the artefacts were potentially as old as 80,000 years.
The new research upends decades-old estimates about the human colonisation of the continent, their interaction with megafauna, and the dispersal of modern humans from Africa and across south Asia.

more details in the Guardian