N-waste belongs in too-important-to-ignore basket

September 30, 2005

BOB Hawke's proposal to store nuclear waste in Australia is not visionary, because science ministers have heard his scenario before. It is plain common sense, and may become a matter of survival.

Yet there is an unwillingness in the Australian community to think about the issue ("Nuclear dump call dismissed", The Age, 28/9) because people are, frankly, terrified.

We have been badly served on this issue by successive science ministers, none of whom have laid out the arguments for and against, for average Australians to understand - despite greenhouse gasses and nuclear waste disposal being two of the most pressing scientific dilemmas. Both could have devastating effects on humanity.

It is criminal to allow people to continue accepting millions of deaths, and possible extinction, from the continued use of fossil fuels and associated extreme weather events, because some politicians flatly refuse to raise politically controversial issues. Their prime concern is their re-election; ordinary people worry about the future facing their grandchildren.

People must know that current nuclear waste disposal arrangements cannot safely continue, because the material is highly vulnerable to terrorists, random acts of nature such as earthquakes and tsunamis, or irresponsible governments dumping spent nuclear waste in the oceans.

The most stable geological formations on the planet are salt mines and granite shields. Australia has vast areas of the latter, and spent fuel rods encased in synroc could be properly secured.

I would far rather have nuclear fuel placed in a secure depository in Australia than the current arrangements, which Bob Brown and his cohorts apparently favour - highly toxic material littered around the world in extremely dangerous storages, or chucked in the sea.

When proposals to store this waste here have been raised with political representatives or their advisers, one of the first objections is that the northern Australian granite shields are on Aboriginal land, which is, apparently, too hot a potato.

But the Aboriginal people and other First Nation peoples are aware of the dangers of mankind poisoning the earth, and deserve to be included in a reasoned national debate.

A facility such as the one Bob Hawke is suggesting would indeed do humanity an enormous favour. He is correct in believing the emotion created by this issue has to be set aside in favour of discussion of scientific facts. Continuing to put our heads in the sand like a mob of frightened emus is a guaranteed recipe for catastrophe.
Barbara Campbell, Lakes Entrance

A visionary idea we should debate

BOB Hawke was never my favourite prime minister, but the visionary leadership that he is displaying on the nuclear waste issue is something both parties need to consider seriously - and are probably wishing they had thought of first.

Will everyone like it? No, certainly not the Greens or the Democrats. But then great ideas and visions will always have their detractors. Being part of the global village carries moral responsibilities and if we can help solve a major global problem of nuclear waste and benefit from it, then we should at least discuss the idea, rather than just dismiss it out of hand. If this idea comes to fruition, Australia might yet become a world power.
Scott Kroeger, South Morang

Sheer genius

BOB Hawke is a genius! Sell the world our substantial uranium reserves, then let them pay us to take the waste back. Later, when the uranium mines start running out and fast breeder reactors become economical, sell them back their own waste as fuel for 10 times the cost. We'd be rich!
Felix Dance, North Melbourne

Leopard spots

A LEOPARD really does change its spots. Bob Hawke, prime minister of Australia, was a different animal to Bob Hawke, millionaire property developer, apologist for the Burmese military regime and now apparent lobbyist for the nuclear waste dump industry. It's sad, but you just have to ask yourself: why now, what's in it for him? And you have to wonder if the big nuclear waste players are standing somewhere in the shadows with a spot eraser . . .
Anne Prince, East Malvern

Oil or nuclear: false choices

THE renewed debate about the disposal of nuclear waste amid another petrol price crisis is revisiting false choices about old and increasingly unsustainable technology.

When the developed world experienced its first oil shock, we responded by seeming to get serious about alternatives to hydrocarbons. But when you think how much potential investment capital has been generated by the constant upward trend in prices for oil and its products, and how much governments have earned in taxes and excise from them, it is bewildering that a generation later we are still talking about insulating ourselves from oil shocks and what to do with the nuclear waste nobody wants in their backyards.

There are so many alternative energy sources that have not been developed into industrial uses or alternatives to our dependence on unclean and finite fuel reserves because of lack of investment and governmental leadership.

Will our children be having the same "debate" about our false choices? Or will they live in a world where investment in renewable energy choices is not constrained by a reluctance to surrender their nuclear and hydrocarbon security blankets?

Recent writings about sustainable societies by Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery are challenging us to plan for a future when we won't have a hydrocarbon backstop.
Tim Sullivan, Mount Helen

The spectre of Joe McCarthy

ASIO's claim of "up to 800 extremists" in Australia (The Age, 29/9) , reminds me, as someone with a sense of history, of Senator Joe McCarthy's claim in the United States in 1950 that he had a list of 205 "active communists" in the US State Department (a number, by the way, that changed from speech to speech).

McCarthy's divisive and scandalous strategy paralysed the US for far too long. It was guilt by innuendo and association, and stampeded far too many people into supporting McCarthy's aim, for fear of being seen as soft on communism.

We are at risk again, of a sort of McCarthyism, being perpetrated by the Howard Government. If left unchecked, this could be as tragic and counter-productive as it was in 1950s America - and as divisive for this nation and the world.
Chris Burgess, St Kilda

Briefed and ready

UNLIKE our premiers and chief ministers, I do not need a secret briefing from ASIO to convince me that there are people in Australia who pose a terrorist threat. For example, I know of at least one Australian who has backed an armed takeover of a Middle Eastern country and who has sent armed militia trained in Australia to support it. Fortunately, we now have a police force with strong enough powers to protect us from such people. Fourteen days' detention without charge should be a good start.
Andrew Brion, Northcote

Dodgy reasoning

PREDICTABLY, Rod Smyrk concluded his letter yesterday (29/9) with a broad utilitarian assertion. He thought the new terror legislation was justified on the basis that "the general good for the society as a whole is considered of greater value than the loss of liberty to the individual".

This type of argument is often used as a bandage to cover all manner of dodgy reasoning, particularly on the issue of terrorism.

Let's say a terrorist attack occurs in the next 12 months on Australian soil, and 100 of us die. The chance that any one person in Australia will die because of this threat is about 0. 5 per cent. The Government's response to what it sees as the probability of such a threat is hardly proportional. To draw an analogy, it would be like giving the police the power to preventively detain someone, who they reasonably suspect may drive dangerously, for up to 14 days in order to protect the right to life of fellow road users.

Primarily, terrorism is a spectacle used to create fear. Don't succumb to it.
Godfrey Moase, Williamstown

What laws do

ROD Smyrk criticises "hand-wringers" for worrying about the new "anti-terror" laws, stating that "each and every law in place in society is in effect an erosion of civil liberties".

This is not true. Many laws are designed to facilitate civil liberties, legally enshrining people's capacity to act without unjust restraint. In particular, they attempt to protect individuals from the whims of corrupt governments, which will always use the slogan of "greater good" to justify totalitarian rule.

Law might well be a clumsy path to justice, but it is often our last bulwark against the slow march of banal evil.
Dr Damon A. Young, department of philosophy, University of Melbourne

Draining the swamp

JOHN Howard and Philip Ruddock, how many Kenneth Davidsons (Opinion, 29/9) do you need to be convinced that the scourge of terrorism will always hover above us until "the swamp of injustice has been drained"?

No amount of tough and still tougher laws are going to help until we have treated the cause of the disease. The continuing occupation of Palestine by Israel for 38 years has been the biggest cause of the present-day terrorism; the invasion of Iraq has only rubbed salt on the festering wound. The "staged" withdrawal of the Coalition troops from Iraq and Israel's return to pre-1967 borders in Palestine are the only medicines that would work.

Turning Australia into a police state is akin to killing the messenger
R. S. Baweja, Clayton

Simplistic and naive

THE trouble with Kenneth Davidson's easy "drag and drop" solution to terrorism - "to drain the swamp of injustice in the Middle East", the touchstone of which is Israel's refusal to withdraw to the pre-1967 green line - is that a large part, if not a majority, of the Palestinian population and leadership does not accept Israel's right to exist. A withdrawal by Israel to the green line will do little to address matters if the other side will take it as a mere starting point for an Israeli withdrawal into complete non-existence.

Hopefully both Israelis and Palestinians will move to a position where a solution can be agreed upon and implemented. But this is not the quick-fix answer to global terrorism as Davidson suggests; it is, rather, a long and delicate process that will take time and require people, not only leaders, to forge together a solution based on co-existence and mutual acceptance. We will gain nothing, and we will lose focus, if we deal with terror by blaming its victims, by escaping into dark corners, or by pursuing simplistic and naive propositions.
Niv Tadmore, South Yarra

Why I ran for political office

LAST November, after more than 20 years working in the community, I did what Mark Latham says not to: I ran for political office as a local councillor.

Why? From volunteering as a teenager at an old people's home, to working with street women in Manila, to a best-forgotten stint as assistant Brownie leader, to establishing an organisation to fight sex slavery, I have enjoyed, if not always been financially rewarded for, working with the community.

But as anyone working for change in the community knows, there is a point where only elected officials can make a difference. People in the community have the power to influence. Elected representatives have the power to act. It is not that community workers are not important, it is just that when they handball an issue, someone has to catch it.

Latham is wrong to set community involvement up against political office. Rather, he should look to people such as Nelson Mandela - or indeed Bob Brown - and advocate working in the community first. This model gives change-makers a grounding beyond petty party politics and an appreciation of what a difference good politicians can make.
Cr Kathleen Maltzahn, North Fitzroy

Taking Umbridge with Nelson's report

ONE could be forgiven for thinking that Brendan Nelson's latest commissioned report on education (The Age, 29/9) was ghost-written by Dolores Umbridge, of Hogwarts fame.

Umbridge's teaching methods align perfectly with the "explicit-teacher-centred-whole-class-lock-step-hierarchical-drill-and-practice-of-linear-sequences-of-sub-skills" methods recommended in the report. She is explicit about the aims of her course, stating them in her first lesson.

She is also explicit about how it will be learned (by whole-class, independent silent reading from a prescribed text book without any talking). She is also systematic. Her planning is based entirely on the prescribed text book, which the whole class will read in lock-step fashion.

Her evaluation of learning is achieved through "carefully controlled examination conditions". When Harry Potter asks, "And what good's theory going to be in the real world?", her response is an apocryphal reminder of the dangers inherent in this kind of curriculum: "This is school, Mr Potter, not the real world."

Umbridge's curriculum causes her students to disengage with her and her subject. Fortunately, some of her students form an underground group to teach themselves the real-world magic spells they needed to know.

My concern is that the recommendations made in this report will have the same effect on our children's learning in maths, science and literacy. Unfortunately, many of them will not have the resources to form "underground groups" like those provided by "for-profit" coaching colleges and tutors.
Brian Cambourne, faculty of education, University of Wollongong

The wrong horse

IT IS a waste of time Australian scientists blaming the Government because they backed the wrong horse and have been working on embryonic stem cells (The Age, 29/9) which have not healed anybody of anything.

Scientists around the world have already healed people using adult stem cells. It is time for our people to change horses to adult stem cells - freely available in the fat culled by liposuction - before all the scientific bucks have gone overseas.
Helen Woodall, Blackburn

Breast is best

YOUR reports on breastfeeding (21/9 and 28/9) are a timely reminder of how breastfeeding prevents obesity and promotes good health not just for babies but as children grow into adults. But as a community we are failing to promote this message.

We need an advertising campaign about breastfeeding along the same lines as the anti-smoking TV ads so that women and men get the right information about how breastfeeding works and why it is worth persevering with. Yes, some people will object to a mass-media campaign and say we are guilt-tripping mothers who can't breastfeed, but nourishing babies with human milk saves lives - and you can't argue with that.
Dr Lisa Amir, Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, University of Melbourne


MY LIFE will never be the same again after reading Chris Johnston's "Don't simply demonise death metal" (Opinion, 29/9). Looking forward to tomorrow's features "Frozen supermarket pastry works well" and "The people in my local newsagency are really nice".
James Jenkin, Footscray