A MULTINATIONAL public relations company will promote the merits of a national nuclear waste dump to South Australians - using up to $300,000 of taxpayers' money.

Meanwhile, a green coalition has pledged 1 per cent of that figure from its comparatively small funds to launch a "counter-offensive".

Hill and Knowlton, a "global communication company" which boasts 66 offices in 35 countries - including two in Australia - has won a Federal Government contract to "sell" a planned low-level nuclear waste repository to SA.

The company, which will run the campaign from its Melbourne office, is charged with "increasing awareness" about the dump, which is almost certain to be sited near Woomera.

The general manager of the company's Melbourne office, Rod Nockles, refused to comment on the campaign.

"We don't confirm or discuss our clients," he said.

Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran, whose department is the proponent of the dump, said the campaign had not been determined.

"Hill and Knowlton are carrying out media monitoring work," he said.

"The Government will constantly tailor the campaign so as to provide the public in SA with all the facts to dispel the constant misinformation and distortions being circulated."

With backing from the Australian Conservation Foundation, the green coalition has planned a three-month grassroots campaign to lobby against the dump.

Led by Sydney anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Jim Green, the coalition will promote its message at community events through information stalls and a public debate.

Dr Green said the "Campaign Against Nuclear Dumping" was aimed at providing "the truth" about the dump, which will take waste from around Australia.

He said South Australians were still missing vital information on the project, particularly on the Federal Government's plans to claim pastoral land for the dump.

"The Federal Government is going to acquire the land to build the dump," he said.

"It will be ripping a bit of SA out and calling it Commonwealth land."

Senator McGauran defended the Government-funded campaign, saying there were already "campaigns of misinformation and distortions by opponents of the project".

Federal Environment Minister David Kemp is expected to make a decision on the dump within two months.

The federal government's plan to build a national nuclear dump in South Australia has hit another hurdle with the leaking of document outlining plans for a $300,000 propaganda campaign in the coming months.

The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) document, titled "Communication Strategy: Announcement of Low Level Radioactive Waste Site in SA", outlines the government's plans to "strategically manage" its announcement of a dump site near Woomera in the first quarter of 2003.

The dump issue is "highly sensitive and emotive in many circles", the document notes, and "careful management of a broad range of sensitive issues will be required". It points to a July 2002 Cabinet decision to implement a communications strategy including a media campaign.

The government intended hiring a public relations agency to assist in the implementation of the propaganda campaign (and has probably now done so). The government and the successful PR agency are to monitor the media and respond to selected media "to encourage reporting of the rationale behind the Commonwealth Government's approach to the site selection"; use reports, media releases, media conferences and other tactics to assist in effectively managing issues around the site selection process; monitor and respond to "emerging 'hot issues' around the site decision in all locations" (hot issue: someone's leaking sensitive government documents!); and continue producing a newsletter called The Monitor.

'Willing experts'

Another task will be to use the "Minister and other agreed willing experts to provide facts about site selection issues in media interviews and on radio talk back programs and other media environments". Science minister Peter McGauran will no doubt be flattered at being described as an 'expert' since he's nothing of the sort - the Australian Financial Review carried a cartoon depicting him with a Pinocchio nose for telling lies about the Maralinga 'clean-up' on August 20.

Other experts have proved themselves rather too willing. For example, during the Maralinga 'clean-up', the head of the technical advisory committee asked a senior bureaucrat if the government would "welcome" advice to terminate vitrification of plutonium-contaminated debris and instead bury it under 10 metres of soil. Expert committees ought to issue expert advice not "welcome" advice. (The technical committee later agreed to burial of the debris just three metres below grade, while the puppet regulator, John Loy from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), went one better and described the 'clean-up' as "world's best practice". Not to be outdone, McGauran insisted that the 'clean-up' exceeded world's best practice!)

Other 'experts' have proven themselves willing but inexpert. A case in point is John Patterson from Adelaide Uni's physics department, a vocal supporter of a dump in the centre-north of SA (perhaps because of his own interest in getting rid of waste stored at the university). In a letter to the Adelaide Advertiser (28/8/02), Patterson warned of the risks associated with highly radioactive sources stored in Adelaide which might be vapourised in a fire - but surely Patterson knows that highly radioactive sources won't be sent to a low-level waste dump even if one is built.

Responding to media reports about the leaked DEST document, McGauran said the "information" campaign was necessary to "balance" the "misinformation and distortions by the Rann Government and other opponents of the project". The DEST document identifies "a small but highly vocal group of opponents" as one of the key issues requiring management (but it fails to mention the opposition of 76-95% of South Australians recorded in numerous polls since the Woomera region was short-listed for the dump in 1998).

The document notes the opposition to a dump of environment groups, "most notably the Australian Conservation Foundation"; the SA state government; some Indigenous groups, "most notably a group of senior Indigenous women from Coober Pedy - Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta"; opponents of the planned new nuclear research reactor in Sydney; and the Andamooka Opal Miners and Progress Association, along with some other Andamooka residents.

The DEST document says the propaganda campaign will be focused on SA but will pay attention to potential "leakage of concern into other States/Territories (eg. to towns on transport routes particularly in NSW), especially as the time of the announcement of the final site draws closer and when the announcement is made." Concern is 'leaking' left, right and centre. A number of state governments have expressed opposition to hosting a low-level dump and/or a store for long-lived intermediate-level waste (LLILW).

A 'sense of control'

The DEST document mentions market research which found that "SA people want a sense of control over what is happening in regards to the Repository... It found a strong cynicism by people towards government information."

Then environment minister Robert Hill said in April 2001 that the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the dump would be "a thorough process that involves significant public participation" and that the government "is committed to a transparent and rigorous assessment process with full public involvement". However, the EIA, now underway, is a farcical process in which the federal government both writes and rubber-stamps the impact statement. The leaked DEST document safely assumes that the 'assessment' will result in approval to proceed with the dump, as did McGauran in public comments earlier this year. No public control there.

Aboriginal groups gave heritage clearance for test-drilling at short-listed dump sites in the late 1990s, but they did so over the barrel of a gun: they could either have some input into the process and hopefully protect significant sites, or else the federal government would use its land acquisition powers (as it openly threatened to do) and go ahead anyway. Aboriginal groups were between "a rock and a hard place" according to Stewart Motha from the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement. No public control there.

South Australian legislation banning 'co-location' of a national LLILW store adjacent to the planned dump led the federal government to threaten to over-ride the legislation. More recently, a Bill being debated in the SA parliament which would also ban the low-level waste dump has led to pre-emptive threats from the federal government to over-ride the legislation. No public control there.

The task for the federal government and its PR agency is to provide South Australians with a "sense of control" - but of course South Australians cannot be genuinely empowered because they would reject the dump. To provide a "sense of control", the DEST proposes a snow-job: "To increase awareness with the target audience about the extensive consultation process which has taken place leading up to the decision about the National Repository site."

In August, people living in the Woomera region boycotted one of the government's farcical 'consultation' meetings. Andamooka resident Bob Norton was quoted in the August 23 Advertiser saying: "If you believe what the Government tells us you believe in fairies". He added: "The Federal Government has treated us in a completely totalitarian way, there is no democracy attached to this process whatsoever." Coober Pedy Mayor Eric Malliotis told the Advertiser: "The Commonwealth will do it with or without us so what's the point of going to a meeting."

Despite the government's best efforts, the South Australian public has asserted some control. Opposition to the government's furtive plan to 'co-locate' a LLILW store with the dump was so fierce that the federal government backed down and now insists to a sceptical public that co-location will not occur. That occurred despite the fact that the federal government holds the legal aces.

The federal government's quaint conception of 'consultation' was also evident during the latest, botched 'clean-up' of the Maralinga nuclear test site in SA. Nuclear engineer and Maralinga whistle-blower Alan Parkinson noted in the February 2002 edition of Medicine and Global Survival that: "Although the government claims that the project was conducted in full consultation with the South Australian Government and the Maralinga Tjarutja, ... key decisions were made without any consultation." DEST bureaucrat Jeff Harris was so 'consultative' that the Tjarutja asked for him to be removed from the 'consultative' committee.

The DEST doesn't even properly inform people let alone provide any meaningful involvement. Parkinson noted in a September 2000 submission to a Senate inquiry: "A very disturbing feature of the Maralinga project is the lack of openness about what was done. Even those who might be the future custodians of the land [the Tjarutja] have not been kept truthfully informed on the project."

The federal government has been equally determined to stamp out any prospect of public control in relation to its plan for a new nuclear reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights. In April 1998, bureaucrats in the DEST (then known as the department of industry, science and tourism) wrote a briefing note - later obtained by Sutherland Shire Council under freedom of information legislation - to prepare for questioning by a Senate committee. It said there is "no point in consulting with potential/hypothetical recipients of a new reactor. It was discovered through the course of inquiry into the new airport [proposed for Holsworthy in south-western Sydney] that such a course of action serves only to inflame the communities for no good reason."

Why SA?

The DEST document says that market research has demonstrated considerable concern about the lack of prior consultation over the establishment of the dump "with a strong demand for an explanation of why it was being located there." It further states that: "The central-north region of SA is the best and safest region in Australia for the facility. It was selected to site the National Repository after a nationwide search and following expert advice."

However, it's simply not true that SA is the "best and safest region" for the dump (and it's also debatable whether a centralised dump is required anywhere in Australia). Sites in several states met the government's geological, environmental and social criteria. SA was ostensibly chosen because it has the largest area of suitable land, but that is a furphy - there is land in other regions and other states, meeting all the government's criteria, large enough to accommodate many 100x100 metre dump sites.

A site in western NSW, called Olary, has the additional advantage of being closer to the main waste source - the Lucas Heights reactor plant in Sydney. Recently, the government invented an argument never before heard in the 10 years of this debate - that the Olary region was excluded because it 'overlaps' the Great Artesian and Murray-Darling water basins. However, the northern SA region selected for the dump also overlaps the Great Artesian Basin, so why was it not excluded? The government has ignored repeated requests for an answer to that question.

The truth of the matter is that SA was chosen because the federal government thought it had a better chance of overcoming the storm of public opposition to a national dump in SA. The choice of SA may also be linked to some political horse-trading in the mid-1990s. Then Liberal SA Premier Dean Brown wrote to Prime Minister Keating in 1995 saying that the state government would "reconsider" its opposition to a dump if the federal government backed off its plans for a World Heritage listing for the Lake Eyre region. Referring to the letter, a report by the 1996 Senate Select Committee on the Dangers of Radioactive Waste said the siting of the dump "should be based on issues of public safety rather than political expediency".

Intermediate-level waste

The leaked DEST document states: "In 2000, the Commonwealth announced a separate site selection study for a National Store for intermediate level waste not suitable for near-surface disposal. In 2001, the Commonwealth announced that this would be a facility for Commonwealth waste sited on Commonwealth land for waste generated by Commonwealth agencies."

In the late 1990s, the federal government planned to 'co-locate' the above-ground store for LLILW with the planned dump, but the government didn't want South Australians to know about this. On the other hand, in order to reduce opposition to a new reactor, Sydney residents needed to be reassured that LLILW - including wastes arising from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel - would not be stored long-term at Lucas Heights. In order to convince South Australians that black is white, and Sydney residents the white is black, the government took Nukespeak to a new level. A case in point is the February 18, 1998 media release from then industry minister Warwick Parer announcing that SA was to host the low-level waste dump. Near the end of the media release, co-location is mentioned but there is no indication whatsoever as to what the government planned to co-locate with the dump - it might have been planning to co-locate a casino, or a golf course, or a giant statue of Peter McGauran with the dump for all the information provided in Parer's media release.

The government was too clever by half. Its subterfuge and deceit regarding LLILW co-location generated a political controversy in SA. The Liberal state government legislated in 2000 to prevent a national LLILW store being built in SA. Then federal science minister Nick Minchin threatened to over-ride the state legislation but later backed down and said that co-location would not occur.

The leaked DEST document asserts that: "The National Store for Australian intermediate level waste will not be located on the same site as the National Repository for low level waste in SA." But why should the government be believed when it has a track record of deceit on this very point?

Moreover, in February and April this year, McGauran refused to rule out co-location, prompting this attack in an editorial in the February 28, 2002 Advertiser: "There is a broken record in Canberra stuck on the same old arrogant, provocative and downright boring message. Science Minister Peter McGauran sounded suspiciously like his predecessor Nick Minchin with his threat on Tuesday that the Commonwealth will force two national nuclear waste dumps on South Australia. Well Mr McGauran, which part of "No" do you not understand? Had you been paying attention for the past three years, you would be aware that the residents and Parliament of this state are implacably opposed to becoming a radioactive waste dumping ground for the nation."

The controversy over co-location also drew another issue to the surface: the role of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the plan for a new reactor at Lucas Heights. ANSTO will be responsible for 80-90% of the waste sent to a national dump, and the plans for a dump and a LLILW store are clearly driven by the perceived need to reduce public opposition to a new reactor in Sydney by getting the waste off-site. Despite the government's ongoing efforts to fudge the issue, by pointing to waste stored at over 100 locations around Australia, the centrality of ANSTO and the new reactor plan are widely understood (and resented) in SA.

The Advertiser gave voice to these concerns in its February 28, 2002 editorial: "[The federal] Government lost its right to establish the intermediate dump here when it tried to foist it upon the SA outback in secret. It was only when the extent of the plan was made public, that the tonnes of dangerous waste at Lucas Heights were destined to come here, did the Government attempt to rationalise its case. It was too late then. It is later now."

While the public is to be fed the illusion of a "sense of control", much of the real power lies with ANSTO. Conflicts of interest abound. Despite being the largest producer of radioactive waste destined for the dump, ANSTO has a formal role as adviser to the government on radioactive waste issues. ANSTO was also directly involved in selecting the head of the 'independent' regulatory agency ARPANSA, and six ex-ANSTO staff now work for ARPANSA.

The leaked DEST document notes that plans for a national dump could be complicated by the recent restatement by Swiss-based company ARIUS of a proposal - previously promoted by Pangea Resources - for disposing of international high-level waste in Australia. McGauran rejected the ARIUS proposal while in Argentina in early September (Advertiser, 7/9/02). What was the minister doing in Argentina? Trying to convince Argentinians to accept Australia's high-level waste from the Lucas Heights reactor!

Maralinga

The leaked DEST document says: "In letters to the media and in media commentary there have been assertions that the alleged 'failure' of the clean up of the Maralinga atomic bomb test site does not engender confidence that there will be sufficient safeguards around the disposal of radioactive waste at the SA site."

The latest clean-up at Maralinga was done on the cheap, Australian standards for the management of long-lived radioactive waste were breached, public 'consultation' was a farce, and there were many other problems besides. In short, the DEST grossly mismanaged the project and the bureaucrats ought not be surprised that the Maralinga 'clean-up' has come back to haunt them.

Alan Parkinson, writing in the July 24, 2000 Canberra Times, made the link between Maralinga and the proposed nuclear dump: "Those with responsibility for the proposed national waste repository are the same people who have recently buried long-lived plutonium waste (half-life 24,000 years) in an unlined burial trench only 2-3 metres below ground - slightly deeper than we place human corpses. If accepted, this precedent should now allow the Commonwealth to place all radioactive waste in shallow, unlined burial trenches, with no regard for its longevity or toxicity, and no regard for the suitability of the site."

And in the August 2002 edition of Australasian Science, Parkinson wrote: "The disposal of radioactive waste in Australia is ill-considered and irresponsible. Whether it is short-lived waste from Commonwealth facilities, long-lived plutonium waste from an atomic bomb test site on Aboriginal land, or reactor waste from Lucas Heights. The government applies double standards to suit its own agenda; there is no consistency, and little evidence of logic."

Puppet regulator

The leaked DEST document says: "The National Repository will be sited, designed and operated in accordance with strict regulatory requirements to ensure the safety of South Australians, the environment and future generations."

However, the regulatory agency ARPANSA has never once imposed "strict regulatory requirements" on any nuclear project and there's no indication it's about to start now. ARPANSA's many failings at Maralinga have been documented by Alan Parkinson (<www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/parkinson.html> and ... parkinson2.html>.) And ARPANSA's handling of the new reactor project has been anything but "strict". For example, Loy said a new reactor would not be approved until "progress" was made on establishing a LLILW store. The government's one and only plan for this waste - co-location with the planned dump at Woomera - was abandoned in the face of public opposition, but Loy still approved a new reactor.

Their own worst enemies

Arguably the greatest difficulty facing the federal government in pursuing its plan to turn SA into a national nuclear dump is the federal government itself, in particular McGauran and the DEST bureaucrats.

McGauran was badly upstaged in an ABC radio documentary in 1998 concerning the planned new reactor. McGauran was talking up the 'need' for a new reactor to produce medical isotopes, saying: "There's no doubt that the health issues concluded the matter beyond any doubt whatsoever ..." But on the same program, a senior government bureaucrat acknowledged that the government had decided to "push the whole health line, and that included appealing to the emotion of people - the loss of life, the loss of children's lives ... So it was reduced to one point, and an emotional one at that. They never tried to argue the science of it, the rationality of it."

Likewise, McGauran told the ABC: "We certainly believed that those who inquired of us for information should be given as much detail as was available to us. ... [E]veryone knew the decision was imminent, and if they wanted to write letters, or seek appointments and meetings with me, or other officials of the Government, they could do so." But on the same radio program, a bureaucrat was gloating about withholding information: "The government decided to starve the opponents of oxygen, so that they could dictate the manner of the debate that would follow the announcement. ... No leaks, don't write letters arguing the point, just keep them in the dark completely."

"I think the Government was very sensible about the whole thing", the minister told the ABC. "It was a race as to who got to the emotional argument first, the Government or the greens", said the bureaucrat.

The minister also has a habit of forgetting his lines, as in February and April this year when he refused to rule out co-location of a LLILW store with the dump. He also had problems filling out travel allowance forms, hence his temporary removal from the ministry during the Howard government's first term in office.

As for the DEST bureaucrats, Parkinson provided some examples of their incompetence in an Ockham's Razor presentation on ABC radio on September 22, 2002: "For example, in Senate Committee hearings we heard public servants declare that soda ash is neutralised by limestone, and that the limestone is rich in sodium and carbonate; no mention of calcium. We also heard that some plastic sheeting covering the plutonium debris will have a life of a few thousand years. Another strange pronouncement was that an estimated radiation dose of 1 milliSievert per annum includes the background radiation of 2.3 milliSieverts per annum. Even more astonishing is that the dose of 5 milliSieverts per annum which could be contracted on land contaminated with 3 kiloBequerels of Americium per square metre, and on which the project was based, suddenly dropped to 1 milliSievert per annum, even though no work was done where that level of contamination exists."

Parkinson added further examples in the February 2002 edition of Medicine and Global Survival: "The public servants responsible for the last years of the [Maralinga] project had no background in radiation or project management, as is illustrated by several statements they made on the public record, asking, for example, what was meant by alpha radiation, or how to convert a milliSievert (a unit of radiation dose) to a picoCurie (a unit of radioactivity) ..."

In another paper, Parkinson said: "... the Department's Representative was advised by a departmental officer that when dealing with contractors he should "always seek compromises" as though the contract and scope of work meant nothing. That same person also asked the Department's Representative how to convert a milliSievert into a picoCurie!!!"

Put yourself in the position of a contractor dealing with a senior bureaucrat who believes that compromises should always be sought. Come up with any half-baked idea to cut costs and thereby increase profits, and you'll get a sympathetic ear every time. The same bureaucrat is in charge of the dump project.

Pity the poor PR agency that has become embroiled in this mess. Here's some advice:
* recommend that the dump plan is put on hold until a proper clean-up of Maralinga is carried out
* revisit the wisdom of centralised, underground dumps as opposed to above-ground storage at the point of production
* recommend that an independent public inquiry be held into the dump plan instead of the sham EIA
* recommend an independent inquiry into the benefits and costs/risks of a new reactor since that is so closely connected to the dump plan
* recommend the creation of a genuinely independent regulatory agency in place of ARPANSA.

Revelations today that the Howard Government will spend up to $300,000 of taxpayers money to promote the merits of a national nuclear waste dump in south Australia is nothing more than a costly and cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion.

A multinational public relations company has been given the job of selling a planned low level nuclear waste repository in South Australia that the community and state government have overwhelming rejected.

This Orwellian approach to manipulate public opinion rather than respect it, reinforces the contempt the Howard Government has already shown for South Australia by indicating its willingness to place the dump in South Australia regardless of public opinion.

It is deeply ironic that a Liberal government, which has always claimed to be strongly supportive of states' rights should show such contempt for the views of local communities.

Labor believes the Howard Government needs to work with local communities and have regard to their views rather than seek to impose a waste dump on an unwilling community.

A Labor Government would not be overriding those community views, or waste taxpayers money on a green-washing campaign.