First, this is essentially a new mine.
It's a new open-pit mine.
It will go in next to the underground mining
operation.
Both mines will operate side-by-side in BHP
Billiton's plans for decades to come.
So you get the continued impacts of Roxby,
as you are familiar with Roxby...
Roxby started in the 1980's – everything
that's been wrong with Roxby will continue
to be wrong with Roxby... but it will get
very much larger and worse.
It's the plan of the company that the scale
of the operation will vastly increase.
The scale of the mining, the scale of the
production of radioactive tailings and the
demand for water and energy to drive the vastly
increased volumes that come with open-pit
mining, and come with mining lower-grade ores.
The company and the Government call it an
expansion.
The Environmental Impact Statement says 'Olympic
Dam Expansion'.
These are public relations terms.
These are terms to try and make the broader
community think that this is going ahead regardless.
They're just expanding within their existing
rights and operations, behind the fence, as
approved.
And it really is a fundamentally different
project to have a new open-pit mine- the largest
open pit mine in fact in the world is proposed
there.
Vast impacts from any aspect of that scale
of mining, and doubly so when it's a radioactive
ore and it's making us further complicit in
the uranium, nuclear fuel chain.
Both the copper and the uranium markets are
fundamentally important to BHP Billiton's
interests in this mining operation.
The open pit would make Roxby the 4th largest
copper producer in the world.
They have plans to make it much larger again.
Larger plans that what you were consulted
on in the Environmental Impact Statement.
The Company actually applied to the Federal
Government for a larger mine than what they
assessed in the public consultation.
They only produced documentation talking about
an operation to the scale of about 750,000
tonnes of copper product in total a year.
BHP were originally thinking 1,000,000 tonnes
a year.
Since then, they've been thinking about 'well,
1.2 million, 1.4 perhaps 1.5 million tonnes.
They have long-term plans for Roxby, its definitely
a multi-decade mine.
They've only really talked to you about initial
stages, and initial smaller scale likely impacts
over the long term.
So there are fundamental questions about due
process, in that, in terms of a Government
assessing something that doesn't really convey
honestly to the public 'what is the long term
impact company plan, the scale or the impacts
of their operations.
Whether it is that the impacts on fragile
water resources and the ecological systems,
whether it's the Great Artesian Basin or the
mound springs, whether it's the Upper Spencer
Gulf and the ecology of the fishing industry
and the cuttlefish breeding ground.. how are
those impacts, how do those impacts scale?
If you build a project up from 750,000 tonnes
to 1 million or 1.2 or 1.5 what happens to
the scale of impacts and those ecological
risks.
How far do you swing the dial with those ecological
risks if you vastly increase the scale of
the mine over time, from what the public has
been consulted about?
It's certainly intended to be the world's
largest uranium project and it will overall,
increase uranium production from 4 to about
19 thousand tonnes of uranium per year.
Now we're already a big player.
South Australia's already complicit in the
worst of the nuclear risks around the globe.
We are already a key supplier of the uranium
that produces high-level nuclear waste in
reactors ad produces plutonium, fissile material,
the fuel used for bombs or for the boiling
of water.
Nuclear reactors can boil water, that's true-
but there are far safer and more sustainable
ways of doing so.
And regardless of the climate change debate
globally and in Australia, we have fundamental
direct responsibilities to uranium threat.
We should not be involved in this.
We shouldn't be counter-sinking any company,
any private interest, any vested interest
any profit margin, involving us in vastly
increasing those risks and our complicities
in those nuclear risks around the globe.
There are fundamental changes with the project,
not just in terms of the pit operation from
underground, so you'll have both mines together.
To date, Roxby has processed its copper on
site, sold all the copper product from that
site.
In the open pit mining project, it's intended
that Roxby will produce a concentrate.
So virtually all the production of copper
that will come from the open pit will go and
be processed overseas.
It will go out as a concentrate.
It will go out as a uranium-infused bulk copper
concentrate.
A few thousand tonnes of uranium will go out
on what is said to be an initial 1.6 million
tonnes of concentrate.
So that will be, that's a radioactive powder.
There are extra risks and concerns about bulk
radioactive transport.
There are risk and concerns about the rights
and interests of communities and traditional
owners.
In central Australia, that radioactive infused
bulk copper concentrate will go up by the
rail, up through central Australia through
Alice Springs, through Kevin's people's country.
It will go out through the port of Darwin.
The community in the Northern Territory are
going to be faced with that radioactive proposition
as well as the likely increased transport
of most of the yellow-cake through the northern
territory, rather than the Port of Adelaide.
And so far there is only one market country
for that uranium infused bulk copper concentrate.
That's China.
When Prime Minister Howard did his uranium
sales deal with China, he didn't even contemplate
selling uranium concentrates.
It's not part of the treaty for the sale of
uranium to China.
So there are actually three sets of Government
approvals involved in Roxby Downs.
There's the South Australian approval which
we hear about in the media.
Mike Rann wears his hard hat.
The Liberals try and compete with him to be
more pro-mining, to be more in favour of BHP
and Roxby.
Both the South Australian government and the
Federal government have virtually got separate
full rights of say over what happens at Roxby
Downs in the proposed new open pit, under
what conditions can the mine go ahead, if
it does go ahead.
Now both of those Governments are fundamentally
responsible for effectively the types and
the scale of impacts that are involved in
this proposal and there are quite key contrasts
between what the Company plans and the impacts
from that, and in theory what the Government's
gonna require of them.
Now one, one change is that you don't go ahead
with the mine whatsoever.
That you acknowledge that the nuclear impacts
of such a large uranium project, being the
impacts of producing such large amounts of
radioactive tailings are unconscionable.
To be involved in that.
The next level of Government decision is 'well,
the mine's going ahead.
Under what terms may it go ahead?'
They could decide to run the mine as a copper
mine.
They don't have to sell uranium out of Roxby
Downs.
There's no technical or economic reason why
Roxby sells uranium now.
I may have time to go one briefly.. when Fukushima
happened, Roxby should've stopped selling
uranium.
They have an obligation that no uranium and
no other radioactive waste should ever leave
that site.
If that means 'no mine' or if it means that
in an interim it goes to a copper only operation,
they should've stopped uranium sales immediately
following Fukushima.
That nuclear disaster.
The commons have those powers in the long
run.
They have the policy and the powers, they've
got it under the constitution, corporations
power.
They can do these things in Australia if they
chose to do that.
If they felt the public power to overcome
the vested corporate and political interests,
we could do that in Australia.
The third set of approvals- we have Mike Rann
here, we can largely assume what his decision
is going to be.
It may come out this week.
We expected the Roxby decision well before
now.
Lately it was expected last week.
All the stars seemed to align.
Mike Rann, the Feds and the company to announce
the approvals last week.
To suit Mike Rann's schedule, and he's gonna
be leaving in a fortnight, from Office as
Premier.
He may announce the decision of approval next
week and then produce an indenture that Mark
Parnell will talk about the week after, in
the three days they're in Parliament.
They may, they may well rush some of those
matters to suit a political agenda, so that
one person can wear a hard hat and say 'well
this is what I give to you.
I give you the legacy of the world's largest
open pit.
The legacy of responsibility for the highest
level of uranium production and sales of the
world.
The legacy of producing the world's largest
radioactive tailings pile ever in the globe.
They're civil society issues that we need
to be able to get a handle round at some stage
if we're ever going to claim that we really
are a democracy.
Now the Federal government have separate power,
because it's a uranium mine.
They have full power under the federal environment
legislation to place a decision and conditions
on that operation.
For instance the Federal and the State governments
could take, divvy up, a different set of priorities
for approval between them.
The State could say 'well, we wanna have a
key say about what might be done about energy
production and greenhouse impacts at Roxby,
in terms of approving.
The Feds could say 'we're not satisfied with
BHP's plans to design this mine to leak radioactive
waste.'
It doesn't make sense under the powers of
the Environment Protection Act to protect
the environment, to design a mine to leak
vast amounts of radioactive waste.
It doesn't make sense.
The Feds could say 'you'll have to dump the
tailings underground.'
Make them dispose of it back into the pit
as is required in the long term at the Ranger
uranium mine.
Why should we, why should the Federal Government,
a Labor federal government, with very strong
discretionary powers to use in the Federal
Parliament, why should they drive down
environmental standards in Australia to even
less than they are now, in terms of how Australia
manages radioactive liquid wastes and radioactive
tailings long-term.
Which we have to do worse than we already
do, assuming BHP Billiton's profit margins
and mining interests.
Because they don't want to pay to manage their
radioactive waste.
They don't want to have to have to line the
tailings pits.
They don't want to pay to dispose of the tailings
back into the pit.
They don't want to take any responsibility
for the uranium that goes overseas.
When it leaves Australia's shores, they're
hands off for al those nuclear impacts.
For the unresolved high-level nuclear waste.
For the risk, of the weapons and waste risks
that come with both governments and state
players.
The state players and the governments but
also the other high risk is terrorism around
the world.
Nuclear power plants are pre-placed nuclear
disaster potential.
They are pre-placed radioactive weapons.
We've seen the potential that can come through
lack of preparedness and the ill design and
natural events in Japan.
If you put that into the context that there
are nuclear terrorists with the potential
for war, what sort of responsibility are people
taking there for those inherently dangerous,
unacceptably dangerous risks that BHP will
make a profit out of.
Unnecessary profit- because they know full
well they can run that project as a copper
project and leave all the uranium and radioactive
waste on site.
