So three sets of approvals.
The State Government, Mike Rann with his hard-hat
on, perhaps to announce that as soon as this
week coming.
Federal Minister Tony Burke, who was elected
on a policy, Federal Labor election policy
commitment, it was in the national platform,
for 'the most stringent conditions' on uranium
approvals.
To only allow the mining of uranium under
'world's best practise' standards of the most
stringent conditions.
Does that mean designed to leak?
Does it mean dumping tailings out on the surface?
Does it mean taking significant ecological
risks through water supply?
Does that mean having very significant unnecessary
increased greenhouse gas emissions?
Vastly increased use of diesel on the side?
Is that what conditions mean to Federal politicians
and our State politicians?
The third set of approvals that's needed,
and it isn't talked about at all in our press,
is because they want to change to sell concentrate,
because now it will e, most of the copper
will go out as a uranium-infused bulk concentrate,
they need to amend the treaties with any country
, particularly with China, to provide for
that.
The proposed sale f uranium-infused concentrate
is not sanctioned under any of Australia's
nuclear treaties.
It wasn't envisaged by previous Federal governments.
It wasn't envisaged by previous corporations
until 207 when Marius Kloppers took over the
reigns of BHP, announced that he wanted to
change the proposal of the mine operation.
So there will have to be a third set of approvals
for BHP to be allowed to sell those concentrates.
It may be the case that the Federal and State
governments grant approvals to something that
isn't sanctioned under the foreign affairs
powers.
Maybe if they grant approval, BHP go ahead
with the mine and an operation to sell uranium
concentrates, a precedent sale, without having
any treaty approval to do so.
Without putting any proposal to the Federal
parliament to ever do so.
They are negotiating a nuclear treaty with
China.
That will have to go to a Federal parliamentary
enquiry.
But the Company and the State government are
well ahead of those steps.
They're assuming that BHP should be given
the configuration 
of the mine that they want to run, to best
suit their mining interests and their profit
margins.
And they do that right through to the radiological
issues that I've spent much of the last 15
years having some focus on.
They do it right through to the climate and
the energy and greenhouse issues.
Now, Mike Rann was an early mover on climate
change.
He brought in some of the first state legislation
on climate change by state government or any
principality or regional government around
Australia.
So what's the premier lining up to do in terms
of the largest mining proposal, the largest
open-pit mining proposal in the state?
It will use a vast amount of diesel.
This open pit operation will move more than
a million tonnes of material a day, every
day, through a very long, through a 6 year
construction period for the pit and for the
infrastructure.
They're gonna move a million tonnes of material
a day.
They're going to use over a million litres
of diesel a day to do that.
It's a vast amount of diesel and a vast amount
of greenhouse emissions that come from the
diesel use.
And it's not just in the 5 or 6 years to dig
what they call a 'pilot pit.'
You dig down 350 metres to reach the ore,
to reach the radioactive ore.
But ongoing, through decades of proposed mining
operations, they keep digging at the same
rate.
They keep moving material at the same rate
of a million tonnes a day.
They keep using a million litres of diesel
a day for decades to widen and deepen that
pit.
In an earlier time when Western Mining, WMC
ran Roxby, I went to a conference where one
of their executives spoke.
He said 'I'd like to fly across Australia
in my plane and look down on the landscape
to realise that I only need to peel back the
thin veneer of the earth to reveal the mineral
resources.'
This is how they really do think.
The ecology, the landscape, the culture of
the country.
Kevin Buzzacott's country, Kokatha country.
That's how the mining executives view these
issues.
That's how they view the ecological risks
that they will take through the intervention
of the land or through the mine's water supply.
So they're going to peel back 350 metres of
the earth just to reveal the ore.
Just to get to the top of the ore body.
They want to continue to dig down to a kilometre
in that pit.
So this diesel use is every year, throughout
the life of that operation.
It has a very significant greenhouse emission,
but it also involves currently, very significant
public subsidies go to BHP.
They get a diesel fuel rebate.
They get 18.5 cents per litre less on their
diesel price than what you the public or any
other corporation or small business for instance
will get to buy and use diesel.
They will get a public subsidy of some 70
million dollars a year, every year, not just
in construction, through decades of operation
through the diesel fuel rebate.
That's more than the current mining operation
pays in royalties!
So BHP hands the state government sixty-something
million dollars a year in royalties for the
total mining operation production, they're
publicly owned minerals, and when they're
building the new proposed pit, and on that
operation, the two mines side-by-side, they
take back more with the other hand from the
Federal government, just in the diesel rebate
alone!
What sort of a deal is that?
That has been given to 
the world's largest mining company, that is
2/3rds overseas owned.
It is not the 'Big Australian' as it used
to be called, as it used to franchise itself
in its public relations in an earlier time.
It would have a vast increase overall, the
pit operations, to South Australia's greenhouse
gas emissions.
Now this is as a time when Climate Change
is a really important public issue.
Now we have the international panel on climate
change saying we need to make urgent, deep
cuts to our greenhouse emissions.
We've all got to take responsibility for this,
particularly in the west and in the developing
countries.
And they talked about, the IPCC talked about
needed cuts of 25-40% by 2020.
The scientists basically say that unless you
can turn around climate change by 2020, you're
running really serious risk of dangerous climate
change, catastrophic climate change depending
on your approach.
The two degree Celsius range... we're likely
to be on a track which makes it immensely
difficult to get off that track by 2020 unless
we make these significant changes and take
leadership in the west.
So what is BHP in South Australia and what
does Mike Rann propose to do out there?
Well the company will increase total greenhouse
gas emissions by about 12% through the one
project.
One company, one project, 1a double-figure
blow-out in South Australia's total greenhouse
gas emissions.
They've gone to all the efforts, all the plans
of the individuals, the companies the corporations
for renewable energy, energy efficiency, we're
changing our ways, our society and our behaviour-
all undone by once company, one project in
one go.
And that's what Mike Rann is highly likely
to do and approve in the next week or two.
The state government haven't taken the steps
to make the company lessen their diesel use.
The company is not under, as I understand
it, any pressure at all from the government
to use renewable energy in comparison to their
existing plans.
But half of the total greenhouse gas emissions
of the whole project, both mines operating
side by side will come from electricity generation,
fossil fuel electricity generation to run
those mining operations.
To run the conveyors and the crushers and
all the big heavy material that can deal with
a million tonnes of earth a year, earth and
rock a year.
To power the smelters and the machinery and
the processing plants that will process al
of that material.
So the state could be saying to BHP we want
this project to lever renewable energy.
We want to put in a green grid.
We want you to use, to commit that you will
use renewable energy and not fossil fuels
. Not build significant new gas plants and
other stations, and they could half their
total greenhouse gas emissions for the total
project proposal.
So far there's no public indication that they're
willing to do that, but it's an example of
the sort of significant change that could
happen in Australia f you did have public
policy leadership.
So facing a state that doesn't have a 2020
climate change target that's going to agree,
it appears, for one company to make a double
figure, 12% increase in the total greenhouse
gas emissions.
What are the little people to do, who want
to save the planet, in terms of climate change,
ecology, respect for traditional owners' rights
and interests.
The whole suite of impacts that come from
Roxby Downs are very stark in contrast to
the Government plans.
The Government plans for approval for what
BHP wish to deliver.
And there are very significant overseas impacts
from the new open pit mine proposal, the world's
largest uranium project.
They were quite starkly shown and Philip in
the audience knows from personal experience
having lived in Japan recently.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster demonstrated
a lot to people with an interest.
It demonstrated that in Japan, the most industrialised
democratic country with the most technical
capability in the world, they were in complete
denial about the inherent dangers, the unacceptable
dangerous nuclear risks that accompany nuclear
power plants that come with the nuclear fuel
chain.
They were in denial and virtually entirely
unprepared and unwilling to have taken the
steps to be prepared to deal with any serious
combination of accident, mishap that could
happen at any of their many nuclear power
plants.
A combination of natural events, inherent
flaws in design, inherent risks in design
and denial of lack of preparedness meant that
Japan suffered a massive nuclear catastrophe
at Fukushima, following the earthquake and
the two tsunami there.
And South Australia, Australia in general
and BHP in particular have a fundamental responsibility
to that because Roxby has had long term uranium
contracts with Tepco, the company that runs
the Fukushima nuclear reactors.
They run a number of reactors in Japan.
It's highly likely that South Australian uranium
was involved in the fuel in at least some
of the reactors in Fukushima.
That was one of the very first things that
we as ACF said following the Fukushima nuclear
disaster.
We said 'well, our government, our companies
are complicit in this nuclear disaster because
we fuel the potential for those nuclear disasters.
Australian uranium, Roxby uranium, BHP uranium,
fuels the potential for these nuclear disasters.'
So we put it on the government and the company
to see what response they would make acknowledging
that fact and what responses they would take
for those issues.
The company cited 'commercial in confidence'.
They would not reveal the content of any contract
with any corporation that used their uranium.
BHP went to the media with confidence in that
proposal, and they got away with it in Australia.
The Federal Government basically said 'this
is a matter for overseas governments and regulatory
bodies and it's not to do with our uranium
sales.'
If they were really worried that the public
might make the connection between uranium
sales and nuclear disasters, between the use
of uranium and nuclear power plants, and the
catastrophes that followed from the use of
that uranium, from the use of our uranium,
Roxby's and BHP's uranium.
The pollies are really worried that the public
might seriously and sufficiently make those
connections and they are making those connections
is a capacity that you as a society, as small
groups and individuals can help bring about.
You can bring about that change by recognising
that yourself, and promulgating that understanding
to others that you have access to and influence
with in your life, and how you do your own
rolls in life over time.
The broader that understanding is,, there
is a need for that understanding to become
broad and to have an expectation that we can
have nuclear free outcomes in Australia.
In facing the bipartisan Federal and state
political, Labor and Liberal support for the
mining industry in general for Roxby and uranium
mining in particular, in facing that, and
in facing the world's largest mining interests
and their vested interests and the way they
do that business, it's really only going to
be overturned by broad, public expectations,
that these are unacceptable dangers in the
nuclear industry that we should no longer
be involved with.
That's how we get to where we want to go.
A lot of the discussion in the meantime is
going to be about the degree of impact and
about the conditions under which it might
happen or it might be held back.
