Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

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................................................................................................................................................................................................... Peace flotilla boat, protesting visits by US warships, Western Australia. In the early 1980s plans to place nuclear weapons in NATO countries created an enormous resistance across Western Europe that reverberated here in Australia. It can be argued that the older anti uranium movement and the rising disarmament movements were similar and inter-connected, yet essentially different. In this simplistic analysis it can be said that FoE was more grounded in the antiuranium movement. FoE’s most significant contribution to disarmament was based on the understanding that nuclear weapons needed to be sourced from radioactive materials (uranium) and the greatest contribution to world peace that Australians could make was to break their involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle. Hence FoE’s campaign work aimed to halt the mining and export of uranium from Australia. The Hawke government was elected in 1983 on the back of the Tasmanian ‘no dams’ campaign. While initially proactive on a range of environmental issues, its policy was more mixed on the question of uranium mining. There was discussion at the FoEA national meeting in 1984 about the most effective way to influence the party. Some felt that the best course was to become involved in lobbying ALP branches in order to help maintain grassroots opposition to uranium and to pressure the party leadership into actually implementing existing policy. Hawke was supportive of an extension of uranium mining and everyone knew they faced an uphill battle to stop the looming expansion of the industry. In late 1983, barely nine months after it had been elected, Federal Cabinet voted to allow the development of the Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs in South Australia and the continuation of the Ranger mine in the Northern Territory (NT). This marked a departure from what many believed was stated in ALP policy – the phasing out of existing uranium mines and a ban on the establishment of new ones. Blockades followed, at Honeymoon in SA in 1982 and Roxby Downs, in 1983 and ‘84, organised by an umbrella grouping called the Coalition for a Nuclear Free Australia (CNFA). These actions concentrated on ‘hindering and frustrating’ work at the mine, in order to delay completion and to raise community awareness. FoE 30 Years 34
The Australian Mining Journal noted that FoE played a ‘leading role’ in these blockades. Through this time, the Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE), originally set up by FoE and others in 1975, played a pivotal role in organising opposition to uranium mining in South Australia (SA). It wound up in 1987 after 12 years of existence and creative resistance. Indigenous land rights and impacts on groundwater from WMC’s Olympic Dam mine have been continual and unresolved issues since the mine was opened. There were suggestions of ‘back door deals’ being done between the mine proponent, WMC (formerly Western Mining Corporation) and selected Aboriginal groups. In 1984, the SA Government awarded the operators of Roxby Downs a special water licence that allowed the mine to extract up to 33 million litres of water a day from the Great Artesian Basin (GAB). Even at lower actual use rates, critics maintain this has been causing ‘irreversible degradation’ of the Mound Springs, a complex of unique arid zone wetlands created where the GAB comes to the surface near Marree in SA, and a general reduction in water pressure across the Basin. In the Wimmera region of western Victoria, a subsidiary of CRA gained approval to begin the ‘demonstration’ phase of a major mineral sands mining project. This could have led to commercial operations covering more than 40,000 hectares of land, with huge impacts on land and both surface and ground water systems. FoEM worked with a broad coalition of antinuclear and environmental organisations and farmers groups to defeat the larger proposal. In 1983, plans were also floated for leach mining of gold in Victoria. CRA and other mining companies were hoping to extract gold in ‘deep leads’ – underground ancient river beds, by dissolving the gold with chemicals, then pumping the slurry to the surface for processing. FoEM worked with the Aboriginal Mining Information Centre as part of a successful campaign to stop ................................................................................................................................................................................................... The first blockades at Roxby Downs SA, 1983. this destructive form of mining. In 1984, the ALP government in Victoria, under the leadership of John Cain, signed a joint venture agreement with the multinational Alcoa over plans to build an aluminium smelter at Portland in the far west of the state. A site at Point Danger was selected on a section of coastal heathland and adjacent to the town itself. This area was of significance to the local traditional owners, the Gournditch- Jmara people. There was an occupation of the site from September 1980 and a successful High Court challenge, but sadly the site was bulldozed, Aboriginal artefacts were destroyed and the smelter was subsequently built. Over this period, FoEM played a key role in a major community campaign that focussed on the impacts of lead petrol on children’s health and mental development. This resulted in petrol with a decreased lead content being introduced in Victoria in 1983. At the same time, the Hazardous Chemicals Collective, influenced by a number of people including Clare Henderson, Clive Rosewarne and Paul Di Masi, campaigned on issues including the bulk chemical facility located at Coode Island in Melbourne’s inner west and undertook ground breaking work on the threats posed by dioxins. Issues of gender and sexism remained a constant theme within FoE in the 1980s. Chain Reaction acted as an important FoE 30 Years 35
Page 2 and 3: Up to a few decades ago, many peopl
Page 4 and 5: It seemed like a simple idea: to pr
Page 6 and 7: The optimism, courage and creativit
Page 8 and 9: Over thirty years, FoE has develope
Page 10 and 11: decades. In Australia, FoE is commi
Page 12: This group acted as an inspiration
Page 15 and 16: In the 1970s, a handful of key issu
Page 17 and 18: Apart from working on the direct im
Page 19 and 20: In the mid ‘70s I was studying en
Page 21 and 22: In 1976, there was a strong campaig
Page 23 and 24: egan to jostle for access to Antarc
Page 25 and 26: Keith Suter The future is never as
Page 28 and 29: I first became aware of FoE via Pet
Page 30 and 31: I remember the attempts of the nucl
Page 33 and 34: I grew up with the threat of global
Page 35 and 36: ...................................
Page 37 and 38: In late 1980 a couple of people who
Page 39: In the 1980s, there was a shift to
Page 43 and 44: sense that these issues formed a pa
Page 45 and 46: was (and remains to this day) the o
Page 47 and 48: Ila Marks Dave Sweeney talking at t
Page 49 and 50: from a community radio background,
Page 51 and 52: FoE 30 Years 45
Page 53 and 54: In the early 1990s, the nuclear ind
Page 55: With the Gulf War and the Dili mass
Page 58 and 59: What makes these comments sadder in
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Page 62 and 63: Action outside the state government
Page 64 and 65: a month. Perhaps the seminal moment
Page 68 and 69: The first meeting of the Dharnya Al
Page 72 and 73: From 1985 until 1992, undercover of
Page 74 and 75: Kathleen McCann In 1996 I was in Ja
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Page 78 and 79: Dave Sweeney From its earliest days
Page 80 and 81: March at the Jabiluka mine site, NT
Page 82 and 83: The camp’s office was located wit
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Gillian Walker ....................
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When it was announced that Melbourn
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FoE 30 Years 88 ...................
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Greens Senator, Bob Brown, 2004 ...
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Steph Long, Kim Stewart Friends of
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Australia has been largely obliviou
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Fossil fuels have not bought wealth
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Roman Orzanski Possibly the first F
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Everyone helped make the procession
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In 1996, Consolidated Rutile Ltd ga
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Melia Bugeja, FoE Melbourne Food Co
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genetic engineering and techno-indu
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East Gippsland (CROEG) to launch th
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1994. VicRoads was planning to wide
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Lee Tan “Let’s chuck in some co
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Friends of the Earth in Sydney (FoE
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Herald Sun Columnist, Andrew Bolt P
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change. Mark Carter, co-founder of
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Australia given Indigenous manageme
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Their final edition, in the year th
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FoEA is a federation rather than an
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input to national decision making f
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are independent. A secretariat base
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lead to some form of wisdom: a know
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FoE 30 Years 137
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FoE 30 Years 139
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FoE 30 Years 141
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Anon (1987); Know your FoE; the Coe
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Page 5 • ‘U Mines’ - Through
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1990s Page 46 • Image from Chain
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• The march that followed the ‘
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Page 116 • FoE ran a food stall a
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Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

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