The battle to protect Kakadu national park from uranium mining has reignited with a push to overturn an 18-year-old promise to First Nations people in order to access billions of dollars of radioactive ore.
It is the resurrection of a decades-old campaign to mine Jabiluka, a proposal that was abandoned after a hard-fought campaign by the Mirarr people – traditional owners – and environmentalists. But the debate is also throwing the rehabilitation of Ranger, an open-cut uranium mine adjacent to Jabiluka imposed on the Mirarr in the 1970s, into doubt.
Rio Tinto owns 86% of the mine operator, Energy Resources of Australia, and has agreed to spend the billions needed to restore the land at Ranger to the same quality as the surrounding park. Rio has also pledged not to mine Jabiluka as long as the traditional owners are against it.
The Mirarr say they will never change their minds. They want to put mining in the past and instead build an economy out of the township of Jabiru that is based on tourism to Kakadu. The world heritage site on Australia’s northern tip is not only brimming with natural beauty, it also carries immense cultural and spiritual significance as the site of the oldest known site of human habitation in Australia.
With the deposits at Ranger tapped out and just two years to go on the mining lease at Jabiluka, the fate of the mines seemed sealed.
But minority shareholders in ERA reckon Jabiluka’s rich deposit should be mined to provide fuel for the transition to a low-carbon economy and that it’s also worth having another look at a second deposit deep underneath the Ranger site.
Their cause was given a boost last week with the release of a valuation report, commissioned by members of the ERA board who aren’t affiliated with Rio, that suggested Jabiluka is worth more than $1bn.
It provoked a furious response from the Mirarr, who have called for the Albanese government to intervene; and from Rio, which called on ERA’s chair to resign. The furore has thrown into doubt ERA’s ability to raise the $2.2bn needed to fulfil its promise to restore Ranger.
This week, all the independent directors of ERA resigned. Rio agreed to give the company some breathing space by lending it up to $100m towards rehabilitation of Ranger.
However, the fundamental dispute has yet to be resolved.
‘The white man is not likely to stop’
Right from the beginning, the Mirarr people opposed mining for uranium on their land.
Their opposition was noted as early in 1977 when the final report of the Fox inquiry set up by the Whitlam government found that traditional owners opposed mining but “felt that having got so far, the white man is not likely to stop”.
The head of the inquiry, Russell Fox, said that the wishes of the Indigenous people should be considered but continued: “In the end, we form the conclusion that their opposition should not be allowed to prevail.”
The mine was approved by the Fraser government to open in 1980.
That was it until 1998, when the ERA, then owned by North Ltd, began a campaign to start a new mine at Jabiluka. That was opposed by an alliance of the Mirarr, led by Yvonne Margarula, and green groups, who held a nine-month blockade of the mine site. About 5,000 people took part and more than 500 were arrested.
“It was high stakes,” says Dave Sweeney, a nuclear campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation who was involved with the blockade.
“The mining company was intent on developing this, it had the full support of the Northern Territory government – then the CLP, the Country Liberal party. They had the full support of the federal government.
What Sweeney calls a “green-black” alliance also held protests outside the Sydney offices of ERA and North Ltd in Melbourne.
“Both of those corporate headquarters were the focus of pretty sustained and sometimes pretty rowdy protests,” Sweeney says.
North was taken over by Rio Tinto in 2000. Rio wanted North’s lucrative iron ore assets. It attempted to sell off ERA but, after failing to get a good price, hung on to the asset and continued to mine at Ranger.
“We very quickly turned our attention to Rio Tinto. We expected a big argument with them,” says Justin O’Brien, the chief executive of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, which represents the Mirarr.
“And we found that they were willing to step back and to provide free prior and informed consent to Jabiluka.”
Rio signed a care and maintenance agreement with the Mirarr people in 2005 that stops it mining Jabiluka unless the traditional owners consent.
By 2012, the Ranger mine was tapped out. Processing of stockpiled uranium ore continued until last year, but since then the mine has been nothing but a vast hole in the ground that ERA is responsible for filling at an ever-increasing cost.
When Rio looks at ERA, it sees little more than this multibillion-dollar liability. It values shares in the company at about 2c, about a tenth of their current market price.
Rio also cannot afford any further damage to its relationship with First Nations people, after blowing up ancient rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara. That disaster cost the jobs of three senior executives, including the CEO.
Kellie Parker, whose position of Australia CEO was created in response to the Juukan Gorge disaster, says the debacle taught the company that “Rio Tinto doesn’t have a home, we’re always hosted on someone else’s country”.
“So, here in this situation, it’s the Mirarr people. They are the most important and understanding what they want and understanding how they want to see the future is critical,” Parker says.
Rio also doesn’t currently think uranium is among minerals needed to decarbonise the world economy.
“Of course there is a public conversation that needs to happen in Australia about whether they want uranium mining,” Parker says. “At the moment, we don’t see that that actually has public support.
“So we’re fully committed to Ranger rehabilitation and we’re staying within our critical minerals – our copper, aluminium – and decarbonising iron ore.”
A carbon-lite resource
Where Rio sees an expensive hole, ERA’s minority shareholders see the opposite – a clean, green, multibillion-dollar opportunity.
Willy Packer, of Packer & Co, which owns 7.9% of ERA, describes Jabiluka as a “magical” deposit that can help fight global warming.
“If Rio truly believes ERA shares are worth 2c, or less than one tenth of their market value, then Rio should put its stake in ERA on the market and let someone else with long-term commitment take control of this incredible asset,” he says.
Another minority shareholder, Richard Magides, of Zentree Investments, says previous estimates value the uranium at Jabiluka and below Ranger as high as $25bn.
“Nuclear power is without doubt a vital source of zero-carbon base load power and has been described by many environmental scientists as critical in addressing [climate change],” he says.
Sweeney says that while it is true that nuclear power is low carbon, “that’s not the only lens for what is desirable, responsible, or less desirable and risky”.
“If it was easy, if it was sensible, if it was good, they would have done it,” he says.
While Magides and Packer dream of a nuclear boom that would make Jabiluka worth tens of billions of dollars, the valuation report released last week came up with a more conservative price tag of $1.1bn.
But O’Brien says the valuation is “completely absurd”.
“The traditional owners have said no so many times,” he says. “It is never going to happen. Its value is zero.”
To those still pushing uranium mining in Kakadu, he had one message: “It’s over. Walk away.”
