Empty words with a $2 billion dollar price tag from Kakadu uranium miner
Publish Date:
21st March 2024
The Mirarr Traditional Owners of the Jabiluka uranium deposit remain concerned about ERA’s capacity to deliver on their commitments in Kakadu National Park. ERA’s announcement today that it has applied for an extension of the Jabiluka Mineral Lease does nothing to improve the Mirarr’s confidence in the mining company or its capacity to clean up properly at the former uranium mining site at Ranger.
Mirarr Traditional Owner, Corben Mudjandi, in Canberra for meetings with the federal government, expressed his concern: “ERA has a very big problem at Ranger, and this application isn’t helping with that,”
“What guarantee is there that this company will be operating in 12 months’ time? This is big talk from a company that is $2B short of rehabilitation at Ranger,” he added
The Chief Executive Officer of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, Thalia van den Boogaard, announced that the Mirarr Traditional Owners would now seek formal protection of Jabiluka’s cultural heritage and called on the Australian and Northern Territory governments as well as ERA to support this.
“If ERA is true to its word about wanting to protect Mirarr’s cultural heritage, we expect it will support protection through the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act (NT) and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act (CTH),” Ms van den Boorgaard said.
“ERA says it wants to protect our cultural heritage at Jabiluka, the best way of doing that is to include it in the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park where it belongs,” Mr Mudjandi said.
“We’ve heard very encouraging words from this company when they assured us Ranger would be cleaned up by January 2026 and look how wrong that turned out to be. We don’t doubt their sincerity, but we gravely doubt their capacity,” Ms van den Boogaard concluded.
Contact Kirsten Blair 0412 853 641
