» less than 20% of the Pu used in the Vixen B trials can be expected to have remained in the debris in the locality of the firing pads.
It follows from this that AWRE also knew that:
» all of the post-firing α-survey data from Vixen B trials were low by at least a factor of ten;
» the areas of Pu contamination at Taranaki to be cleaned up in BRUMBY were greater, by an order of magnitude, than as indicated by the results of the post-firing α-surveys; and
» the burial pits at Taranaki contained no more than 15% to 20% of the Pu used in the 12 firings.
Those few lines written to Davoren distilled what Moroney had deduced from the Roller Coaster pages. His analysis discovered the key to understanding what damage Vixen B had done. He subsequently supplied this information to Ian Anderson, and it provided the backbone for his article. Moroney’s analysis was later confirmed by MARTAC.
In his letter to Davoren, Moroney observed, ‘I know that the Pu survey work in RADSUR & BRUMBY had its problems, but I still find it galling that it was so bad that it couldn’t even pick-up an error of such huge dimensions’. Moroney signed off his letter with the handwritten words ‘good luck’.
The analysis showed that the Australian authorities had not possessed all the relevant facts before signing the 1968 agreement. The accumulated data from the 1984 expedition and from Roller Coaster data produced an irrefutable case for the British to help fund a major site clean-up. Simon Crean and Gareth Evans were armed with these facts as they prepared to negotiate with the British for compensation. Behind-the-scenes wrangling over this issue had been going on for several years, with expert input from Moroney. The Australian Government alerted the British Government that it had the Roller Coaster data in December 1991.
The moves to deal with the contamination began in the wake of the Royal Commission when a group known as the Technical Assessment Group (TAG), made up of British, American and Australian scientists and technicians, undertook extensive tests across a range of issues. TAG did not itself include formal Indigenous representation, as suggested by the Royal Commission, although Maralinga Tjarutja people were represented on the Maralinga Consultative Group, a broader forum to discuss all matters concerning the test sites.
TAG carried out six studies from 1986 to 1990, including inhalation studies, flora and fauna surveys and a detailed anthropological study. The group devised 27 clean-up options, preferring one that involved, in part, immobilising the waste in the Taranaki burial pits using an innovative technique known as in situ vitrification. Anderson reported on the outcome of the TAG investigations, in a New Scientist story on 17 November 1990. He highlighted TAG findings that suggested ‘Aboriginal children would receive doses of radiation more than 300 times the accepted limit if they were to live in the most highly contaminated regions of the former British nuclear test site at Maralinga in South Australia’. Anderson’s 1990 story also reported that the Australian Government was seeking compensation from the UK to help cover the cost of the clean-up.
It took three years. During those frustrating years – 1990 to 1993 – Moroney analysed the Roller Coaster data in detail, comparing them with the Pearce Report, the data generated by his ARL colleagues in 1984 and material that was emerging from TAG. In the process Moroney’s attitude to the British tests changed. This shift was profound and painful. He deeply resented the British lies and felt that he, personally, had been misled through years of loyal service. He became a bitter crusader for accountability and nearly single-handedly pointed out all the ways the British test authorities had been deceitful. In a series of reports, analyses and memoranda he summarised the issue in a way that Australia’s legal and scientific representatives were able to use.
Geoff Williams, who worked with Moroney for years, said the 1984 findings and the subsequent Roller Coaster revelations had been ‘a great eye-opener’ to Moroney and confirmed that he was angry. Ultimately he felt the British must have known and had ‘entirely hoodwinked him and his committee… John felt very let down by the British because he felt that it was a relationship of trust.
He trusted the British, he felt the British trusted him, and there was this great breach of trust where they had really done things out at Maralinga that he wasn’t aware of’.
After Anderson, acting upon his chance conversation with Williams, decided to pursue the story, he interviewed Williams and Peter Burns together. In a recording of the interview, Anderson can be heard quietly but determinedly directing the two radiation scientists to tell their detailed and damning story. The scientists were calm but displeased. They were frustrated that their work back in 1984, the following Royal Commission and the extensive, exhaustive work by TAG all seemed to be coming to nothing. Williams later observed in 2004, ‘We all felt originally that the British were going to get away scot-free again’. Certainly, in 1993, it was by no means certain that the truth would out.
Anderson portrayed the interviews as ‘a cat and mouse game’ because he was denied direct access to the declassified Roller Coaster documents. He had gone to his first meeting at ARL expecting to be shown the documents, but he never saw them. He said in his application for the Michael Daley awards, ‘After that setback, it was a matter of piecing together the main thrust of the documents from what Moroney’s colleagues at ARL felt they could say’. He said, ‘My sources wouldn’t always tell me what was right, but would indicate when something I put to them was wrong’. The existing tape recording does not bear this statement out, however. The interview sounds more open – Williams and Burns were talkative, informative and expansive. Anderson was likely unhappy he could not see the actual Roller Coaster documents himself, and it possibly coloured his perception. He believed that a ‘senior bureaucrat’ in Canberra had prevented him from getting the documents.
A cat-and-mouse game is certainly evident in a taped telephone interview between Anderson and an unidentified contact, however. The source was obviously a ministerial adviser who could have been any of several advising Crean at the time. Anderson (IA) was trying to find out from the unknown interviewee (UI) how much compensation was being sought from the UK.
IA: So are we going for this $101 million?
UI: Thereabouts, yes.
IA: But how much are we asking them for?
UI: A substantial contribution. You would have seen the newspaper reports about that.
IA: There was something in the Canberra Times about $60 million I think it was.
UI: That’s inaccurate. In fact most of the newspaper reports are inaccurate – most have guessed at what a ‘substantial proportion’ is.
IA: Okay, well what is it then?
UI: Well, that’s the Australian Government’s position and up to negotiation between the two governments. We’ve told them what we are expecting – all we’ve been saying is that we are expecting a substantial…
IA: So the idea of it being 50 per cent is not necessarily correct?