Pat Davoren, at the time responsible for co-ordinating the development and presentation of Australia’s Maralinga case to Britain, confirmed the impact of Aboriginal delegations outside parliament at various times during the dispute: ‘I got the impression from British Ministry of Defence officials that these visits did have some effect (they wished they would stop!)’.
Anderson’s story was timely, terse and filled with cross-checked data. Its sub-heading summed it up: ‘Fresh evidence suggests that Britain knew in the 1960s that radioactivity at its former nuclear test site in Australia was worse than first thought. But it did not tell the Australians’. The two-page news feature had a generic picture of an A-bomb mushroom cloud, a graphic map of the radiation plumes that emanated from the Taranaki test site and a picture of two unidentified scientists collecting samples during the 1984 survey at Maralinga. The science was deftly woven into the politics and the history:
Burns and his colleagues now believe that contamination at Maralinga is much worse than Britain has admitted. They say 21 pits, which were dug to hold radioactive waste, contain far less plutonium than Britain maintains. The remaining plutonium – ten times more than Britain has acknowledged – was spread over the land. The Australians will say that if they had known the full extent of the pollution, they would never have signed the agreement releasing Britain from its responsibilities over the cleanup.
Jeremy Webb, who edited the article, having quite a bit of input, as was usual for New Scientist editors, remembered its bombshell effect. He noted that publishing just before the bilateral meetings was critical in creating a storm: ‘The injustice was blatant and the story was widely covered. Obviously the British government would have preferred it if the negotiations had gone on in secret. But suddenly the talks were in the media spotlight with news outlets and the public wanting to know how the wrongs would be righted’. The management of the magazine was well pleased, he said. ‘There was a great sense of pride at New Scientist that we had helped to make a difference.’
Brian Toohey had opened a multi-faceted story to media examination back in 1978. Now Ian Anderson’s contribution had provoked a new round of public and political pressure, leading to a compensation agreement with Britain. Anderson appeared in many Australian media outlets when the story was released. He told Tony Delroy’s audience on ABC Radio National’s late evening show on 10 June, ‘This story as you know has been bubbling away for quite some time. Little bits and pieces have come out. What we have got here I think is just a pulling of it together’. He also discussed how the recently declassified documents had helped to bring out the truth.
Asked by Delroy about the forthcoming intergovernmental meeting in London, Anderson continued his favoured cricketing theme as he pondered the battle ahead: ‘A very tough fight, yes. Ironically the Australians will be doing battle with the Brits at Lords the same time won’t they?’ He pointed to a debate on 1 April in the UK parliament, discussed in his story, which had made clear that the British believed the 1968 agreement and the Brumby clean-up had fulfilled their responsibilities. The British had also denied that they were responsible for compensation to the Aborigines.
In the debate, Archie Hamilton had stood up in the House of Commons and maintained that Britain should not and would not pay. He had quoted from the 1968 agreement signed by the governments of Australia and the UK:
The United Kingdom government have completed decontamination and debris clearance at the Atomic Weapons Proving Ground Maralinga to the satisfaction of the Australian government… With effect from 21 December 1967, the United Kingdom government are released from all liabilities and responsibilities under Memorandum of Arrangements save that the United Kingdom will continue to indemnify the Australian government in accordance with Clause 11 of Memorandum in respect of claims for which the cause of action took place after 7 March 1956 and before 21 December 1967.
(Clause 11 specifically guaranteed to provide compensation for claims of death, injury or property damage sought by British government employees only, something that the Australian Government had agreed to despite an initial weak protest.) Hamilton had also mentioned how Britain had already repatriated half a kilogram of plutonium from the site in 1979, and how this was followed by an ‘exchange of notes’ that stated there was ‘no question of the United Kingdom having any further responsibility to repatriate waste’.
In the New Scientist story, Anderson had paraphrased Hamilton, who had equated dose levels at Maralinga ‘to those in Cornwall from naturally occurring radon gas’. He had also given Geoff Williams’ rebuttal, which had described Hamilton as mischievous: ‘It is not acceptable internationally to compare levels of man-made radioactivity with those of a naturally occurring radionuclide… Doses in Cornwall could reach 8 millisieverts a year. But, according to the TAG, because of the Aboriginal lifestyle, a child living near Taranaki could inhale more than 460 millisieverts a year’. Young children were at the greatest risk, because they were closer to the dusty ground and had smaller body mass.
Anderson was asked several times in different interviews to speculate on what the British knew and when they knew it. He tried to be balanced and fair. When asked by one host if it was proved that the British had knowingly lied, Anderson replied:
Well that’s a very, very good question. Was it deceit or not? You have to go back to the time… the world was different 30 or 40 years ago. These were cloak and dagger days and it has been suggested to me particularly by a person who was involved a lot on the Australian side at the time that the British Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, or parts of the Establishment, may not have been talking to each other. So whether it was deceit and deliberate is another matter – I think the crucial thing from Australia’s point of view is that it happened, and therefore 40 years on Australia believes it has a moral right for the British to participate again in a cleanup.
Almost certainly Anderson was referring here to Moroney, who had guided much of his understanding of the issue. The host continued with the theme of deceit, commenting that the key question was British culpability ‘and the extent to which Australian officials may have been part of that conspiracy of silence’. Anderson said:
Whether there was any Australian duplicity in it is another interesting point… I guess one of the questions that comes up is: why didn’t Australia do a more thorough job itself at the time and find out what was going on back then? Of course I get back to the point that this was a long time ago. I think that the British position was probably to a large extent taken and not questioned. We were much, much closer to the British in those days – in fact it was suggested in the parliament in London the other day that a lot of this, as far as the arrangement to do the testing, was stitched up in a telephone call between Robert Menzies and Clement Attlee, who was the British PM at the time. I doubt very much whether telephone calls these days would come to such deals.
In an interview on South Australian radio station 5CK, Simon Royal raised the slightly qualified New Scientist editorial support. The magazine’s editorial had suggested that ‘even if Australia has right on its side, it is too much to expect that Britain should immediately offer to pay for part of the clean-up. The sums of money are not massive by government standards but they are far too big for the Treasury to part with lightly’. The rest of the piece had supported the story. Royal asked Anderson how he felt about the suggestion that Britain shouldn’t immediately offer to pay up. Anderson replied that the editorial had been suggesting Britain come clean first and ‘then, probably, pay up’. Royal asked the question again and Anderson gave his own view: