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Nuclear Citizens Jury in action: the purpose and the process

By Noel Wauchope - posted Tuesday, 5 July 2016


You make it clear that the Royal Commission has no responsibility to educate the community at large. We jury members, with our lack scientific knowledge are given this job - our job is greater than the Commission's. Who is going to support and fund this necessary education of the public?

Answer from Greg Ward:

It is a big challenge. I think you will enjoy the process. (repeats) It is a big challenge. You will need to focus on the real issues and the facts. I'm sure that you will provide the right advice.

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A problematic area is in the choice of witnesses. This is done in a complicated way, but DemocracyCo is trying to be fair here. In looking for expert witnesses, the jury members are not necessarily aware that some might come with technical knowledge, but with an implicit or well-known bias on the subject. This is most likely to happen with witnesses on the subject on health and ionising radiation.

A later meeting, on selection of witnesses on the subject of "education" (educational methods etc), the meeting recommended a speaker from Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). What was needed was an education expert, not a radiation expert.

If you go to DemocracyCo's Citizen Jury website – Citizens' Jury One Video Library or to Youtube - you can see 24 videos of these recent hearings.

To try to assess the content of all of these witness speeches is quite a daunting task. However, when one breaks it down into topics, it becomes easier to analyse these speeches from witnesses, and to detect any biases, omissions and flaws. Day One was pretty much a big spruik from the Nuclear Fuel Chain Royal Commission. Day Two was more complicated.

As one goes through all these hearings, as I have done, questionable areas emerge. Some of these are – the economics of waste importing, transport safety, including terrorism risks, the effects of low dose radiation, and perhaps the most significant aspect of all – Aboriginal rights. I think that if observers study each aspect separately, flaws in the Royal Commission's (RC's) case will become evident.

It's not a proper "Jury", with a purpose to arrive at a yes or no verdict. It is a campaign ruse by the Weatherill government to get these "ordinary people" to develop a readable, understandable, summary of the RC's 320 pages of recommendations. Apparently the RC personnel are not able to do this themselves.

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Two rays of light in all this. First, the jury members are already asking intelligent questions. Secondly, DemocracyCo's personnel are making every effort to run these hearings fairly, and transparently.

The South Australian nuclear lobby may be in for some surprises.

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About the Author

Noel Wauchope taught science before switching to nursing. She has several post-graduate qualifications, in health informatics, medical terminology and clinical coding. She is a long time anti-nuclear activist.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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