Construction of a nuclear waste dump in regional South Australia has been scrapped with the traditional owners hailing the move but the local mayor declaring it a "kick in the guts".
The facility, to permanently dispose of low-level waste and temporarily store intermediate waste, was to be built on land at Napandee near Kimba on Eyre Peninsula.
The site was designated by the previous coalition government despite continued opposition from the Barngarla people, the native title holders.
They recently won a protracted Federal Court battle which ruled the 2021 declaration by former resources minister Keith Pitt was invalid.
Resources Minister Madeleine King on Wednesday told parliament the government would not appeal the ruling and would look for a new location.
"I'm deeply sorry for the uncertainty the process has created for the Kimba community, for my own department, for the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency workers and for the workers involved in the project," she said.
"I also acknowledge the profound distress this process has caused the Barngarla people."
Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation chairman Jason Bilney said his people had been strong and resilient in their fight against the dump.
"We welcome the move by minister King today to listen to our voices and walk away from the atrocious conduct of the former government," Mr Bilney said.
"Today, this ends, and I thank everyone who has been with us along the way.”
Barngarla elder Aunty Dawn Taylor was relieved there would be "no dump on our land".
"This plan was flawed from the start and finally today, things went our way," she said.
But Kimba Mayor Dean Johnson urged the federal government to reconsider.
"This is a kick in the guts for our community who have invested eight years of extraordinary effort and determination to do what is right for the region," Mr Johnson said.
"All of that work has been for nothing."
SA Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham labelled the decision "gutless" while opposition resources spokeswoman Susan McDonald said it had thrown into doubt the future of Australia's nuclear medicine industry.
"After 50 years of planning for a centralised storage site, and the more recent work of successive governments to develop this particular facility, this Labor government has erased this progress and now has no plan," Senator McDonald said.
But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the site proposal was knocked over because of the former government's incompetence in its administration of the process.
The proposal for the SA dump was also opposed by the state government and conservation groups.
A ballot of the local community around Kimba returned majority support, though that also angered the Barngarla who said they had been unfairly excluded from voting.
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the plan had been divisive and deficient.
"The first step to getting something right is to stop getting it wrong. Today, the government took that important step," the ACF's nuclear-free campaigner Dave Sweeney said.
South Australian Infrastructure Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the idea of selecting a dump location on the basis of self-nomination from landholders was "probably the dumbest way to ever choose this type of site".
"What we had here was a political process and political processes don't give you good independent, scientific outcomes," he said.
"This is probably an example of how not to do a project."
Mr Koutsantonis said the SA government also believed the Indigenous owners had a right to say no.
Following the recent court decision, all work at Kimba stopped.
The government said the site was being supervised to ensure it remained safe and cultural heritage was protected and what had been done in the area would be reversed.
