Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 extends the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s ability to handle, manage or store radioactive materials from a wider range of sources and circumstances than it is able to at present. Currently ANSTO is limited by legislation to dealing with its own radioactive material, including waste, and in a number of ways it would be sensible and practical for ANSTO to handle, manage or store a wider range of materials. For this reason, the opposition will be supporting this bill. Specifically, the bill before the House tonight allows ANSTO to have a direct role in managing radioactive material involved in terrorist or criminal incidents. At the moment the ANSTO Act limits the assistance that ANSTO can provide in an emergency to only providing advice to Commonwealth, state and territory agencies.

In, for instance, the circumstances of a terrorist group gathering material for and assembling the components of a radioactive dirty bomb, ANSTO personnel could advise other Commonwealth officers about handling the radioactive material but would be restrained by law from handling the material themselves, from making that material safe, from transporting that material in safe containers or, indeed, from safely storing that material at an ANSTO facility. Given the expertise and experience held within ANSTO and the facilities which ANSTO has available, this legislative restriction should be removed. ANSTO ought to be able to manage, clean up and store radioactive material in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal incident involving that radioactive material. In my view, this should include the safeguarding of any radioactive matter which may be required as evidence in legal proceedings against alleged terrorists or criminals and in providing expert opinion as required by the courts.

I note also the comments by the Minister for Education, Science and Training that this bill will bring Australia into line with standards set out in the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, and Labor urges that all necessary actions to comply with this UN convention be taken so that Australia can agree to this important treaty. In addition to the handling of material involved in a criminal act, ANSTO is also currently constrained by a lack of power to process, handle or store waste from other Commonwealth sources—for example, Defence or CSIRO. As a consequence of this bill, ANSTO will be able to lend its expertise to waste management of all radioactive materials held by the Commonwealth. This will include transporting radioactive waste to Lucas Heights, ‘conditioning’ or processing the material to render it safe and suitable for further storage, and temporary storage of that treated material until a long-term repository is available.

I am advised that the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency is developing a code of practice and safety guide for the conditioning and management of radioactive waste prior to its disposal. Once they are developed, ARPANSA intends to apply these national requirements for predisposal management to all Commonwealth entities. ANSTO’s experience in managing its own waste makes it the only body suitable for and capable of conditioning Commonwealth waste to meet ARPANSA’s requirements. These changes will mean that much larger quantities of waste will be transported to Lucas Heights for conditioning and held there during processing before eventual storage at the waste dump. This may cause concern about waste transportation and storage in the Lucas Heights community, and I hope that the government has already begun discussions with the community around Lucas Heights.

Labor supports appropriate management of Australian nuclear waste, following proper community consultation. Equally, Labor wants to make sure that the present ANSTO site at Lucas Heights does not become a long-term dump for Commonwealth nuclear waste. To this end, I am seeking an immediate assurance that Lucas Heights will not become a de facto national waste dump as a result of the provisions of this bill. I hope that the minister for science is in a position to respond to this request when she closes this second reading debate.

At present, spent fuel from the research reactor at Lucas Heights is sent to France for reprocessing. In the past it has also been sent to Scotland. Reprocessing involves the spent fuel waste being held in storage for a considerable period in order to reduce its radioactivity. The reprocessed spent fuel is yet to return to Australia. However, it is due to come back between 2011 and 2015. ANSTO has entered into contractual arrangements for the reprocessing and eventual return of the waste. This intermediate-level waste will return to Lucas Heights before it is taken to the nuclear waste dump that the government is imposing on the Northern Territory.

During the reprocessing operation overseas, ANSTO spent fuel is mixed with spent fuel from other customers into a single batch and then allocated to customers in proportion to their input to the mixed batch. It is probable that waste returning to Australia will contain nuclear waste not generated by the Australian research reactor. The government believes that it is not clear that a court would regard such waste as waste arising from ANSTO’s activities. The proposed amendments would make sure that ANSTO has the necessary powers to accept such wastes under its contractual agreements, and manage and store such wastes.

The bill also explicitly provides that materials and waste generated, processed or controlled by a Commonwealth contractor are taken to be generated, processed or controlled by the Commonwealth itself, and as such contractors are covered by the same responsibilities and immunities as the Commonwealth. In a broad sense, this ought to be viewed as a positive outcome of this bill because the Commonwealth should not be able to shirk any of its responsibilities or controls by handing over possession of radioactive materials to a contractor. However, there is another side to Commonwealth immunities being extended to contractors. According to briefings my office has had from the department, this bill is what they call a belt and braces attempt to prevent any residual capacity which may exist for legal challenge to the nuclear waste dump by removing the avenue of challenging ANSTO’s authority to manage waste generated by non-ANSTO sources.

Advice I have received on this issue indicates that the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, which already applies to Commonwealth contractors, is ‘a very powerful tool in providing immunity from the operation of state or territory legislation in relation to the establishment and operation of the proposed waste facility in the Northern Territory’. Further, this legal advice suggests that any role that ANSTO may have in the future operation of the facility, including storage and transport, would be covered by those immunities in the Radioactive Waste Management Act. So I ask the minister another question which I would appreciate her responding to when she sums up the bill: could she confirm that she shares the department’s objectives in relation to this provision—objectives which were not stated in these terms in the explanatory material for the bill?

Labor objects strongly to the very extensive and powerful immunities that the Commonwealth has already bulldozed through this parliament. These concerns of ours form the basis of the second reading amendment, which has been circulated in my name. I now move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

its extreme and arrogant imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory;

(2)

breaking a specific promise made before the last election to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory;

(3)

its heavy-handed disregard for the legal and other rights of Northern Territorians and other communities, by overriding any existing or future State or Territory law or regulation that prohibits or interferes with the selection of Commonwealth land as a site, the establishment of a waste dump, and the transportation of waste across Australia;

(4)

destroying any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the Minister’s decision to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory;

(5)

establishing a hand-picked committee of inquiry into the economics of nuclear power in Australia, while disregarding the economic case for all alternatives sources of energy; and

(6)

keeping secret all plans for the siting of nuclear power stations and related nuclear waste dumps”.

The Howard government, as we all know, is determined to dump radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. Before the last election, the people of the Northern Territory were given an undertaking—a promise, in fact—by this government that there would not be a dump in the Northern Territory. When this government needed to be re-elected, it could not wait to reassure Territorians that there would be no nuclear waste dump in the Territory. However, once the Howard government was safely back in office, it seems it could not break that commitment fast enough.

Just last year David Tollner, the member for Solomon, claimed not to support the nuclear waste dump in the Territory. At that time he said:

There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory … That was the commitment undertaken in the lead up to the federal election and I haven’t heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election.

We now know that he has completely backflipped in order to force the nuclear waste dump onto the Territory. The government has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted on such issues. Why would anybody trust this Prime Minister when he breaks his promise to keep interest rates at record lows, when he smashes his promise that no worker will be worse off under the Howard government and when he dumps the promise that he made to keep nuclear waste away from the Northern Territory? We can only say that broken promises are the debris left after 10 long years of this Prime Minister taking a wrecking ball to the foundations of our fair and decent society.

The other legacy of 10 long years of this government is its sheer arrogance and heavy-handedness—and that applies particularly to the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory. The Prime Minister has once again broken the trust of the Australian people. He has repeatedly failed to recognise that trust works both ways. You cannot expect to be trusted if you are not willing to trust the Australian people, to consult with them and to give them time to consider important matters, like the location of nuclear waste.

Instead, this government has rammed its extreme nuclear waste dump legislation through this parliament. The waste dump legislation gave the government total power to site, construct and operate the Commonwealth radioactive waste dump at one of three sites in the Northern Territory. It overrode all existing and future state and territory law and regulation that got in the way. In addition, many federal laws have been overridden, including the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act and the Native Title Act. As a final blow, the waste dump legislation destroyed any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the minister’s decision to put a waste dump in the Northern Territory. Not only does the government not trust the people of the Northern Territory but it has taken extreme measures to gag them and block them at every turn.

We now have this Prime Minister calling for a debate about nuclear power in this country. He expects all of us to believe in him this time when he says that he is interested in the Australian community’s views. The Prime Minister has refused to come clean on the question of where he will put his nuclear power plants. Both the Prime Minister and his science minister, Julie Bishop, have refused to talk about locations—although the science minister has been quite happy to rule out her own electorate. So, if a debate about nuclear power is not an appropriate time to talk about power plant sites, when is an appropriate time?

The economic feasibility and safety of nuclear power is intrinsically tied to where the power plants will be. The Prime Minister’s so-called inquiry into nuclear power is not looking at this critical question—but, not surprisingly, that has not stopped Geoscience Australia, the government’s own advisory body on the geology and topography of Australia, from stating in its submission to the inquiry that Australia is:

... the most geologically stable of the continents. It has areas which appear geologically suitable for waste disposal.

If that is the case, local communities have a right to know what this government’s intentions are and what to expect from it, both on nuclear power sites and on the siting of future nuclear waste dumps. Make no mistake about it: this government is determined to bring nuclear power to Australia. This so-called inquiry is just part of the government’s constant campaign for nuclear power. I will just make it clear once again: the Labor Party is fundamentally opposed to bringing nuclear power to this country.

The Howard government knows that local communities will not cop it, which is why it is refusing to talk about the most important thing: where the power plants and the resulting high-level waste dumps will be. ANSTO told Labor at a Senate estimates hearing this year and later on ABC radio that at least three to five nuclear power plants would be needed for a viable Australian nuclear power industry. So, if this Prime Minister is serious about nuclear power, he should come clean and tell us where these three to five sites might be.

In addition, the Minister for Education, Science and Training recently released a report that was commissioned by ANSTO and written by a fellow called John Gittus, a nuclear insurance expert on the economics of nuclear power. John Gittus argued that the risk of terrorist attack on an Australian nuclear power station would be 50 per cent higher today than it was in 2001. A nuclear power station in Australia would now be classed as a ‘world terrorism target’ by insurers, who could charge up to $400 million to insure such a plant. The report goes on to suggest that nuclear power stations would be economically viable in Australia only:

If Australia purchased a 5th or later copy of an AP 1000 nuclear power plant, something that’s not likely to be available for another 20 years.

If at least 3 nuclear power plants were purchased and built.

And if the Government subsidised 14.31 % of the cost of building a power station by, and 21.41% of the cost of electricity produced for the first 12 years of operation.

The economics of nuclear power plainly do not stack up. We have abundant sources of alternative energy, waste disposal issues for nuclear power remain unresolved and there are very important national security issues to be considered. The government’s refusal to be honest with the Australian community is seriously concerning at this particular time when the government is pushing the benefits of nuclear power.

We also know that the coalition have form when it comes to the location of nuclear facilities. They certainly know how to keep them secret. In 1997 the government considered a shortlist of 14 possible sites for nuclear research reactors but kept the list secret from the public. The confidential briefing—signed with ‘good work’ by the former science minister Peter McGauran—said the shortlist should be kept secret because:

… release of information about alternate sites may unnecessarily alarm communities in the broad areas under consideration.

Because this document has been released, we now know the short-listed sites included Goulburn, Darwin, Mount Isa, the Mount Lofty Ranges and electorates including Brand and Pearce in Western Australia. The list also included Lucas Heights, right there in Sydney, which makes it all the more important for the minister for science to rule out Lucas Heights becoming a de facto waste dump as a result of this bill.

Last week we had the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, and the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory spruiking even more nuclear waste for Australia with their calls for Australia to enrich uranium. The problem for Australia is that this Prime Minister has not explained what his plans for nuclear enrichment mean for waste storage in Australia. Is it the case that the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory does in fact want more nuclear waste dumped in their own Territory? We know there is growing momentum in international politics for countries that process uranium to accept spent fuel as well. We know that the government has had enormous difficulty finding a solution for Australia’s low- and intermediate-level waste, let alone taking the world’s high-level waste, but that has not stopped the foreign affairs minister. In February this year he said Australia needs more nuclear waste dumps. He said:

We need medium and we need high level storage as well ... We really need to get on with it ... The longer it takes the greater the risk.

As I said, we had the Country Liberal Party from the Northern Territory voting last week to support an inquiry into uranium enrichment in the Northern Territory. They backflipped to force the waste dump on the Territory; now they are running to support uranium enrichment and, of course, all of the consequences that that entails.

So if the government are in fact planning to introduce nuclear power—and it seems they are—or uranium enrichment plants, they must answer some questions that the Australian people want to ask. Which suburbs or towns will be home to the new nuclear reactors and enrichment plants? What will the government do to make sure local residents and schools are safe? Where will we see nuclear reactors in our major cities? Will they be in any cities other than Sydney? What will be done with the nuclear waste? Will there be nuclear waste dumps other than in the Northern Territory? Given the Prime Minister has not been able to get agreement on the location for low- and medium-level nuclear waste, how does he plan to dispose of or store high-level waste? Of course, he has not been prepared to even attempt to answer any of these questions let alone address the intractable problems of nuclear waste and the safety of operations of nuclear facilities.

We only need to look to Britain’s experience. It is certainly a cautionary tale of the serious environmental security and social risks posed by nuclear waste. Britain’s civil and military nuclear industries have accumulated 2.3 million cubic metres of nuclear waste around their country. Indeed, the United Kingdom government has estimated it will cost $170 billion to clean up the 20 British nuclear sites.

As a nation, we still do not have a solution for the disposal of our small quantity of low-level nuclear waste. There is no agreement from the people of the Northern Territory. We also know the Howard government’s nuclear power inquiry task force does not include a single environmental expert to look at the critical environmental or safety issues. We understand that Greg Bourne, the head of WWF Australia, was approached to be on the task force, but he described the inquiry as ‘rubbish’.

The minister for science, Julie Bishop, even left the door open for the nuclear power inquiry to consider the dumping of foreign nuclear waste in Australia, despite the Prime Minister himself ruling out the importation of foreign nuclear waste. So which is it going to be? Is it the case that we will get nuclear power stations up and down the coast of Australia, as the Prime Minister seems to want? Is it the case that the minister for science is saying that she will consider the importation of foreign nuclear waste into Australia, as she seems to be?

All of these issues are critical matters for the Australian people, but as usual we are not getting any answers to these questions from the Howard government. They prefer to run a program of deception when it comes to nuclear power. They prefer to mislead people and to make promises to people, as they did in the Northern Territory, over the nuclear waste dump before the election and then backflip and impose that nuclear waste dump on those people after the election.

As I said at the start of this debate, there are good reasons for supporting this bill that is before the House, but I do urge members to look at Labor’s very serious concerns that we have set out in this second reading amendment. It certainly indicates our extreme concerns about the heavy-handed way in which this government is going about both the debate on nuclear power and the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory.

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