Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

To resume my comments, I point out that the scope of research that these 17 neutron beam instruments will allow is tremendous—from research on advanced materials through to molecular biology—using technologies that were unknown at the time the current reactor was opened by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, later Sir Robert Menzies, on 18 April, 1958.

As well as opening up new areas of research, ANSTO is well known as the principal producer and supplier of radioisotopes for medical diagnoses, treatment and pain relief in Australia. Last year, approximately 550,000 patient treatments were transported from ANSTO to hospitals around Australia and increasingly into South-East Asia as well. Nuclear medicines are chiefly used for diagnosis, but increasingly also to treat disease and for pain relief. For example, bone scans can now detect the spread of cancers six to 18 months sooner than X-rays. ANSTO also continually conducts new research aimed at developing new radiation treatments for different types of cancer and other medical conditions.

With additional capacity, ANSTO will also be able to expand its support of the Australian manufacturing, minerals and agricultural industries. (Quorum formed) The estimated gross benefit of support to the minerals industry, for example, currently exceeds $100 million annually. The replacement reactor will give us significantly more. This modern high-tech research facility will attract eminent foreign scientists to work in Australia and provide Australian scientists with greater reciprocal access to complementary, first-class research facilities around the world. Indeed, the return to Australia from the new research reactor will be significant in attracting to Australia the greatest scientific minds of our age. We will be truly beaming up Australia with the brightest lights in the international scientific community whereas Labor would seek to dumb us down.

The amendments in this bill will enable ANSTO to treat and appropriately package Commonwealth radioactive material before eventual storage or disposal at the Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility to be established in the Northern Territory. The act already permits movement of non-ANSTO radioactive material to the Lucas Heights site on a case-by-case basis under the regulation-making power of the act. This amendment in no way implies that Lucas Heights is now intended as the Commonwealth’s radioactive waste management facility. This government, unlike the previous Labor government, has a clear policy, backed by legislation, that the Commonwealth’s radioactive waste management facility in the Northern Territory will be the destination for Commonwealth radioactive material.

That legislation is the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005, which I spoke on last year. It was welcomed by the people in my electorate of Hughes because this government is getting on with the job of bringing a Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility into creation. The idea of a national approach to radioactive material management originated in 1978, but, through careless inaction and indifference by the previous Labor government and the stonewalling by state Labor governments, this responsible national approach had been scrapped. It has taken this government to put in place a facility to manage this Commonwealth material in a suitable location.

The fact is that the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, otherwise known as ARPANSA, would not issue an operating licence for the new OPAL research reactor until an appropriate site for the national repository had been identified. This was a condition of the operating licence. Dr John Loy, CEO of ARPANSA, had made it clear that, if the establishment process for a radioactive waste management facility had not advanced to his satisfaction, he would not issue the licence for ANSTO to operate OPAL. Therefore, last month, when ARPANSA granted ANSTO a licence to operate OPAL, Dr Ian Smith, Executive Director of ANSTO, welcomed the decision. He said:

The granting of the licence takes us one step closer to the start of a new era in Australian science.

Not only will OPAL increase ANSTO’s capacity to supply Australia and the region with critically important radiopharmaceuticals, it will provide world leading capability for our scientists to apply nuclear research to such areas as biotechnology, food and molecular biology, nanotechnology, health, environmental management processes and engineering.

This research will result in tangible social and economic benefits for Australia.

I have been assured that the licence was granted following an exhaustive examination of all the evidence presented by ANSTO, including cold commissioning tests. ARPANSA were also advised by overseas consultants, including an International Atomic Energy Agency review team—all experts in the field of nuclear reactor engineering. OPAL has met the highest possible standards imposed upon the nuclear industry. The granting of the licence will now allow ANSTO to load nuclear fuel and begin its second commissioning phase, when further testing will take place to ensure OPAL’s performance meets expectations. When this is complete, it is proposed that the current ANSTO reactor, HIFAR, will shut down early next year.

The amendments will also permit ANSTO to manage radioactive materials in an emergency situation where ANSTO’s specialist expertise might be called on—for example, in the aftermath of a terrorist incident in Australia involving radioactive materials. Numerous recent attacks and attempted attacks on Western targets all over the world underline the emergence of the use of terror by radical extremists as a major threat to Australia’s security. This threat is serious and enduring. This terrorist phenomenon is new in scale, method and ambition.

Al-Qaeda and similar networks have demonstrated both the willingness and the capability to inflict massive casualties on civilian targets, and they display no concern for the loss of innocent life. We are also led to believe that they have an active interest in obtaining chemical, biological and even radiological weapons. Unlike the terrorist groups of the last century, the al-Qaeda fundamentalists embody extremist terrorism that is uncompromising.

Australia is a Western democratic nation. Where previous forms of terrorism barely touched us, this new form of extremist terrorism has declared its aim to inflict damage on Western liberal democracies. It is indeed global in scale. No nation can afford to ignore such threats. I welcome more powers being given to ANSTO because, if the unthinkable were to happen, I know I would want the experts rendering all assistance possible to Commonwealth, state or territory law enforcement and emergency agencies.

After all the benefits that ANSTO and the nuclear industry in general have brought to Australia, I find it very difficult to understand why Labor attack ANSTO at every chance they can get. Clearly, the nuclear industry in Australia is one of the most highly regulated industries, with the greatest of safety records.

When I first entered parliament in l996, I was approached by Dr Garry Smith, an environmental scientist from Sutherland Shire Council, to lobby our government on behalf of the council for the establishment of an independent oversight agency for Australia’s nuclear activity, including that of ANSTO, to assure Australians generally and local residents in particular that world’s best practice was the driving principle at this important research facility.

The establishment of an independent oversight agency was achieved in 1999, with the successful passing of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998. This created ARPANSA as the Commonwealth’s licensing agency for nuclear facilities and radioactive waste materials management and disposal in Australia. Like the Sutherland Shire Council, I considered it imperative for the assurance of my constituents that such an independent oversight agency of appropriately accredited scientific professionals existed to undertake this oversight responsibility.

I continue to be grateful to a previous minister for health, the Hon. Dr Michael Wooldridge, and his parliamentary secretary, the Hon. Trish Worth, the then member for Adelaide, for their work and commitment in bringing forth the legislation that created the vital, independent oversight agency that is ARPANSA. I was very proud to have been part of that process. This organisation has the statutory responsibility for, and the accountability to, the people of Australia for the activities of ANSTO and all Commonwealth nuclear activity across Australia.

ARPANSA’s specific responsibilities include: promoting uniformity of radiation protection and nuclear safety policy and practices across jurisdictions of the Commonwealth, state and territory governments; providing advice to government and information to the community on radiation protection, nuclear safety and related issues; undertaking research and providing services in relation to radiation protection, nuclear safety and medical exposures to radiation; directly and significantly reducing the risk and impact of a radiological attack by improving the physical security of all radioactive sources; enhancing Australia’s capability to undertake comprehensive in-field analysis and provide expert advice in the event of a radiological attack; and regulating all Commonwealth government entities, including departments, agencies and bodies corporate involved in radiation or nuclear activities or dealings.

It is appropriate that the activities of ANSTO are the subject of the utmost scrutiny by the world’s best scientists under a legislative regime. However, it should be of grave concern to the members in this House that other industries in Australia also come under tight scrutiny. One industry which appears not to be sufficiently regulated and which receives little publicity in the media is the toxic chemical industry.

In June this year, the television program 60 Minutes reported that in Sydney there are storage sites of dangerous toxic chemicals which cannot be described in any terms other than environmental vandalism on a monumental scale. This report informed the nation that a huge stockpile of around 15,000 tonnes of highly toxic industrial chemical waste called hexachlorobenzene, known in the trade as HCB, is stored only 12 kilometres from the Sydney CBD. This dangerous stuff causes cancer and reproductive abnormalities, as well as skin, nerve and liver damage. But that is not the worst of it.

The Daily Telegraph, in an article by David Fisher and Larissa Cummings on 23 August entitled ‘Poison in the water’, reported that a cocktail of toxic chemical waste that includes arsenic, lead, nickel, benzene, chlorinated hydrocarbons and solvents is slowly poisoning the vast watertable that lies under the Sydney area. This has resulted in a ban on the domestic use of bore water in Sydney suburbs that range from Surry Hills in the west, to Coogee in the north, to Tempe in the south and to Phillip Bay in the east. The good citizens of Sydney should be contacting their local state members of parliament and asking: ‘What in the world is the state government doing about this alarming situation?’ As the member for Grayndler expressed before, he should be advising his constituents that this exists. As he said earlier, constituents have a right to know.

I am also aware that Sutherland Shire Council have expressed their concerns to the government that, while they understand the need for ANSTO to have the ability to deal with the possibility of a dirty bomb in the event of a terrorist activity in Australia and that it is necessary for ANSTO to be able to deal with such a situation, retrieve any such radioactive material and take it back to the ANSTO site, they seek the government’s assurance that no other waste will be brought to the site for storage. I can assure the council that, while 95 per cent of the Commonwealth’s radioactive waste material is already stored at the ANSTO Lucas Heights site and a remaining five per cent may also be stored there sometime in the future, this provision will cease immediately when the national waste repository in the Northern Territory comes on line. The federal government has given a clear commitment to the establishment of this national waste repository and I will continue to take an active personal interest in its progress. I refer my constituents and the council to my record and success in bringing ARPANSA into existence. Indeed, I consider ARPANSA to be one of my most important achievements during my time here in parliament. (Time expired)

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