Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

He doesn’t know—well, he wouldn’t! They were told on one hand that this is waste material stored at ANSTO. Now they are being told they have to house all of the Commonwealth nuclear waste. We know that that will mean eventually that those spent fuel rods which are in France will come back and will have to be stored somewhere. We know where that will be.

We know also that the bill will reinforce ANSTO’s ability to operate the Commonwealth nuclear waste dump, should the government decide to transfer overall responsibility to ANSTO. They will have carriage of and responsibility for this dump in the Northern Territory. ANSTO are currently licensed to operate a separate storage facility for its own waste.

This legislation will ensure that nuclear waste that is handled by contractors is considered to be Commonwealth waste under the ANSTO Act. They believe this is because the Commonwealth has a view that the extension of this immunity to contractors will limit potential legal action by the Northern Territory government. So here we have another attempt to circumvent any potential threat or challenge by the people of the Northern Territory to this legislation and to the prospect of having nuclear waste facilities in the Northern Territory.

I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase: in all fairness, do you think that is reasonable? You may not wish to answer me right now, but I am sure you will at some later point. I know, given what your understanding is of people living in remote communities, that you know they like to be treated fairly and reasonably. They are not being treated reasonably or fairly by the propositions which have been put forward in this legislation or by the government in relation to the nuclear industry.

I was going to canvass issues relating to nuclear enrichment. We know now that we have encouragement from the member for Solomon to anticipate that we should have a nuclear enrichment facility in the Northern Territory. I understand that my time is going to be limited and I will have an opportunity at some later point to resume my contribution, even though it will only be a short one at that point. But I will continue on at the moment.

One of the issues which I think we need to understand is the implications of this bill for a nuclear energy future including the possibilities of uranium enrichment and the impact on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. George Bush is pushing the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, GNEP, which some observers—notably George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—view as an act of welfare for the nuclear industry that far outweighs welfare for the poor. I think that there is a fair assessment and a fair conclusion to be drawn from that.

President Bush believes the industry to be over-regulated and is talking about tax incentives and indemnity from legal action to get the industry moving. He sees nuclear energy as safe and environmentally clean and as a sure foundation of the continuing growth of the US economy. The US industry has a problem disposing of nuclear waste.

Debate interrupted.

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