Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This bill, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, is a small piece of legislation designed specifically to address an issue that was not adequately resolved on the introduction of the Commonwealth radioactive waste management legislation of 2005.

If you are not too busy, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, I might later make some remarks about tidal power in which you may be interested.

This is a simple piece of legislation. It addresses the opportunity for the Commonwealth, having acquired the land for this waste facility in the Northern Territory, to return that land to the traditional owners if it finds that the land is excess to its needs or if the land is no longer required because of a change of policy.

The member for Lingiari was at pains to stress the rights of the Aboriginal landowners to speak for country, and I would certainly endorse their right to speak for country. He makes constant reference to a land council. But my observation of the process is that it does not address that right.

The land entitlements of various tribal groups were minuscule compared to the coverage granted to land councils. A land council is a sort of cooperative and a bureaucracy that has taken upon itself the right to speak for individual native title traditional owners.

Might I quote to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, the experience I had as a minister when I thought it was appropriate to clean up an embarrassing slum in Canberra, outside Old Parliament House, which some people—campers, if you like; and I am surprised that a few Australian pensioners have not thought it appropriate that they turn up and park their caravan there on some similar grounds—had set up. When I set out to clean that up and replace it with an appropriate interpretative centre, to recognise the original tent embassy—which, by the way, happened to be a beach umbrella, but it caught the popular imagination of Australians—I had a very interesting experience. I thought it quite appropriate to consult sincerely with the traditional owners, the Ngunnawal people. But it became obvious to them that most of the inhabitants of this so-called ‘embassy’ were not traditional landowners—they did not even come from the region! They took some exception to this, once it was obvious to them, and went down and told these people to leave and started to pull down their tents and the other things that they had constructed there. And those people went off to the whitefella court—the Supreme Court of the ACT—for protection from the traditional landowners who did not want them there. This is how farcical certain aspects of so-called land rights can be.

And for the member for Lingiari, as he traditionally does, to stand up in this place defending the rights of a bureaucracy, in terms of what might be best for the traditional landowner, is, I think, just typical of a Labor Party bureaucratic approach. Consequently, I reject the amendments that he and others have promoted on this.

I find it quite amazing that we have (a) to (f)—in fact, we have two paragraphs of amendments, which of course in the first place state that the bill not be given a second reading. But when we get down to 1(f), they criticise the government’s failure to deliver a national waste repository after 10 long years in government. And they have spent the bulk of this debate saying why it should not be in the Northern Territory!

Yet, of course, it is in the Northern Territory because when the residents of the Northern Territory were given the opportunity to become a state and have some constitutional rights in regard to the land under their administration, the people of the Northern Territory voted against it. So I think there are a few realistic matters that have come forward. But the reason that this is in the Northern Territory is that, by the decision of the local people, it is still a territory answerable to the Commonwealth. And it is also, of course, appropriate, in many ways, from a geographical, a geological, perspective.

It is interesting to look at the second reading speech of the Minister for Education, Science and Training. In that speech we are told that, through this bill, the Australian government seeks to ensure, should a volunteer site be selected for the facility, that there is a mechanism for the land to be returned to its original owners or successors when the site is no longer required. We will not be returning a dirty or polluted site.

The bill provides that the return may not be effected unless the independent regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency—highly regarded, I might add—has released the facility from regulatory control. Further, the traditional owners must consent to the return of the site. However, in the extremely unlikely event that contamination occurs as the result of the use of the land for the facility, the traditional owners will be indemnified by the Commonwealth against any resultant claims. A related purpose of this bill is to amend both this act and the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 to prevent politically motivated challenges to a land council nomination. What could be more sensible than that?

If we ever have a nuclear power industry and a uranium enrichment facility in Australia, we must have a safe and properly controlled nuclear waste management facility. I find it remarkable that people get all frantic about this when the prime purpose of the Lucas Heights facility is to produce radioactive isotopes for the purpose of human medicine. As is well known, those isotopes are injected into the human body by a doctor using a syringe of some description, some rubber gloves and maybe some other robes. These items could be ‘contaminated’ by that process. Each of these items becomes low-level nuclear waste.

State premiers who say ‘No nuclear waste in my time’ approve the storage of such products in the basements of their hospitals. Admittedly, the only protection needed between these items and other human beings is a sheet of cardboard, but surely such waste, if it is declared to be low-level nuclear waste, should have an adequate repository.

There is now almost total acceptance that sending Aboriginal people out onto some of their traditional lands with no commercial or other opportunities has been a disaster. A nuclear waste management facility would bring a lot of commercial activity in which I hope these people would be able to find employment. It would clearly bring better roads and many other facilities for which, I think, they would be grateful.

This legislation refers to nuclear waste. The member for Lingiari was at pains to point out that the potential exists to have 25 nuclear power stations in Australia and, in that regard, a waste repository would be required. This gives me the opportunity to speak for some time on that situation. I am neither frightened of nor concerned about a nuclear power industry. In fact, I have advocated for the storage of international nuclear waste in Australia, particularly the waste from yellowcake, or uranium oxide, exported from Australia. It is my view that, whatever the economics of it, it should be enriched in Australia, leased to users and returned to Australia—if only to guarantee that the cycle is complete and that Australia, as a contributor to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, is able to guarantee the safe and secure storage of that waste. I have often said that I would much prefer to have the waste returned in the appropriate container than at the head of a rocket. Therefore, I think it is appropriate that Australia have a facility and a commitment to that approach.

However, considering the greenhouse emissions debate, the economics and the arguments for a reliable and consistent form of renewable energy—remembering that nuclear electricity generation does not create any greenhouse effect—I would prefer that my government, and maybe this parliament, look at a better option. This is not the first time I have drawn the attention of the parliament to the huge, reliable, predictable and renewable resource of the tides of the Kimberley. I have recently been advised that there is an opportunity for an electricity generating facility at Walcott Inlet. This is a 50- to 60-kilometre inlet which twice a day experiences mean tides of 11 metres. It is 50 metres wide where the water rushes in and out and it has the capacity to produce 2.8 gigawatts of electricity—arguably, 2½ nuclear power stations. And that is a drop in the ocean. If you take my index finger as a representation of the energy capacity of the tides of the Kimberley—

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