Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition supports this very important bill. The Non-Proliferation Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 obviously implements the revised convention on the physical protection of nuclear material as agreed in July 2005. It regulates with respect to nuclear safeguards the decommissioning of a nuclear facility to ensure that Australia meets its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency under the additional protocol. It also deals with appropriate penalties for serious offences—and we all appreciate that we are dealing with a very serious issue when it comes to the issue of nuclear nonproliferation.

Can I say on behalf of the opposition that there is also much more that needs to be done when it comes to the global non-proliferation regime. This is one of the challenges that confront us as a global community, especially as a nation, because we are strategically positioned to be one of the biggest suppliers of yellowcake to the world; therefore, we have additional responsibilities with our huge uranium assets. For that reason, it has been the opposition that have called for serious attention to be given to this issue, because we, in government, will make sure that Australia as a nation takes a lead in the international community in getting the nuclear non-proliferation treaty back on track. I must say that it is a treaty that both sides of politics, the major political parties in Australia, have supported for some considerable time. But you reach a point in time where you have to step up to the challenge of revising the treaty and modernising it for the challenges that confront the global community.

I therefore give credit to the former Labor leader, Kim Beazley, who said in July last year:

Australia has no greater international obligations and no greater international opportunities than those granted by our position as a nuclear supplier.

That is about Australia accepting its international responsibilities on that challenging field. Kim understood that the world is threatened by the collapse of the existing non-proliferation regime and we must do everything to prevent that. At the time, he as the Labor leader proposed a new diplomatic initiative against nuclear proliferation to be led by Australia. It was to be about a review to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That is where we believe our nation’s efforts have to be focused—and I can assure you that that is where the Labor Party’s forthcoming national conference’s efforts will also be focused in the context of a major debate about us removing our three-mine policy with respect to uranium mining in Australia; it is an outdated policy and it is time it was thrown out the door.

We are strategically located as a nation to be a major supplier of uranium to the world in the context of guaranteeing that it is mined and handled with safe hands internationally. As part of that decision we also have to accept that we as a nation have to put a bigger effort into modernising and strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I can assure honourable members that this will be a key issue in the debate about uranium at our conference at the end of April, because we regard the issues as inseparable.

Let us go to the issue of the United Nations. In working with the United Nations and our allies to exercise the leadership needed to get the nuclear non-proliferation treaty back on track, we have to provide a coherent international framework for the future peaceful use of uranium in nuclear technology. That is the challenge that confronts us as a nation. We are prepared to mine it with safe hands and supply it to the world. The world needs uranium because it is part of the solution to the growing demand for energy throughout the world. Demand for energy is expanding, and not only in Australia; it will double internationally by 2030. Part of the energy mix is going to be nuclear power. We as a nation do not have to make those tough decisions because we are energy rich. Other nations such as China are going to increase their use of nuclear power in the same way as they are going to increase their use of new renewables and also coal and gas. But, for a whole variety of nations, including the United Kingdom, France and the United States—there are nearly 40 such nations throughout the world—nuclear power is a fact of life. As part of that growth in nuclear energy, we have to make sure that, side by side, we strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is about leadership.

Australia is used to playing above its weight. We do it in the sporting arena, we do it in the arts, we do it in international business and we do it in international politics. I remind the House that in 1988 it was Australia, under the Hawke Labor government, that led the way to a global agreement preserving the Antarctic forever from human exploitation of its minerals. In 1989 it was Australia, again led by Hawke, which established APEC, a very important forum in terms of our own backyard. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation process was established here in Canberra by the Hawke Labor government. It started as a consultative forum of 12 economies with a modest program of sectoral and trade negotiations to promote economic growth, and it will meet in Australia later this year. It was an original Hawke initiative.

We believe that Australia can and should lead the world on nuclear nonproliferation too. Under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, there is nothing illegal about any country having processing technology. Let us be clear about the facts. The acquisition of highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium is one of the most difficult and important steps towards making a nuclear weapon. If a country with a full nuclear fuel cycle decides to break away from its non-proliferation commitments, a nuclear weapon capacity could be within reach in a very short time. So these are huge responsibilities with respect to the nations participating and supporting the nuclear non-proliferation process. That is why we as a world are frightened of Iran at this point. As the United Nations struggles to hold Iran to account under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards regime, it has never been clearer that the NPT must be reviewed to make it more relevant to today’s issues and more relevant in a modern world.

We clearly do not want rogue nations processing uranium. It is very disappointing that so few nations supported Mohamed ElBaradei’s proposal—he is head of the International Atomic Energy Agency—for a five-year moratorium on the enrichment of uranium and production of plutonium at the last nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in May 2005. That was a failed exercise, unfortunately, despite the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Unfortunately, Australia is one of the many and not one of the few. We have to get the balance right. The peaceful nuclear cycle offers so much to the advancement of society: for clean power generation in those countries less fortunate in their energy resources than Australia, for minerals processing, for advanced industrial processes and for radiopharmaceuticals. I simply remind Australians that there are very few of us who have not been touched in some way by the requirement for a nuclear medical capacity in Australia; yet people say we should not be fronting up to our responsibilities in the nuclear debate, when we are beneficiaries on the medical front. We will continue to be beneficiaries on the medical front, and that is why the future of Lucas Heights and the new OPAL reactor to be opened in April this year is very important for Australia as a nation, and exceptionally important from a research and a medical point of view.

I say that because I think the peaceful nuclear cycle is so important in these contexts that the debate is no longer about uranium mining. The world has moved on. The big marches on Palm Sunday in the seventies were about nuclear nonproliferation and ending the international capacity of the world to actually embrace nuclear weapons. Uranium mining was a side issue. The world has moved on. It is a new debate—one about climate change and where nuclear power fits into that debate in countries which are not as energy rich as Australia is. We are the envy of the world when it comes to our access to energy; be it coal, gas—which is really a peaking capacity more often than not—renewables or geothermal, we have got it. Other nations have not, and they are going to embrace coal, gas, renewables and nuclear power. They are facts, and it is about time some people in the Australian community had a factual debate rather than an emotional debate about these issues.

When it comes to the nuclear cycle, the Labor Party will always stop to think about national security, global security, the safety of workers and the protection of the environment. They are part of the debate. I remind members of the House that article 4 of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty recognises the importance of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in the broad sense, not just nuclear power. I also remind the House that Australia has an important contribution to make in this field, which will be further realised when we open the OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights next month. I also remind members that OPAL is fuelled by low-enriched uranium, which is not a proliferation concern. ANSTO in Australia is therefore contributing to reducing the global use of high-enriched uranium, and that is very important. ANSTO’s radiopharmaceutical production process also uses low-enriched uranium, whilst most of Australia’s competitors use high-enriched uranium. We are again leading in a very practical sense on this important non-proliferation issue.

Given that some in the community remain concerned about the safety of the Lucas Heights facility, it is also worth noting that a 2005 US government agencies peer review of security concluded that security at ANSTO is equal to or better than security at any civilian research facility in the world—facts, rather than what you hear from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Australian Conservation Foundation. Security is critical with respect to the future operation of OPAL, and particular care has been taken to separate the researchers from the reactor itself. This means that scientists from around the world will be able to access the world-class instruments at Lucas Heights without having access to areas of any significance to the safety or security of the OPAL reactor itself.

I believe ANSTO is one of Australia’s iconic research institutions, as important as CSIRO, as important as our CRCs and as important as our universities. It is part of our research capacity as a nation. It is part of our future. It is part of our employment and new manufacturing opportunities of the future. There is no question in my mind that it is the appropriate organisation to be responsible for managing radioactive materials in Australia. ANSTO is Australia’s nuclear research and development organisation and it is the centre of our nuclear expertise. As well as OPAL, ANSTO also operates the national medical cyclotron, an accelerator facility used to produce certain short-lived radioisotopes for nuclear medicine. Interestingly, this is located in the grounds of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, in close proximity to Sydney University. In addition, ANSTO manages Australian cyclotron facilities at a number of overseas locations. The Australian facilities overseas have been a critical resource to CSIRO in developing an understanding at an atomic level of its new low-cost processes for the production of titanium powder and metals and parts. The potential of these titanium technologies for Australian resource and manufacturing industries is extraordinary. It is important, for example, to the future of the aviation industry.

The synchrotron facilities have been an important piece of infrastructure that has helped CSIRO reach the level of achievement that it has in these new technologies. I am pleased to say that Australia now has its own synchrotron, which was built by the Victorian government and is located adjacent to Monash University and the CSIRO campus at Clayton in Victoria—a campus that is going to become more important for the centre of CSIRO’s manufacturing research activities. Both CSIRO and ANSTO are foundation investors and members of the Australian Synchrotron Co. It is a world-class facility that will deliver beams of very intense X-rays with unique characteristics that can be used for a wide range of scientific experiments, including new drug design, advanced manufacturing, medical imaging, metals research and mineral analysis. The effective operation of this facility will support a large number of Australian national research priorities and associated goals.

We are fortunate as a nation to have this capacity to develop leading-edge technology in many areas, guaranteeing our future as a nation. There are outstanding research and development opportunities but unfortunately little is known about them, and some of the organisations involved are pilloried for the wrong reasons. Let us stop the fearmongering with respect to some of these debates, because we need these facilities.

Nuclear nonproliferation is an issue that raises the question of waste disposal. The Labor Party when last in government started two decades ago a process to deliver a national approach and a national solution to the issue of nuclear waste. That is still unresolved and it is an indictment of all of us. There is not a member or senator in this parliament who would not agree with me. I simply say that, if the games were stopped and all of us delivered a responsible outcome to the Australian community on this complex challenge, we would be a better nation. Australians deserve better than the cheap politics that has surrounded this complex and important decision for over two decades.

Radioactive material is currently stored at over 100 locations around Australia: in government stores, universities, hospitals and factories in the suburbs of our major capital cities. That is where it is stored now. We are saying we cannot establish a national facility in remote Australia to store it on a long-lasting basis, but, again, the facts speak for themselves. This waste is currently stored in the suburbs of our major capital cities. So let us have a factual debate rather than the emotional debate that has surrounded this issue for far too long.

Radioactive waste is disposed of at the Western Australian government’s Mount Walton East integrated waste management facility and in the Queensland government’s purpose-built radioactive waste store at Esk. Radioactive waste is stored at Woomera in South Australia and at the Lucas Heights facility in Sydney, and in defence facilities in and around Melbourne, Ipswich, Wodonga, Albury, Newcastle, Darwin, Sydney and Nowra. Radioactive waste is stored at CSIRO facilities in Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Mount Gambier, Brisbane and Melbourne—and guess where—at the Australian National University, one of Australia’s leading institutions.

It is about time we worked out where to put this waste and how to manage and store it in a proper, professional way. This waste includes such things as contaminated laboratory equipment, protective clothing, paper, rubber gloves, plastic, glassware, lightly contaminated soil arising from previous CSIRO research into mineral extraction that was transported to Woomera in 1995, and low-activity, disused radioactive sources such as smoke detectors and exit signs from the buildings we are working in today.

Let us store it properly and stop this stupid political debate that has surrounded this issue for far too long. We need a national repository, we need it sooner rather than later, and we need it in the hands of ANSTO so it is managed in a professional and proper way by an institution that we can trust. The Labor Party started this process, so we have got to be part of the solution. It has become too politicised in recent times, with foolish decisions made in the last election in an attempt to get it off the political agenda in the short term. This has only complicated what should have been an easy decision.

I raise these issues because, as far as I am concerned, they are all interrelated to the debate about the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and our responsibilities as a nation that will potentially be even more important in the global debate about the safe use of uranium into the future. The use of uranium coming out of Australia is going to grow sooner rather than later, with us as a nation potentially having the largest mine in the world and being the largest supplier of uranium in the world. The current policy limits our capacity to three mines, let alone using our capacity to open up a range of new opportunities in most states and territories of Australia.

This treaty is exceptionally important and the Labor Party supports the changes reflected in the bill before the House today. But we have added responsibility to work to strengthen the treaty even further as part of the ongoing debate about modernising the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We owe that to ourselves as a nation. We owe that to ourselves as part of a global community. We also owe it to Australian scientists and engineers, who have a proud history in nuclear technologies—just as they have in solar technologies, light metals, coal technologies and so on.

It is equally important that we are at the leading edge of nuclear technology into the future as well. I say in conclusion that Labor supports the bill, but I call on the government to take a stronger approach when it comes to nonproliferation and for it to adopt Labor’s call for a new diplomatic initiative led by Australia to get the nuclear non-proliferation treaty back on track. Both sides of politics have supported those endeavours in the past. The global community has failed, at recent conferences, to achieve that. Both sides should renew their commitment because it is of fundamental importance to the future of a safe global community, a global community that will embrace nuclear energy more than ever. I commend the bill to the House.

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