Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the amendments proposed by the Australian Greens and agreed to by the Senate on the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010. As members may recall, I referred this bill to the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Environment and the Arts on 21 October 2010; however, the committee chose not to take any evidence or hear witness statements other than from the proponent and issued a report on the basis of one departmental briefing.

Without going through and examining its merits and gaps, this bill is an utterly deficient legal framework to deal with the most toxic and long-lived hazardous waste material in this nation. This fatally flawed bill that allows for nuclear waste to be imposed on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory on an unwilling Aboriginal community was at least improved in one very small regard: the prohibition against Australia importing radioactive waste from other countries has been tightened up through a Greens' amendment which added 'that is of domestic origin' to the definition of a controlled material—that is, the nuclear waste that will go into this facility must be of domestic origin and the facility cannot be used to house international waste. Some have said that that was never the intention, but it is worth recalling that in this debate in this place the member for Lyons advocated that Australia should:

… offer a little patch of Australia to store nuclear waste …

because:

… taking others’ waste could be an industry in itself …

This amendment ensures that no little patch of Australia becomes toxic with foreign waste.

This proposal for Australia to accept foreign waste does in fact have a long history. The head of the World Nuclear Association has advocated it, as has Hugh Morgan. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke peddled the idea in 2005 and again recently at the 2011 US-Australia friendship society dinner. In 2005, the minister, the member for Batman, Mr Ferguson, agreed with Bob Hawke saying:

In scientific terms Bob Hawke is right … Australia internationally could be regarded as a good place to actually bury it deep in the ground.

Former foreign minister Alexander Downer has repeatedly called for higher-level nuclear waste to be dumped in Australia, most recently in April of last year, saying that it would have enormous economic benefits. He was echoing the 3 June 2007 resolution of the Federal Council of the Liberal Party supporting the establishment of a foreign nuclear waste dump in Australia. I am pleased that, at the very least, despite the fact that this bill remains a very deficient legal framework, this Greens' amendment ensures that this will not happen.

Members may also recall that in 1998 a corporate video leaked to the media revealed the existence of an international consortium, Pangea Resources, which was secretly lobbying to establish a high-level nuclear waste dump in Australia. That company now calls itself Arius and is still lobbying to build a nuclear dump here. Savory Basin in the Pilbara was one of their chosen locations in 2003, but they also targeted South Australian and Central Australian locations. The approach taken by that consortium recognised that no form of engineered barrier could conceivably contain this thermally hot, corrosive, chemically toxic and radioactive material for tens of thousands of years. The plan was defeated but it has not gone away entirely.

Why do these voices and corporations continue to make this call and why were we pressing so hard for this amendment? Because nuclear waste has grown to the level of a real crisis for the nuclear industry. Over almost three decades, one proposal followed another to cope with the waste either stemming from the IAEA itself or from groups of governments, the EU or even private groups. All have failed on a combination of legal, political, technical and ethical factors.

The Yucca Mountain proposal is a case in point; it was aborted after US$9 billion was spent. The US now has approximately 57,700 tonnes of nuclear waste looking for a home. The alarm about Australia becoming the world's nuclear waste repository is not unfounded. It is what some on both sides of the House, current members, and former members want. The Greens' amendment ensures that the national radioactive waste dump does not become what was envisaged by Pangea, Mr Hawke and Mr Downer.

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