Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

It is absolutely strange standing up the back here, I can tell you—it is bizarre! I acknowledge the contribution from the member for Grey. While I understand his frustration, and I understand it only too well, I think it is reasonable for us to finally go through this process in a manner where the issues which others want ventilated are ventilated in the appropriate way: through a Senate committee. That'll happen. It'll come back and, presumably, on the basis of his contribution, there will be recommendations from that committee that the site should proceed. I would say to him that it's okay to be critical, but be objectively critical, and allow the opportunity for others to have a look at the issues as they perceive them as being important.

I also want to acknowledge the contributions of the member for Gorton, the shadow minister; and the member for Macarthur, Dr Freelander. Both acknowledge the importance of having the site. Dr Freelander made it clear he was opposed to a nuclear industry, and I might just put on the record yet again that I share that opposition. I'm an old man, but in the late 1970s, when I was a younger person, I spent a lot of time trying to prevent uranium mining being developed in the Northern Territory. It's all because I was opposed then, as I'm opposed now, to a nuclear industry. But I am also a realist, and I understand that we are now all part of the nuclear fuel cycle and that there are issues that need to be addressed. Nuclear waste is one of the issues to be addressed, and that's what this bill seeks to do.

I want to put this in some sort of historical context. I have in front of me two very similar bills, which were discussed in 2005. They are the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendments) Bill 2005. I'm doing this to contextualise it—even to put it in a way which will potentially support the view that is being put by the member for Grey. There is no-one in this chamber at the moment who was here in 2005, but I can tell you that there was a very live discussion going on over 2004 and 2005 about a nuclear waste facility in Australia to address the sorts of waste concerns that we've seen identified in this piece of legislation. It was a course which came initially from a report which was made to the Commonwealth by a national scientific advisory committee, which went through and examined 22 different sites across the country as being potentially reasonable sites for nuclear waste disposal. Not one of them was in the Northern Territory. The most suitable sites were not in South Australia, either. They were seen as being Seymour, near Puckapunyal, in Victoria; Narrandera in New South Wales; indeed, there was a site near Canberra, Mount Reedy, out near Majura, which was seen as suitable; a site at Deniliquin, which was seen as 'most suitable'; and a site at Denham in New South Wales, which was also 'most suitable'.

Obviously, there were limitations in the areas they were looking at, but clearly the government of the day took the view: 'We're not going to bother going to any of those places. What we will do is look at land which is available to the Commonwealth in the Northern Territory, because it's not a state; therefore, we don't have to play around with it.' They wanted initially to go to Woomera, but you will recall that the then South Australian Premier took the matter to the High Court to prevent it from happening at Woomera, so they needed to look somewhere else. What they did was choose quite arbitrarily three different sites to look at in the Northern Territory. All three of these locations were Department of Defence land, so it was Commonwealth land for the Commonwealth to determine the purpose of its use, with the attraction of its not having issues to do with native title. The sites were Fishers Ridge, 40 kilometres east of RAAF Base Tindal; Harts Range defence land, 200 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs; and Mount Everard, 42 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. You can imagine the response from the Northern Territory community when the Commonwealth took the position that it would impose one of these sites as a nuclear waste facility on the Northern Territory population without so much as a by-your-leave—no consent given, no consultation taking place. It caused a furore, as you can imagine. Ultimately, the Commonwealth didn't proceed, because of the strength of community opposition, as well it should. When, later, there was a proposal for a site which came from an Aboriginal group north of Tennant Creek at Muckaty, it, too, didn't proceed. But in that particular case there was a group of traditional owners who were prepared to allow the development of a waste repository on their land in return for commitments made by the Commonwealth. That too, of course, was a source of great contention and community division, and, ultimately, as I say, it didn't proceed.

We are now left with this proposal. I have to say, given the approach that has been taken, it has a lot more merit than any of the others because, whatever we might think of the community consultation process, there was community consultation. Whether we think it was a relevant level of community consultation is quite another thing, but, as the member for Grey has strongly put, there was a process which had the support of the majority of the residents of the Kimba local government area.

That's apparently not a position which is supported by all. While there is no native title over the land, because it was freehold title, there will be people with an interest in that land who would see themselves, had it not been freehold land, as having native title interests or traditional owner interests, and there is merit to asking what those people actually want. I know that the relevant Aboriginal native title organisation in South Australia, the Barngarla people, took an appeal to the Federal Court and lost, but they still expressed the view that they should have been consulted and that, even though they reside outside of the Kimba area, they should have been involved and had their views represented in this ballot which took place. That's an ongoing issue, and there are clearly issues around people who reside in the region but at Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla, who have interests in that community and want those interests properly ventilated. And that is what this Senate inquiry will have the capacity to do.

That's why I think it's important—given the history of this, over decades now—that we actually work with communities. I can see some merit in the proposals which have been put, but, nevertheless, there are valid concerns, which are expressed in the opposition's amendment but which I might just go to, for the sake of the member for Grey and those in the government who would be concerned about the fact that we want to proceed to have a Senate inquiry.

We, here in Labor, reaffirm our need to determine a site for the storage of radioactive waste. That is understood. I don't think there can be any reasonable person in this country who could argue that we don't need a waste facility. I think the questions arise around the nature of it—indeed, I think they arise in part because of the nature of the waste requirements. Bear in mind that this is 2005 I'm now going to talk about. At that time, the Commonwealth had approximately 3,600 cubic metres of low-level waste, a high proportion of which was at Woomera, and produced about 30 cubic metres of low-level waste per year. The Commonwealth had, at that time, 400 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste in Australia and generated less than five cubic metres a year. The intermediate-level waste generated from spent fuel out of the reactors had been sent to France where, at that time, there were 6½ cubic metres, and the United Kingdom, where there were 26½ cubic metres. As to the nature of the waste being determined then, it was from the new reactor, which the member for Macarthur referred to, the old High Flux Australian Reactor, which was, at that point, still operational, which had waste to be returned from France; Defence waste, held at various sites across Australia, including contaminated soil from the Woomera site—and of course we all remember Maralinga, and we'll have seen recently the publicity around an ABC program around it, and we all know what happened there—and the CSIRO's accelerator waste and other Commonwealth waste, including, of course, all the medical waste that has been referred to by the member for Macarthur. At the time, we were told this thing had to be done and dusted within a very short space of time. Then, in 2011, when we had a similar discussion, we were told that this all had to be settled by 2015, when the nuclear fuel rods were due to come back from France and the United Kingdom. I'm not certain what has happened to those rods but what we do know is that we have got, as was expressed by the member for Gorton and the member for Macarthur, effectively, a waste facility at ANSTO's site in Sydney, which needs to be fixed. We need to find another site for that nuclear waste. What is being proposed here is a site in South Australia.

I don't think we should walk away from the fact that there are people with significant interests who may not be directly living in Kimba or in the area of this consultation. We do need to accept that there are people with legitimate views and interests, and those views and interests should be ventilated in the course of the discussion and debate about this issue. That's what this inquiry proposed by a Senate committee will do.

We know there have been concerns raised by interested parties, including, as I mentioned earlier, by the traditional owners. It is legitimate, I think, for us to look at the costs, the funding arrangements and employment levels associated with the facility. It is legitimate to look at the potential impacts on affected communities, the adequacy of the community investment fund and related compensation.

As the member for Macarthur said, this stuff will be put away for a very long time—not 10 years, not 20 years, not 50 years but hundreds of years. We need to be aware of our obligations in ensuring the security of any repository. I know this has been referred to as a temporary facility. Old Parliament House was a temporary facility; it lasted until 1988. I don't think we should regard this as a temporary facility. If this is temporary, what is stage 2 and where will it be at? We should know that. If they've got views about what a long-term facility would look like, where will it be? What will it encapsulate and when will it happen? I would think what they're planning for here is a contingency where this site won't be for the short term or the medium term but will be for the long term, and we need to be aware of all the implications of those decisions. That's why it is important, in my view, that we support the amendment moved by the opposition and support the prospect of a Senate inquiry. And until that Senate inquiry reports, we should not be voting on this legislation. Sadly, the government has chosen, despite advice from the opposition, to debate this legislation today and effectively have us vote against it because we're not prepared to support this legislation prior to that inquiry deliberating and making its findings public.

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