James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

When God was giving out continents, not many countries got one to themselves, and we're very lucky to be this great, vast island nation. But it underscores the very important challenge of defending such great abundance, particularly as we have no land border with another nation. The capability of the Royal Australian Navy is at the front line of that and is absolutely vital to our national security interests. That doesn't only include the circumstance—hopefully never eventuating—of conflict with another nation but also the proper management of our maritime borders and all the other search-and-rescue capabilities and many other capabilities that the armed forces of our nation, underpinned by the Royal Australian Navy, task and perform. Most importantly, the submarine capability is one that transforms the potency of the Royal Australian Navy and the ability for us to, first and foremost, defend our nation, because it puts an unbelievable capability, in an undetected form, hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from the Australian coastline. That dramatically changes the dynamic with any potential adversary looking at Australia with any form of aggression.

Being from Adelaide, I of course followed the submarine debate for a long time. The Collins program, which we're very proud of, was conceived around the time of my birth—I'm 40 now—and those six submarines were constructed in Adelaide. There were the naysayers, of course, around that decision to develop a sovereign submarine construction capability through the Collins, which replaced the Oberon class, which of course was built in the United Kingdom. And the submarines before the Collins were all really linked to acquisition opportunities from the United Kingdom. So, the Collins demonstrated the great capability that Australian defence industry could develop and has developed and maintained to produce the most complicated maritime capability, which is that of a submarine.

Of course, back in the Rudd-Gillard era, the identification of the need to replace the Collins fleet and decision to do that were, regrettably, obfuscated. When the Abbot government was elected in 2013, it became very clear that some rapid decision-making was required, because, of course, the Collins, which is an excellent, capable, conventional diesel electric hunter-killer submarine, has, like any maritime asset, a useful life from a technological point of view and from a maintenance point of view. It was constructed in Adelaide, and the full-cycle docking occurs in South Australia as well, so each boat comes out every 10 years for about two years. The pressure hull is opened up, and really the submarine is completely rebuilt in the shipyards in South Australia.

We did indeed intend to go down the path of acquiring a new, sovereign designed and constructed, conventional diesel electric submarine in Adelaide when that was the only technological option for us. Much has been said and written about the relationship with the French government and DCNS, who became Naval Group, but, were it not for the opportunity of nuclear technology, that would have been an excellent program that would have provided an excellent capability. The best conventional submarine capability available to any Navy in the world would have been built in Adelaide by the partnership with Naval Group.

But the former prime minister, Scott Morrison, is to be commended for absolutely transforming the capability options of our Navy through discussions with the United States and the United Kingdom, culminating in the September 2021 announcement of the new AUKUS partnership and AUKUS framework—which, by the way, is way more than just nuclear propulsion technology for the Royal Australian Navy. Nonetheless, the absolute centrepiece of it, from our point of view, is being given access to nuclear propulsion technology, which is, effectively, the most closely guarded piece of defence technology that the United States possesses. Of course, only one other nation, the United Kingdom, had this technology shared with them, and that was way back in the 1950s. Some 70 years later, we are being welcomed into a very trusted partnership and framework with the United States and with the United Kingdom to give us the capability of eight submarines with this nuclear propulsion technology.

The member for Fisher very eloquently outlined what the strategic value of nuclear propulsion is, and it is absolutely transformative, particularly for our vast continent with, currently, a Collins submarine fleet based in Western Australia. That is a long way from potential areas of action and activity—and that's a good thing; it's nice to come back to a home port that is relatively remote from potential aggression. But it also means that, particularly for Australia, our submarines use a lot of their resources, a lot of their diesel fuel, getting to the places they want to be and coming back home from them.

The unbelievable element of nuclear power is the almost infinite power source that it provides. As the member for Fisher mentioned, the limitation on a submarine's range suddenly becomes that of human endurance, human mental health considerations, the ability to take provisions for the sustainment of human life or the amount of missiles and torpedoes that can be accommodated—and, hopefully, not used very regularly, if at all, apart from in testing and exercises. So it dramatically changes the capability. We are very grateful for that. I think, of all the great things that our recent period in government delivered, that will be at least the equal best part of the legacy of those years that we leave to this nation, particularly from a national security point of view.

This bill is about providing the legislative change that is necessary to accommodate the first stages of this AUKUS opportunity. We know that dramatic upgrades in Western Australia are necessary to sustain nuclear powered submarines that will be on rotation from the United States and the United Kingdom while we work through the ultimate objective of the Royal Australian Navy. That objective is acquiring submarines and, most importantly to me as an Adelaide MP, having submarines that we build in Australia. In Adelaide they will be built at the Osborne shipyard complex. It is important that we build them here and sustain them here so we have a sovereign capability that underpins our ability to defend ourselves without relying on anyone else. We all understand that a lot of other legislation will need to be considered into the future to allow us to achieve that potential. It's very important that as a parliament we appropriately scrutinise but also move at an appropriate pace through those changes so that this capability is in no way delayed for the Royal Australian Navy, in the interests of defending our nation. Moving this bill through the parliament is something we very much support and will be as cooperative as possible on.

In conclusion, I will say that this demonstrates that we can embrace nuclear well beyond the propulsion of submarines. This is a very expensive capability that we're acquiring, and some of the costs include putting in place the necessary oversight, regulatory framework and independent statutory agency capability to oversee nuclear reactors going into the bellies of submarines at some point in the future. There is also potential for these same small nuclear reactors to provide other benefits to our nation, in the economy and in power generation point.

I commend Premier Peter Malinauskas in my home state of South Australia, who has been very open-minded and very contradictory of some of the scaremongering around nuclear from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Jay Weatherill was a very prominent Labor left politician who became South Australian premier. A bit like Nixon in China, maybe he was the only one that could put on the table the open-minded approach to nuclear that resulted in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission. That royal commission was undertaken by former rear admiral Kevin Scarce, who is also the former Governor of South Australia. It looked at all the parts of the nuclear fuel cycle. In South Australia we have the largest uranium deposits on the planet. We effectively send that relatively unprocessed uranium immediately off for export. The royal commission looked at other ways of potentially being further involved in the supply chain fuel cycle and, of course, opportunities for the storage of nuclear waste, which the Weatherill Labor government sought to embrace.

Defence Minister Marles has indicated that, within the next 12 months or so, the government will identify a site for the storage of nuclear waste from the eight reactors that we're acquiring as part of this AUKUS program that we will be responsible for, which will produce nuclear waste. It will be interesting to learn the site of that facility, which we are told will be on defence land. I suspect there is a good chance that it will be in the state of South Australia, particularly thanks to Jay Weatherill's Labor government bragging about South Australia's capability to host half the world's nuclear waste, which was the proposition in that royal commission. So Labor in South Australia have done the hard work of advertising South Australia's suitability for nuclear waste, so that might have helped the government make a decision in that direction. We will find out in due course but that underpins one of the spurious criticisms that is often thrown up about management of nuclear waste. We will need to manage the nuclear waste from the bellies of these submarines, and those submarines will be lashed to the wharves of Port Adelaide while they are undertaking their final fit out and sea trials and all the rest, when they come in for complex maintenance, just like when they come into the wharves in Fremantle, and potentially if there is a fleet base east for nuclear submarines to be determined in the near future as well.

Apparently, cities can safely have nuclear submarines docked, but we equally have a government that is rubbishing the opportunity of nuclear in other areas, particularly around generation. In my state of South Australia, the likely location of nuclear reactors for the generation of electricity purposes would probably be where the previous coal-fired power plant was in Port Augusta, around 45 kilometres north of metropolitan Adelaide. The transmission lines are in place; the land obviously exists.

As we debate and pass legislation like this, it demonstrates that we can embrace the opportunity of properly considering how nuclear can deliver for this nation, not just through a dramatic enhancement of the capability of our Royal Australian Navy submarine force but perhaps also in other ways as we address challenges like getting to net zero by 2050. With that contribution, I commend the bill to the House.

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