James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the second reading of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023. I comment my colleague, the shadow defence minister, the member for Canning, on the way in which he has, of course, engaged very proactively with the government on all things AUKUS. We are very proud of AUKUS in the coalition, and having served in the previous parliament, one of the great achievements of the Morrison government was undoubtedly achieving this spectacular breakthrough of giving the Royal Australian Navy access to nuclear propulsion technology through the AUKUS agreement. Of course, we know that this is US technology. It's the absolute best technology available for nuclear propulsion, particularly for our purposes. It has a nuclear reactor that does not have to be refuelled every decade or so like most do. This technology allows a fully fuelled reactor for the entirety of its life to be provided to us. That is transformative in our capacity to have that sovereign capability for the Royal Australian Navy.

I remember very well when the announcement was made by the three leaders, President Biden, Prime Minister Johnson and Prime Minister Morrison. There was indeed a great sense of history at that occasion because it had been around 70 years since the United States had decided to provide the United Kingdom with this technology in the fifties, and then, in 2021, agreed to expand that circle of trust, including one other nation, the United Kingdom, to now include Australia. It is a significant marker regarding the esteem that we are held in as a nation and a national security ally with the greatest power on the planet, the United States. They do not share their technology willingly whatsoever, and there are a lot of nations that are extremely jealous of the opportunity provided to us through AUKUS. I note as an aside that it also extends well beyond that nuclear propulsion technology. This is, of course, the most eye-catching component of it, but it is a defence technology sharing agreement that provides enormous opportunity beyond nuclear propulsion. Nonetheless, that is what we are here to debate, and we welcome the opportunity to keep this program moving forward.

As an Adelaide MP, not surprisingly I speak regularly on submarines in this chamber and have ever since I was elected in 2019. I've been involved in the issues of submarine construction for what feels like my entire adult life. I've been at many interesting press conferences for many interesting milestones around submarine construction, particularly out at the ASC headquarters in Osborne. There has been a lot of politics around submarine construction for a long time and the people of South Australia are completely sick of it. We want certainty. We want the jobs that have been promised for a long time, by all sides of politics, to start to flow. So seeing legislation move through this parliament is heartening. We're making progress. Although, I do still have concerns about the pace at which the program is moving and when and what the important industrial and economic dividend for the state of South Australia will be on this project, always remembering that, first and foremost, we prioritise capability in the national security interests of our defence forces and, in this case, the Royal Australian Navy. That is why we very proudly support the acquisition of this transformative opportunity in capability.

It's also very important, particularly on a bill like this, to note, to point out and to keep on the agenda the very important task of holding the current government, the previous government and any future governments to account for the commitments from an industry point of view and from an economic point of view that have been made. I remember back when we were building conventional submarines. There were very dramatic press conferences held by the now foreign minister, Senator Wong, and other senior South Australian Labor members about the words that we used to hear a lot: 'local industry content'. We miraculously don't hear that from the now government, when in opposition, they liked to talk about it so much. I'm very hot on just what proportion of the AUKUS submarine construction will actually happen in Australia, not just Adelaide. Absolutely, the shipyards are in Osborne. There's no question that the pressure hulls will be welded together and that a whole amount of manufacturing activity will happen on site. But there's an enormous amount of supply chain activity when it comes to the construction of submarines, and we want to keep this government on notice that we're watching very closely what decisions are going to be made, from a supply chain point of view, to make sure they benefit Australian industry.

We are happy to be in partnership with the United Kingdom and happy to be building this AUKUS submarine together—designing and constructing it together. And it has to be together. We know the first of class will be built in Barrow-in-Furness in the United Kingdom, and that's fine. That's for the Royal Navy. We equally need to know and understand, at every opportunity when the government spruiks this project, just what are the latest details on timeline and industry content when it comes to the Australian submarines. What we can't stand for, and what we've got to be ever vigilant on—I'm not making an accusation here; I'm saying we have to be vigilant on this—is the risk of governments, and particularly the defence department, trying to make arguments that it might be easier for more and more of this program to happen in parts of the world other than Australia. Sovereign capability comes from the ability to build and maintain these boats in Australia, and, if we start outsourcing more and more of the supply chain—that means componentry—that is a huge impact on future maintenance. I don't level this as an accusation, but, if the worst case happened and people started to say, 'Well, maybe it will be easier to build them over in the UK,' that would be a spectacular betrayal of the Australian people and the defence capability of our nation.

I don't believe that's going to happen, but I think, when we're having debates like this one about this AUKUS program, we've got to reflect on and look at commitments that were made and track them against where we're at right now, because I'm not confident that the submarine yard construction is at the pace that the government said it should be at by now. Hopefully, there will be more information from the government about timelines for building the shipyards out there at Osborne to construct our submarines. There's a little uncertainty about how many submarines we will be building, frankly. There's uncertainty about how many we'll be acquiring, potentially, from the United States. We know we're putting billions of dollars into helping to build shipyards not in Australia—shipyards in Connecticut and Barrow-in-Furness. That's fine if what is actually happening in Australia is properly outlined and reconfirmed to people. As an Adelaide MP, I will always take the opportunity in these sorts of debates to relitigate those points and make sure we're monitoring what the government are telling us and how they're staying on track with commitments they've made that start to slip to being a year or two ago but that need to stay on track to give us the confidence that we are getting what we believe we're getting. There's a lot of money going into this program, and as much of it as possible needs to be spent in this country, both from an economic and industrial point of view and from a national security and national security capability point of view.

The bill, of course, creates a framework for the proper stewardship and custody of nuclear material. I've been very closely involved in the nuclear waste debate for what feels like most of my adult life. The former state Labor Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, undertook a royal commission in 2015 with the objective of storing about half the world's high-level nuclear waste in the state of South Australia. He's from the Labor Left, and it was his position and his government's position that we take half the world's high-level nuclear waste and store it in South Australia. So he and the royal commission have done a lot of work advocating for South Australia to host a lot of nuclear waste, and as Defence continue to move through their processes of determining where the waste will be stored—they've obviously put some parameters around it, particularly that it will be on Defence land—my strong expectation, based on Labor Premier Jay Weatherill's work, is that that will happen in the state of South Australia. It underscores the point, as the government brings this bill forward and talks about it and proclaims its support for nuclear propulsion technology in this country and provides the assurances that the government can handle all components of this program, including the proper custody and storage of that waste, just how that applies to a civilian nuclear industry as much as it does to the waste from reactors sitting in the belly of submarines. It's the sort of maturity that we've got in this debate that we need to have a debate around civil war nuclear power generation in this country.

One of the major issues in any nuclear reactor, whether it's sitting in a submarine or whether it's producing important materials for nuclear medicine like the one we have at Lucas Heights or other reactors that we could have as part of the energy generation mix in this country, is the safe storage of the waste that is produced. What this bill demonstrates and what this debate around AUKUS demonstrates is that we can very sensibly develop proper plans for a safe nuclear industry. This bill is confined to naval submarines, but there's no reason, if we can do it for submarines, that we can't just as equally do it for a civilian nuclear generation industry in this country.

I note the comments being made by the government about some amendments that they've put in talking about clarifying this, that this legislation can't envisage or accommodate anything on the civilian side. The fact they're bringing them forward as amendments shows how political they are rather than genuine. No-one drafting this legislation in the department thought that issue needed to be addressed whatsoever. Clearly the minister has had some questions and queries publicly along the lines of: 'You're creating a framework to manage your custody of nuclear material for the naval shipbuilding program. Why in the world could it not be exactly the same for civilian power generation?' For political purposes we see these amendments being brought in to rule that out because, if it weren't for those amendments, the point is we can. We can do it for a civilian industry as much as we can for the custody of nuclear material from the naval submarine program.

So, as the debate on nuclear more generally progresses, this bill is specific to naval nuclear capability. But, as the broader debate progresses towards the next election, the government are in a very difficult position. They used to demonise nuclear, just generally, and say it was unsafe and dangerous and they put up ridiculous social media content predicting glow-in-the-dark animals and mushroom clouds and all the rest of it. Now, of course, they've come on board to having nuclear submarines, eight of which will be lashed to the docks at Osborne out of Port Adelaide in my home city. They can't justify the demonisation of the technology and the scaremongering around safety anymore because they've signed up to this AUKUS program. So now they're concocting an economic argument around nuclear. We're always happy to debate the Labor Party on anything economic, particularly when it comes to energy and electricity and the promises they've made in that area and what the reality has been since.

This capability is completely transformational for the Royal Australian Navy. It's one of the greatest, if not the greatest, achievements of the Morrison government in Prime Minister Morrison's time. It's one that he often himself singles out as one of his proudest achievements. It's very significant. It took a lot of complexity to negotiate access to this technology. It was also quite significant to walk back from going down the pathway of conventional submarines, but it was a decision made in the interest of our nation. It's a fantastic capability being acquired for the Royal Australian Navy. Also, I'm very proud to represent an electorate in the city of Adelaide where we will be the heart of the future nuclear submarine program.

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