Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 extends the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s ability to handle, manage or store radioactive materials from a wider range of sources and circumstances than it is able to at present. Currently ANSTO is limited by legislation to dealing with its own radioactive material, including waste, and in a number of ways it would be sensible and practical for ANSTO to handle, manage or store a wider range of materials. For this reason, the opposition will be supporting this bill. Specifically, the bill before the House tonight allows ANSTO to have a direct role in managing radioactive material involved in terrorist or criminal incidents. At the moment the ANSTO Act limits the assistance that ANSTO can provide in an emergency to only providing advice to Commonwealth, state and territory agencies.

In, for instance, the circumstances of a terrorist group gathering material for and assembling the components of a radioactive dirty bomb, ANSTO personnel could advise other Commonwealth officers about handling the radioactive material but would be restrained by law from handling the material themselves, from making that material safe, from transporting that material in safe containers or, indeed, from safely storing that material at an ANSTO facility. Given the expertise and experience held within ANSTO and the facilities which ANSTO has available, this legislative restriction should be removed. ANSTO ought to be able to manage, clean up and store radioactive material in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal incident involving that radioactive material. In my view, this should include the safeguarding of any radioactive matter which may be required as evidence in legal proceedings against alleged terrorists or criminals and in providing expert opinion as required by the courts.

I note also the comments by the Minister for Education, Science and Training that this bill will bring Australia into line with standards set out in the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, and Labor urges that all necessary actions to comply with this UN convention be taken so that Australia can agree to this important treaty. In addition to the handling of material involved in a criminal act, ANSTO is also currently constrained by a lack of power to process, handle or store waste from other Commonwealth sources—for example, Defence or CSIRO. As a consequence of this bill, ANSTO will be able to lend its expertise to waste management of all radioactive materials held by the Commonwealth. This will include transporting radioactive waste to Lucas Heights, ‘conditioning’ or processing the material to render it safe and suitable for further storage, and temporary storage of that treated material until a long-term repository is available.

I am advised that the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency is developing a code of practice and safety guide for the conditioning and management of radioactive waste prior to its disposal. Once they are developed, ARPANSA intends to apply these national requirements for predisposal management to all Commonwealth entities. ANSTO’s experience in managing its own waste makes it the only body suitable for and capable of conditioning Commonwealth waste to meet ARPANSA’s requirements. These changes will mean that much larger quantities of waste will be transported to Lucas Heights for conditioning and held there during processing before eventual storage at the waste dump. This may cause concern about waste transportation and storage in the Lucas Heights community, and I hope that the government has already begun discussions with the community around Lucas Heights.

Labor supports appropriate management of Australian nuclear waste, following proper community consultation. Equally, Labor wants to make sure that the present ANSTO site at Lucas Heights does not become a long-term dump for Commonwealth nuclear waste. To this end, I am seeking an immediate assurance that Lucas Heights will not become a de facto national waste dump as a result of the provisions of this bill. I hope that the minister for science is in a position to respond to this request when she closes this second reading debate.

At present, spent fuel from the research reactor at Lucas Heights is sent to France for reprocessing. In the past it has also been sent to Scotland. Reprocessing involves the spent fuel waste being held in storage for a considerable period in order to reduce its radioactivity. The reprocessed spent fuel is yet to return to Australia. However, it is due to come back between 2011 and 2015. ANSTO has entered into contractual arrangements for the reprocessing and eventual return of the waste. This intermediate-level waste will return to Lucas Heights before it is taken to the nuclear waste dump that the government is imposing on the Northern Territory.

During the reprocessing operation overseas, ANSTO spent fuel is mixed with spent fuel from other customers into a single batch and then allocated to customers in proportion to their input to the mixed batch. It is probable that waste returning to Australia will contain nuclear waste not generated by the Australian research reactor. The government believes that it is not clear that a court would regard such waste as waste arising from ANSTO’s activities. The proposed amendments would make sure that ANSTO has the necessary powers to accept such wastes under its contractual agreements, and manage and store such wastes.

The bill also explicitly provides that materials and waste generated, processed or controlled by a Commonwealth contractor are taken to be generated, processed or controlled by the Commonwealth itself, and as such contractors are covered by the same responsibilities and immunities as the Commonwealth. In a broad sense, this ought to be viewed as a positive outcome of this bill because the Commonwealth should not be able to shirk any of its responsibilities or controls by handing over possession of radioactive materials to a contractor. However, there is another side to Commonwealth immunities being extended to contractors. According to briefings my office has had from the department, this bill is what they call a belt and braces attempt to prevent any residual capacity which may exist for legal challenge to the nuclear waste dump by removing the avenue of challenging ANSTO’s authority to manage waste generated by non-ANSTO sources.

Advice I have received on this issue indicates that the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, which already applies to Commonwealth contractors, is ‘a very powerful tool in providing immunity from the operation of state or territory legislation in relation to the establishment and operation of the proposed waste facility in the Northern Territory’. Further, this legal advice suggests that any role that ANSTO may have in the future operation of the facility, including storage and transport, would be covered by those immunities in the Radioactive Waste Management Act. So I ask the minister another question which I would appreciate her responding to when she sums up the bill: could she confirm that she shares the department’s objectives in relation to this provision—objectives which were not stated in these terms in the explanatory material for the bill?

Labor objects strongly to the very extensive and powerful immunities that the Commonwealth has already bulldozed through this parliament. These concerns of ours form the basis of the second reading amendment, which has been circulated in my name. I now move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for:

(1)

its extreme and arrogant imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory;

(2)

breaking a specific promise made before the last election to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory;

(3)

its heavy-handed disregard for the legal and other rights of Northern Territorians and other communities, by overriding any existing or future State or Territory law or regulation that prohibits or interferes with the selection of Commonwealth land as a site, the establishment of a waste dump, and the transportation of waste across Australia;

(4)

destroying any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the Minister’s decision to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory;

(5)

establishing a hand-picked committee of inquiry into the economics of nuclear power in Australia, while disregarding the economic case for all alternatives sources of energy; and

(6)

keeping secret all plans for the siting of nuclear power stations and related nuclear waste dumps”.

The Howard government, as we all know, is determined to dump radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. Before the last election, the people of the Northern Territory were given an undertaking—a promise, in fact—by this government that there would not be a dump in the Northern Territory. When this government needed to be re-elected, it could not wait to reassure Territorians that there would be no nuclear waste dump in the Territory. However, once the Howard government was safely back in office, it seems it could not break that commitment fast enough.

Just last year David Tollner, the member for Solomon, claimed not to support the nuclear waste dump in the Territory. At that time he said:

There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory … That was the commitment undertaken in the lead up to the federal election and I haven’t heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election.

We now know that he has completely backflipped in order to force the nuclear waste dump onto the Territory. The government has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted on such issues. Why would anybody trust this Prime Minister when he breaks his promise to keep interest rates at record lows, when he smashes his promise that no worker will be worse off under the Howard government and when he dumps the promise that he made to keep nuclear waste away from the Northern Territory? We can only say that broken promises are the debris left after 10 long years of this Prime Minister taking a wrecking ball to the foundations of our fair and decent society.

The other legacy of 10 long years of this government is its sheer arrogance and heavy-handedness—and that applies particularly to the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory. The Prime Minister has once again broken the trust of the Australian people. He has repeatedly failed to recognise that trust works both ways. You cannot expect to be trusted if you are not willing to trust the Australian people, to consult with them and to give them time to consider important matters, like the location of nuclear waste.

Instead, this government has rammed its extreme nuclear waste dump legislation through this parliament. The waste dump legislation gave the government total power to site, construct and operate the Commonwealth radioactive waste dump at one of three sites in the Northern Territory. It overrode all existing and future state and territory law and regulation that got in the way. In addition, many federal laws have been overridden, including the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act and the Native Title Act. As a final blow, the waste dump legislation destroyed any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the minister’s decision to put a waste dump in the Northern Territory. Not only does the government not trust the people of the Northern Territory but it has taken extreme measures to gag them and block them at every turn.

We now have this Prime Minister calling for a debate about nuclear power in this country. He expects all of us to believe in him this time when he says that he is interested in the Australian community’s views. The Prime Minister has refused to come clean on the question of where he will put his nuclear power plants. Both the Prime Minister and his science minister, Julie Bishop, have refused to talk about locations—although the science minister has been quite happy to rule out her own electorate. So, if a debate about nuclear power is not an appropriate time to talk about power plant sites, when is an appropriate time?

The economic feasibility and safety of nuclear power is intrinsically tied to where the power plants will be. The Prime Minister’s so-called inquiry into nuclear power is not looking at this critical question—but, not surprisingly, that has not stopped Geoscience Australia, the government’s own advisory body on the geology and topography of Australia, from stating in its submission to the inquiry that Australia is:

... the most geologically stable of the continents. It has areas which appear geologically suitable for waste disposal.

If that is the case, local communities have a right to know what this government’s intentions are and what to expect from it, both on nuclear power sites and on the siting of future nuclear waste dumps. Make no mistake about it: this government is determined to bring nuclear power to Australia. This so-called inquiry is just part of the government’s constant campaign for nuclear power. I will just make it clear once again: the Labor Party is fundamentally opposed to bringing nuclear power to this country.

The Howard government knows that local communities will not cop it, which is why it is refusing to talk about the most important thing: where the power plants and the resulting high-level waste dumps will be. ANSTO told Labor at a Senate estimates hearing this year and later on ABC radio that at least three to five nuclear power plants would be needed for a viable Australian nuclear power industry. So, if this Prime Minister is serious about nuclear power, he should come clean and tell us where these three to five sites might be.

In addition, the Minister for Education, Science and Training recently released a report that was commissioned by ANSTO and written by a fellow called John Gittus, a nuclear insurance expert on the economics of nuclear power. John Gittus argued that the risk of terrorist attack on an Australian nuclear power station would be 50 per cent higher today than it was in 2001. A nuclear power station in Australia would now be classed as a ‘world terrorism target’ by insurers, who could charge up to $400 million to insure such a plant. The report goes on to suggest that nuclear power stations would be economically viable in Australia only:

If Australia purchased a 5th or later copy of an AP 1000 nuclear power plant, something that’s not likely to be available for another 20 years.

If at least 3 nuclear power plants were purchased and built.

And if the Government subsidised 14.31 % of the cost of building a power station by, and 21.41% of the cost of electricity produced for the first 12 years of operation.

The economics of nuclear power plainly do not stack up. We have abundant sources of alternative energy, waste disposal issues for nuclear power remain unresolved and there are very important national security issues to be considered. The government’s refusal to be honest with the Australian community is seriously concerning at this particular time when the government is pushing the benefits of nuclear power.

We also know that the coalition have form when it comes to the location of nuclear facilities. They certainly know how to keep them secret. In 1997 the government considered a shortlist of 14 possible sites for nuclear research reactors but kept the list secret from the public. The confidential briefing—signed with ‘good work’ by the former science minister Peter McGauran—said the shortlist should be kept secret because:

… release of information about alternate sites may unnecessarily alarm communities in the broad areas under consideration.

Because this document has been released, we now know the short-listed sites included Goulburn, Darwin, Mount Isa, the Mount Lofty Ranges and electorates including Brand and Pearce in Western Australia. The list also included Lucas Heights, right there in Sydney, which makes it all the more important for the minister for science to rule out Lucas Heights becoming a de facto waste dump as a result of this bill.

Last week we had the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, and the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory spruiking even more nuclear waste for Australia with their calls for Australia to enrich uranium. The problem for Australia is that this Prime Minister has not explained what his plans for nuclear enrichment mean for waste storage in Australia. Is it the case that the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory does in fact want more nuclear waste dumped in their own Territory? We know there is growing momentum in international politics for countries that process uranium to accept spent fuel as well. We know that the government has had enormous difficulty finding a solution for Australia’s low- and intermediate-level waste, let alone taking the world’s high-level waste, but that has not stopped the foreign affairs minister. In February this year he said Australia needs more nuclear waste dumps. He said:

We need medium and we need high level storage as well ... We really need to get on with it ... The longer it takes the greater the risk.

As I said, we had the Country Liberal Party from the Northern Territory voting last week to support an inquiry into uranium enrichment in the Northern Territory. They backflipped to force the waste dump on the Territory; now they are running to support uranium enrichment and, of course, all of the consequences that that entails.

So if the government are in fact planning to introduce nuclear power—and it seems they are—or uranium enrichment plants, they must answer some questions that the Australian people want to ask. Which suburbs or towns will be home to the new nuclear reactors and enrichment plants? What will the government do to make sure local residents and schools are safe? Where will we see nuclear reactors in our major cities? Will they be in any cities other than Sydney? What will be done with the nuclear waste? Will there be nuclear waste dumps other than in the Northern Territory? Given the Prime Minister has not been able to get agreement on the location for low- and medium-level nuclear waste, how does he plan to dispose of or store high-level waste? Of course, he has not been prepared to even attempt to answer any of these questions let alone address the intractable problems of nuclear waste and the safety of operations of nuclear facilities.

We only need to look to Britain’s experience. It is certainly a cautionary tale of the serious environmental security and social risks posed by nuclear waste. Britain’s civil and military nuclear industries have accumulated 2.3 million cubic metres of nuclear waste around their country. Indeed, the United Kingdom government has estimated it will cost $170 billion to clean up the 20 British nuclear sites.

As a nation, we still do not have a solution for the disposal of our small quantity of low-level nuclear waste. There is no agreement from the people of the Northern Territory. We also know the Howard government’s nuclear power inquiry task force does not include a single environmental expert to look at the critical environmental or safety issues. We understand that Greg Bourne, the head of WWF Australia, was approached to be on the task force, but he described the inquiry as ‘rubbish’.

The minister for science, Julie Bishop, even left the door open for the nuclear power inquiry to consider the dumping of foreign nuclear waste in Australia, despite the Prime Minister himself ruling out the importation of foreign nuclear waste. So which is it going to be? Is it the case that we will get nuclear power stations up and down the coast of Australia, as the Prime Minister seems to want? Is it the case that the minister for science is saying that she will consider the importation of foreign nuclear waste into Australia, as she seems to be?

All of these issues are critical matters for the Australian people, but as usual we are not getting any answers to these questions from the Howard government. They prefer to run a program of deception when it comes to nuclear power. They prefer to mislead people and to make promises to people, as they did in the Northern Territory, over the nuclear waste dump before the election and then backflip and impose that nuclear waste dump on those people after the election.

As I said at the start of this debate, there are good reasons for supporting this bill that is before the House, but I do urge members to look at Labor’s very serious concerns that we have set out in this second reading amendment. It certainly indicates our extreme concerns about the heavy-handed way in which this government is going about both the debate on nuclear power and the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Bob Sercombe (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Overseas Aid and Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have had a moment to look at the amendment proposed by the Labor Party to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006. Not one paragraph of the amendment is constructive and not one paragraph says, ‘There might be a better way.’ The member for Jagajaga, of course, went as far as to talk about renewable energy. We know what is available there—things such as wind. If you do not mind a cinematographic experience for your eyes, where you read the book as the lights go on and off again, that will work. If you do not want to do anything after dark, then of course solar power will work. I have never heard a word from the Labor Party saying that a resource in your electorate, such as the tides, might be a worthwhile experiment. They have said nothing at all constructive in response to this government’s challenging the people of Australia on the future needs for energy. It is as simple as that. That is not a challenge for the baby boomers of the Y brigade or generation X; that is a challenge for kids who have not been born yet but for whom this parliament might have some responsibility above the Labor Party’s view of their rights individually or as a party to be re-elected.

The member for Jagajaga has served her party well. She is the doomsayer above all doomsayers. I remember her in this place attacking the government’s proposal to duplicate the Keating and Hawke government’s proposal to get a bond off people entering what we now call high-care nursing homes. It was already there for hostels, as we knew them, introduced by the previous government. She created concern among the community and the government withdrew—and what was the outcome of that? We now have people with homes worth $1 million who, for want of a bond, cannot get into a nursing home. That is a big help! These are the sorts of silly things that she constantly promotes. The great pity—because I have some pretty serious things to say—is that it took three pages of notes full of her misleading comments for me to set the record straight.

She wants a guarantee that waste will not be stored at Lucas Heights, considering that ANSTO will be given additional powers to aggregate and manage nuclear waste. But what better organisation within Australia with what better skills—a word we hear constantly in this place—could we give the job to? She wants a guarantee that waste will not be stored at Lucas Heights and then complains about it going to the Northern Territory. She had better make up her mind. She of course runs the usual Labor argument that contractors are all crooks and public officials are always honest. Then she says that no state government is prepared to allow this dreadful stuff within its boundaries. She forgets to tell us that under these arrangements and under what the Commonwealth has been forced to do in the Territory—the people of which rejected statehood—all the states are going to continue to store their nuclear waste in basements around the cities. That is apparently an improvement on having a properly managed and organised storage out in a remote area.

She talks about broken promises. This is a big building, and I guess that is why lightning has never struck her dead, but the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to broken promises is those three letters l-a-w. She talks about arrogance. Who was it who called the Senate ‘unrepresentative swill’? She attacks the government for not nominating where we are likely to build nuclear power stations before we have even decided, on good advice, whether that is an option for Australia. Of course, she is quick to shoot the messenger. Poor old Geoscience Australia, a group of independent people, bothers to put a submission to the committee which, she complains, does not contain her choice of decision makers. I always thought a committee was there to listen to the evidence and report, in this case to the parliament and the government, on that evidence. Is Geoscience Australia a reputable organisation? If it is not she should have said so. Instead, she just casts this throwaway slur. It is the equivalent in modern day history of burning books—‘Do not confuse me with the facts.’ As soon as someone goes before an appropriate committee and says something that she and the Labor Party do not like, they are nasty people. She accuses ANSTO of telling them that there could be three opportunities to have plants in Australia. Why are they to be pilloried for that? They are experts. That is what democracy is all about—get the right advice; do not have street corner meetings where you stir up the uninformed.

I loved the bit about terrorist attacks. I guess, Mr Deputy Speaker Haase, you read recently about or saw the photographs of the Lucas Heights reactor. It is a mini-reactor. I think the walls are six metres thick. What sort of car bomb is going to run into that and make a dent? What a stupid argument! I want to talk further about the development of the nuclear reactor in Iran. It is probably beyond smart bombs. In its early stages of development it was bombed, but what terrorist is going to blow up the shell of a nuclear reactor if it is six-metre, or even six-feet, thick concrete? I have had a look at some of the Nazi submarine facilities in Oslo. The walls are still there. They are about 10 feet thick. There was not a bomb of the period that could blow them up.

Then the member for Jagajaga gives us an economic lecture. When I want some advice from an economist, I will not ask her. She says that someone said we might not need them for 20 years. That might be true, but is that a reason to not debate it now? When she talked about who might contribute, she raised the issue of whether it might cost the government some money. My recollection is the government paid 100 per cent for the Snowy Hydro facility, and the other day there was a big campaign to make sure we never sold it. Of all of the things she has to say, she is worried for the people. But she is not worried for the people of Iran. I have never heard a word from her in this place about whether or not there is a threat to the people of Iran because they are building a nuclear facility and going into the enrichment. She seems to be highly selective about who might get fried and who might not. You have to be consistent about these issues. We know why the world is worried about Iran. It is because, with their hydrocarbon resources, we cannot see their need to generate electricity with nuclear materials. We think they have an ulterior motive. I have never heard her complain about that in this place.

She tells us that there are 2.3 million cubic metres of nuclear waste in the UK and then she wants to put a financial figure on that. What I would put on it is that it is there and I have not heard of a person from the general community in the UK who has become impotent or has suffered cancer or anything else as result of that waste in an area about the size of my electorate. Is it proof there is something wrong or there is something right? Then, of course, she worries about there not being a Green on the expert committee. I had a longish period as Minister for Forestry and Conservation, and I tried to get an approved standard for the management of forests. To get that past the standards association all community interests had to be involved or consulted. It was the Greens who refused to be involved in that also. What was the purpose of it? To create a standard by which people might manage our forests. The last thing in the world they wanted was for the problem to go away. And you wonder why they do not want to be there judging a nuclear power investigation. Are they going to give evidence? As I have said previously, the people you put on these committees should be people who are able to analyse the evidence and give good advice to the people of Australia through their parliament. But their idea is that you put people on so that you know the answer before you commence the inquiry. We know all about that from when they were in government.

I have 10 minutes left. I have had to spend half my time pointing out the stupidity. Let me repeat again: I have read the amendments and not one of them is constructive—negative, negative, negative. If you wonder why people distrust the Labor opposition it is because they never offer a solution. They want to live with the problem and gain political advantage. As I have said, there are people now who are unable to find a high-care nursing home position because of one of the member of Jagajaga’s campaigns in Labor’s early period in opposition.

ANSTO will have additional powers to manage the disposal of waste. We have had the courage to select a highly remote area, with ANSTO’s additional supervision, to place nuclear waste. Please remember that when a medical practitioner injects radioactive isotopes into a human body—prepared and manufactured, of course, at Lucas Heights—the person receiving the injection does not die. They are allowed to go home and sleep with their wife without any fear of contamination. But the rubber gloves that the physician used are low-level radioactive waste, and we have to find somewhere to put that. The state public hospitals keep it in the basement—or possibly chuck a bit of it away when no-one is looking. That is where we start.

In my early days in this place, I once said to a person of great knowledge on this: ‘When this radioactive waste has to be stored, what sort of protection do we need? How many feet of concrete? How many feet of lead?’ He said: ‘What about a sheet of cardboard.’ Let us put it into perspective. Nobody, including the Labor Party, is suggesting for a minute that we cease exporting uranium oxide, as long as it comes from their nominated holes in the ground. Yet they seem quite comfortable with a piece of paper that a country signs saying: ‘Take our word for it. We’ll look after this stuff. Even when it is useless to us, we’ll guarantee that no terrorist group will get hold of it. We’ll guarantee we won’t have a change of government and then send you a little bit back on the end of a rocket.’ They want to mount an argument that we should not, firstly, enrich and then monitor that product all the way back to Australia. It would seem to me that, on that practical argument, that is the best place for it.

Someone who has had a bit of courage in the Labor Party to argue a long way down this road said to me: ‘Wilson, don’t go that last step. The people will not accept it.’ Why? Because we have the member for Jagajaga saying that you will be infertile tomorrow. But apparently 2.3 million tonnes of the stuff has not created that problem in the United Kingdom—and it is a pretty small place. These are the sorts of issues.

Let me put something on the record, more particularly because the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, who advises the Prime Minister on water, is here. He will probably be terrified to hear my remarks. Years ago, I lived in a town that had a river that could fill Sydney Harbour in four hours, and most of the time it was a dry riverbed. It did not have a dam site.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What river was that?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Gascoyne River. It was 30 miles wide at the sea in one case. One day I will tell you the whole story. I guess it was exciting if you were there. I went out to try to find a way to store some of that water. That seems to be an arising problem throughout Australia. We have a lot of lousy dams. You can talk about most of them on the Murray River. They are too big, too shallow and too subject to evaporation.

But, in the days when people saw nuclear energy in a different light, the Americans conducted a program called Plowshare. They actually excavated holes at minimum cost in the deserts of America using this technology. A couple of Australian engineers wrote a paper on it, which came into my possession. They argued that you could dig a mineshaft 1,500 feet deep, half-fill it with TNT and blow a hole 600 feet deep to store water. They told just how you would take it off the river.

They went on to say that you could also drill a hole eight inches in diametre and put the appropriate nuclear device at the bottom of that hole, 1,500 feet below the ground, and also get a 600 feet deep water storage. I thought that was a pretty good idea. In fact, if someone went back in the records of the ABC, they would see a very young Wilson Tuckey arguing that case in the bed of the Gascoyne River. I got a response from a state politician of the Labor kind at the time, who said, ‘We’d have everybody eating radioactive cabbages.’ The first point, of course, was that the hole was 800 feet above where the device exploded.

But Sir Charles Court, who is the best politician I have ever met in his commitment to this nation—and we take great profits from his commitment to gas when nobody else wanted it and from his commitment to other matters—then delivered me a 16-millimetre movie of the Russians doing just that. I have never found many reasons to approve of communism, but this seems to be one of them. In the movie they drilled the hole right in the riverbed. My advice said it should be off the riverbed. They drilled this hole and they all stood there in visual sight of this event. Off it went—boomp!—and here was this hole. They relied on the rim of the crater to be the dam wall, to add to the value of the hole. Within days, they had dozer drivers in there cleaning off the mess. Of course, they portrayed horses drinking the water and other things at a later time.

That is all okay, but when will Australians have the courage to ask themselves: might this be a solution to our water storage issues? In a hole 600 feet deep you do not get a lot of evaporation. These are the things that we have to talk about. The worst thing for the community is for the member for nagger-nagger—I am sorry; I mean Jagajaga—who comes into this place time and again and whinges and moans, ‘The world will end tomorrow.’ I am not planning on it ending tomorrow. I think it is a great place, and I think it will be better when the people who occupy this place come with a constructive attitude. Yes, of course there are problems in everything we do. I thought about this today when they were carrying on with their White Australia policy on imported 457 visa workers. Let me put it this way: a lot of people have car crashes, but we do not ban motor cars.

In the rural areas at the moment, we desperately need these people. The greenies go crook about live sheep exports and say, ‘Slaughter them here.’ I agree—except that we have nobody to do it. I have sheep dying of drought which I guess can have their lives ‘saved’ by going to a meatworks. It is a little less painful. But we do not have enough people to do it in a drought. And we have these people standing up making their nice little political point: ‘Let’s take a negative view.’

I have to say that I can remember, when I was not sure whether the power point was broken or the drill was, putting a couple of bare wires in to see which bit worked. Maybe that worker was doing just that. I bet that, if you put the test around this House, there might have been someone else that did. But that is a simple and single issue and it should not be part of the debate in this place. (Time expired)

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After listening to the member for O’Connor, I am confident I could say whatever I wanted to in this debate and you would not have to worry about relevance, if that is the precedent that has been set.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Newcastle should not reflect on the chair, otherwise she might be dealt with.

Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, dear! In dealing with this legislation, I think it deserves great research and credible thought. I have risen to speak on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 and to support Labor’s second reading amendment, which:

... condemns the Government for:

(1)

its extreme and arrogant imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory;

(2)

breaking a specific promise made before the last election to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory;

(3)

its heavy-handed disregard for the legal and other rights of Northern Territorians and other communities, by overriding any existing or future State or Territory law or regulation that prohibits or interferes with the selection of Commonwealth land as a site, the establishment of a waste dump, and the transportation of waste across Australia;

(4)

destroying any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the Minister’s decision to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory;

(5)

establishing a hand-picked committee of inquiry into the economics of nuclear power in Australia, while disregarding the economic case for all alternatives sources of energy; and

(6)

keeping secret all plans for the siting of nuclear power stations and related nuclear waste dumps …

This amendment deserves to be highlighted given the track record of the Howard government—a government that certainly has form when it comes to misleading Australians on nuclear waste and nuclear energy. Who can forget those fighting words from the government’s representative in the Northern Territory, the member for Solomon, who last year claimed that the Country Liberal Party did not support even a low- and medium-level nuclear waste dump in the Territory? During an ABC interview on 7 June 2005, the member for Solomon said:

There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory ... That was the commitment undertaken in the lead-up to the federal election and I haven’t heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election.

Let us fast-forward three months; the Howard government now has an apparent change of heart and the member for Solomon, perhaps exhausted by all those policy backflips post election, falls immediately into line, becoming the loyal servant of his big coalition brothers in Canberra. Apparently no longer opposed to the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory, the member for Solomon is reborn as a passionate advocate for the benefits to all Territorians of housing Australia’s nuclear waste.

So the member for Solomon, along with all the coalition members, obediently voted in this House to impose a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory. This was despite that fact that it was against the wishes of the very same Territorians who voted for the member for Solomon at the last election when he assured them, ‘There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory,’ and despite the government’s own advisory committee and scientists, who said that the Northern Territory was not a suitable site for a waste dump. But, true to form, the government rammed the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Billthrough the parliament last December, allowing them to build a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory whether Territorians like it or not.

The then minister for education and science, Brendan Nelson, was granted the power to choose from one of three sites in the Northern Territory: Fishers Ridge near Katherine, Mount Everard and Harts Range near Alice Springs. The minister does not have to now consider any environmental or heritage protection laws or worry about the decision being reviewed by the courts for procedural fairness. Apparently we no longer need to be fair in this country. Territorians must be wondering what they did to deserve so much attention from the Howard government, but overriding Territory laws is a well-established party trick for this government, so there are no surprises there.

Having established the Northern Territory as Australia’s dumping ground for nuclear waste—despite community opposition—the Prime Minister is now touting nuclear power as an option for Australia in a desperate bid to be seen to be doing something about climate change. This is an issue he has ignored for the last 10 years. Two years ago the Howard government’s own energy white paper stated:

The Australian Government is not contemplating the use of nuclear energy in Australia.

Well, two years and a visit to George W later, we have another policy backflip. The Prime Minister now says that nuclear power is inevitable and he wants a ‘full-blooded’ debate about nuclear energy in Australia. But how serious is the Prime Minister if he cannot confide in the Australian people to let us in on his plans for nuclear power and if he steadfastly refuses to provide details of where he plans to locate future nuclear power stations? Every time a direct question on this issue is asked of him or his government they run a mile.

How does this Prime Minister expect us to have a nuclear debate without his stating where he thinks the nuclear reactors should be located and where the nuclear waste should be sited? Will there be a nuclear reactor in Port Stephens, in the electorate of Paterson, as reported on the front page of the Newcastle Herald on 24 May this year? According to one think tank, Port Stephens would be an ideal location for a nuclear reactor. On the same day that the Treasurer, as Acting Prime Minister, and the foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, threw their support behind the construction of a nuclear reactor in Australia, the member for Paterson, under local pressure, yelled very loudly: ‘Not in my backyard.’ This is the same member for Paterson who says he is a supporter of nuclear energy—just so long as no-one tries to build a power plant in his electorate! Of course, it is fine to dump a nuclear power plant on someone else’s community, and the member for Paterson will no doubt vote for any such future legislation just like he supported dumping a nuclear waste facility on the people of the Northern Territory last year.

There would not be a community in Australia that does not have the same concerns that the member for Paterson raised in his response to the nomination of Port Stephens as an ideal site. If not Port Stephens, then where does the member for Paterson suggest that the government should build those nuclear power stations? He is, after all, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, so he must have some thoughts on the matter. Perhaps he would like to share those thoughts with the people of Australia. The member for Paterson, like all members of the Howard government who do not want nuclear plants in their communities, should have the courage to stand up and say no to the Prime Minister. But, after seeing the way the member for Tangney—a strong advocate of nuclear energy—was recently decommissioned by the Liberal Party preselectors for stating that he would welcome a nuclear power plant in his electorate in Perth, I doubt we will be seeing much comment from coalition members on this issue. Actually, only eight members from the government are even speaking on this legislation, and I am sure that they will toe the party line. I look forward with interest to hearing the speech of the member for Tangney later in this debate; ‘Too late,’ he will cry.

My position, and that of the Labor Party, is clear. There will be no nuclear power plants in Australia under a Beazley Labor government. We all know that the Prime Minister’s call for a full-blooded debate on nuclear energy is just code for: ‘We are determined to have nuclear power in Australia.’ But nuclear power is not appropriate for Australia. The economics simply do not stack up, and certainly the public are not at the point where they would support it. The Prime Minister continues to talk up this phoney debate on nuclear power for Australia because he really does want to go down that path. But if the Prime Minister is serious about debating nuclear power he should come clean with the Australian people and tell us all which towns and which suburbs will house those nuclear reactors and where the high-level nuclear waste dumps will be located.

We now know that nine years ago the Howard government secretly short-listed 14 sites for nuclear reactors without any community consultation. According to the cabinet submission, community consultation was simply too risky because the release of this information would alarm communities. Don’t ever forget that little saying: ‘Who can you trust?’ Well, not much trust there! The experts in this area, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, have stated that four or five nuclear power plants would be needed near east coast cities to make the nuclear industry viable. East coast cities? Sounds a bit like the electorate of Paterson.

The Prime Minister ought to come clean about where he thinks these four or five nuclear power plants should be located. Then we could have an open and honest debate with the Australian people. Instead, we have a Prime Minister who opts to simply appoint a six-member task force to undertake a review of uranium mining and nuclear energy in Australia. The task force is of course hand-picked by the Prime Minister and is headed by the former Telstra boss and nuclear physicist Dr Ziggy Switkowski. Curiously, this task force will apparently examine every stage of the uranium cycle except how many nuclear power stations might be needed and where they would be built. So the Australian people will be none the wiser on these important questions when the task force produces its draft report for public consideration in November 2006. That report will have no scientific evidence or opinion regarding locations.

Given that the final report is due to be completed by the end of 2006, the period for public consideration will be very brief indeed, particularly as we have an election in 2007. How many Australians will be able to wade their way through the detailed scientific reports with ease? Very few, I suspect. If this is the Howard government’s idea of public consultation, the government members should hang their heads in shame.

It is against this background of the government’s incompetence in gaining community consent to establish even a low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste dump and their stubborn refusal to come clean with the Australian people about their plans for nuclear power or to provide details of any proposed sites for future nuclear power stations and waste dumps that we are being asked to consider the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill.

ANSTO is Australia’s national nuclear research and development organisation and the centre of Australian nuclear expertise. It is responsible for delivering specialised advice and scientific services and products to government, industry, academia and other research organisations. Its current nuclear infrastructure includes Australia’s only nuclear reactor, HIFAR, which is based at Lucas Heights. It also includes particle accelerators, radiopharmaceutical production facilities and a range of other unique research facilities. The HIFAR reactor is used to produce radioactive products for use in medicine and industry. A replacement, OPAL, the open pool Australian light-water reactor, is in its final stages of construction. ANSTO also operates the national medical cyclotron, an accelerator facility used to produce certain short-lived radioisotopes for nuclear medicine procedures. It is located in the grounds of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown. ANSTO also manages Australian synchrotron facilities at a number of overseas locations.

Importantly, ANSTO is currently constrained to management and processing of its own waste alone. It does not have the power to process waste from other Commonwealth sources like Defence or CSIRO. The purpose of this bill is to allow ANSTO to handle, manage or store radioactive materials from a broader range of sources and circumstances than it is currently allowed to under the current act.

This bill is designed to extend ANSTO functions to handle radioactive materials in three broad additional scenarios: dealing, where requested by a Commonwealth, state or territory law enforcement or emergency response agency, with radioactive material and waste arising from incidents, including terrorist or criminal acts; participation in the management of radioactive material and waste that is in the possession or under the control of any Commonwealth entity; and, finally, dealing with intermediate level waste that is due to return to Australia from France and Scotland at a future date for storage and/or disposal.

Importantly, this bill also reinforces ANSTO’s ability to operate the proposed Commonwealth nuclear waste dump should the government decide to transfer overall responsibility to ANSTO—ANSTO is currently licensed to operate a separate storage facility for its own waste only—and ensures that nuclear waste handled by contractors is considered to be Commonwealth waste under the ANSTO Act. The Commonwealth believes that the extension of this immunity to contractors is necessary to limit potential legal action by the Northern Territory government in relation to the siting and operation of the waste dump proposed for in the Northern Territory.

Key issues that relate to this bill include the following. The power given to ANSTO, as the expert agency, to assist state and federal authorities in the event of a terrorist attack involving radioactive materials is important and obviously one of the reasons we support this bill. In its current form, the ANSTO Act limits the initial assistance that ANSTO could provide in an emergency to little more than the provision of advice. Currently, ANSTO cannot take possession of any nuclear material in the event of an incident. The bill will also bring Australia into line with standards set out in the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.

The bill also clarifies ANSTO’s role in assisting in the management of nuclear waste in Australia and lending its expertise generally to nuclear waste management. As a consequence of this bill, ANSTO will be able to lend its expertise to waste management of all radioactive materials held by the Commonwealth. This will expand its responsibilities greatly. Given that ANSTO will be handling a lot more waste and in light of the recent accidents at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, which we have raised in the parliament—a stark reminder that things can go wrong—the minister must assure the local community that their health and safety will not be put at risk.

I would have liked to have seen this legislation provide more support for ANSTO in terms of research into the management of waste—after all, it was Australian knowledge and expertise that led to the invention of the synroc process. But unfortunately there is no accompanying guidance in this legislation that gives ANSTO more resources or more research capabilities—just more work.

I would also like to draw the attention of the House to report 407 of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, which was tabled this week. It is actually regarding ARPANSA, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, which is charged with protecting the health and safety of people and the environment from the harmful effects of radiation. Report 407 was in response to an Audit Office report that found that improvements were required in the management of ARPANSA’s regulatory functions and that processes to issue licences and monitor compliance were insufficient. The report recommends a more rigorous process for appointing the CEO, managing the information systems and granting licences. There is also a very important specific recommendation that ARPANSA provide a quarterly report to the parliament, not an annual report, on licence breaches, including incidents of noncompliance. Incidents such as those that were recently revealed in parliament question time only because Labor brought them to public attention by asking questions of an embarrassed Minister Bishop, who knew nothing of them, highlight the need for more regular reports to parliament on incidents where safety and health are compromised.

Notwithstanding Labor’s opposition to the nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory and our concerns about more waste being held at Lucas Heights, Labor supports the bill’s provisions relating to expanding ANSTO’s role in dealing with nuclear terrorism incidents, including controlling and storing radioactive material which may involve a dirty bomb. Overall, the extension of ANSTO’s involvement as the nuclear science and research experts in nuclear waste and security management is totally desirable. But, as our second reading amendment makes clear, we will continue to hold this government to account for its heavy-handed imposition of a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.

Debate interrupted.