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

Last night I moved a second reading amendment to this legislation, and I will pick up where I left off. The stated purpose of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 was to put beyond doubt the Commonwealth’s power to conduct activities related to siting, constructing and operating a radioactive waste management facility in the Northern Territory. The 2005 act contains a number of provisions excluding procedural fairness in relation to selecting a site for the facility. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendment) Act 2005 excludes application of judicial review to the minister’s decision on a facility site. Labor opposed the 2005 bills on a number of grounds, all of which remain relevant today.

The government’s acknowledged purpose for these provisions is to prevent local individuals or communities, representative bodies or state or territory governments being able to undertake legal objections to the Commonwealth’s actions which may delay the project. The government stated at the time of parliamentary debate that these provisions give the Commonwealth some certainty, subject to normal regulatory processes, of having a facility operating by 2011 when repatriation of spent fuel reprocessing waste from the United Kingdom is due to commence.

Labor does not oppose the establishment of a nuclear waste facility; indeed, Labor explicitly agrees that there is a need for a properly sited, properly operating facility to securely handle and store the low- and intermediate-level waste produced by the use of radioactive materials for research and for industrial and health and medical purposes. However, we remain firmly of the view that the siting, establishment and operation of such a facility needs to be done in an open and transparent fashion, in full consultation with local communities and with the relevant state and territory governments. Such a process would be in full compliance with the recommended approach set out by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Commonwealth has approximately 3,600 cubic metres of low-level waste, half of which is at Woomera, and produces around 30 cubic metres of low-level waste per year. The Commonwealth has approximately 400 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste in Australia and generates less than five cubic metres per year of this type of waste. Intermediate-level waste generated from spent fuel has been sent to France—there is 6½ cubic metres there—and the United Kingdom, where there is 26½ cubic metres.

The waste dump that is being planned by this government is intended to house waste from the new reactor presently under construction; the old reactor, which is still operational, including waste from France and the United Kingdom; Defence waste held at various sites across Australia, including contaminated soil from the Woomera test site; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation accelerator waste; and other Commonwealth waste. The original 2005 act provides for site assessments of three potential sites on Defence land for that Commonwealth waste dump—these being: Fishers Ridge, near Katherine; Harts Range, approximately 200 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs; and Mount Everard, approximately 42 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs.

Before I turn to the specific provisions of the amendment bill before us, we do need to consider the nature of the amendments to the 2005 bill which were moved on 1 November last year by the government member for Solomon, Mr Tollner, which the government supported into law. You would have to say that these were the 30 pieces of silver that the government threw the member for Solomon to get him to recant his pre-election promise that the Northern Territory would not have a dump foisted on it. The amendments moved by the member for Solomon provided for the Northern Territory Chief Minister and Aboriginal land trusts or land councils to nominate potential sites for the waste dump in addition to the three sites set out in that bill.

Given that the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory has always been, and remains, implacably committed to representing her community’s opposition to this waste dump being imposed on the Northern Territory, this amendment moved by the member for Solomon was clearly designed to smooth the way for a nomination by a land council. Given the Central Land Council also remains utterly opposed, that only leaves the Northern Land Council as a possibility. Included in the amendments moved by the member for Solomon was a set of criteria or rules against which such a nomination should be judged, including provisions that the process of nomination by a land council must demonstrate evidence of a number of things—and these matters are very important in relation to today’s bill. What the member for Solomon put in his amendments were the following: consultation with traditional owners; that the traditional owners understand the nomination; that they have consented as a group; and that any community or group that may be affected has been consulted and had adequate opportunity to express its view. It is particularly important to recall the rationale the member for Solomon advanced for these amendments, and I quote him:

The main rationale for these amendments is to ensure that, firstly, Territorians do have a say in the siting of the facility—

that is, the radioactive waste dump—

and, secondly, there is an enhanced level of safety and security enshrined in the legislation. The Northern Territory government and the land councils of the Northern Territory should have an increased opportunity to be involved in the nomination of possible sites for the radioactive waste management facility.

Interestingly, the member for Solomon chose not to inform the House why he chose those particular rules for nominations to be deemed valid.

I now turn to the specific provisions of the amendment bill before us. These provisions all relate, in one way or another, to the nomination process placed in the previous bill by the member for Solomon late last year. Whilst the Minister for Education, Science and Training chose not to reveal an important fact in her second reading speech to the House, the Senate statement of reasons for introduction briefly states the circumstances which have led to the drafting of the bill that is before us, namely:

The bill addresses concerns raised by the Northern Land Council (NLC) in relation to nominating a site under the CRWM Act. If not addressed, the NLC may be unwilling to nominate a site should a community within its jurisdiction wish to volunteer its land.

Whilst my office has inquired of departmental officers as to the nature of these concerns raised by the Northern Land Council, apparently no further information could be made available. Therefore I would certainly like to see a response from the minister when she closes this debate as to the nature of the concerns raised by the Northern Land Council so that the House can decide for itself whether the bill before us properly meets the concerns raised.

The acknowledged purpose of the legal challenge provisions of the 2005 act is to prevent local individuals, communities, representative bodies and state or territory governments from being able to undertake legal objections to the Commonwealth’s actions which may delay the project. Due to the late consideration of the Tollner amendments, departmental officers advise that the same protections against legal challenges to the Commonwealth’s actions were not applied consistently to the site nomination procedures inserted by the Tollner amendments.

In effect, the provisions of the bill before us today—and this is very important—will extend the current protection from judicial review further to the processes and decision making of land councils in the Northern Territory, who are statutory agencies for the purposes of the judicial review act. Similarly, the bill proposes to extend the current provision that no person is entitled to procedural fairness so as to ensure that it applies to a nomination of a site as provided for by the Tollner amendments to the principal act. Labor opposed the corresponding provisions in the 2005 bill on the grounds that they were heavy-handed and attempted to remove—and of course they do now remove—important rights to judicial scrutiny and review from the site decision-making process. Labor will oppose the provisions of the current bill which remove those same rights from the nomination decision-making process.

I now turn to the provisions of the bill relating to the return to the original Indigenous owners of land nominated and used for a radioactive waste facility. Section 119 of the Lands Acquisition Act 1989 allows the Commonwealth to dispose of Commonwealth land. However, the department has advised my office that there is some legal doubt that this power allows the Commonwealth to grant land title with the same status as land granted under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. Accordingly, the government argues that the provisions of this bill are necessary to ensure that, where acquired land is Aboriginal land immediately before the acquisition, such land may be returned with the same status as Aboriginal land.

The department has indicated in briefings that any site will be required for the operations of the waste facility for at least 100 years and, even when waste is no longer being accepted into the site, it will need to be closely monitored for at least a further 200-year period. Therefore, any possible return of Aboriginal land to original owners will not take place for at least 300 years. However, legal advice that I have received indicates that the proposed provision is not legally necessary as the government of the time could simply hand the land over to traditional owners under the provisions of the land rights act if, in fact, it applies at the time.

Under this bill, the government does not have to make any such hand-back. The bill simply provides for a hand-back should the minister of the time determine that it is safe to do so on the advice of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency or its equivalent. We have to ask: why all this fanfare of caring about Indigenous rights, when the government could hand it back anyway at some time in the future? It appears that this bill could be seen as providing some political cover for the Northern Land Council should they make a nomination and subsequently face criticism for giving away hard-won ownership of traditional lands for three centuries or more.

Now let us have a look at the clauses of the bill which address the issue of potential invalid nominations made under the provisions inserted in the principal act by the member for Solomon, which I will call the ‘Tollner amendments’. There are two ways any nomination of land for a radioactive waste dump could be made invalid: procedural inadequacies or, a more substantive issue, a failure to comply with the rules of nomination so carefully inserted by the member for Solomon.

Given that a procedural inadequacy, such as not lodging a nomination in writing, is extremely unlikely, we conclude that the only likely noncompliance by any future nomination relates to the nomination rules. In other words, this bill proposes to validate a nomination which would otherwise be automatically ruled invalid for ministerial consideration because, for instance, traditional owners have not been informed of the nomination, or that traditional owners did not properly understand that their land was being nominated, or that traditional owners had not consented to the nomination, or that other affected communities or groups, such as in neighbouring lands, had not been consulted or given an opportunity to express their views.

The bill before us proposes a new section which provides that a failure to abide by these currently binding rules of nomination will not affect the validity of a nomination. In effect, these current statutory rules would become mere guidance, because a failure of the minister or land council to abide by these rules will not render a nomination as unacceptable. A site could still be nominated and accepted even though traditional owners do not know it has been or do not agree with it being used to dump radioactive waste.

In addition, it is also important to recognise that this provision would remove the current statutory right of ‘affected’ neighbouring communities or groups to even be consulted or to express their view. Given that under the Tollner amendments to the act these groups are not required to consent to the proposed nomination, the provision aims squarely at their statutory right to even express a view.

As well as being an almighty slap in the face for the member for Solomon through this outright repudiation of his rules of nomination, the Howard government has also completely backtracked on its own rhetoric about fully consulting with and achieving informed consent from all affected local communities and groups, in particular the Indigenous traditional owners of any nominated sites. The provisions of the bill in this regard are a direct contradiction of the minister’s own commitments to the parliament in her second reading speech on this bill, when she stated:

Current provisions of the act set down a number of criteria that should be met if a land council decides to make a nomination. Importantly, these criteria include that the owners of the land in question have understood the proposal and have consented to the nomination, and that other Aboriginal communities with an interest in the land have also been consulted.

I can assure the House that, should a nomination be made, I will only accept it if satisfied that these criteria have been met.

You would have to say, when you look at the detail of the bill, that the minister’s words in her second reading speech are just that—words. This minister knows very well that her speech will have legal weight only if a court is unsure of the parliament’s intent on the face of legislation. The minister knows that the proposed words of this bill are crystal clear—any nomination which does not comply with the nomination rules requiring full and informed consent will still be rendered invalid.

Faced with the clear intent and outcomes of the bill before us, the minister’s contradictory commitment in her speech is simply meaningless rhetoric, providing no comfort whatsoever to any traditional owner or their representatives. Importantly, the outcome of the proposals contained in this bill is also in conflict with the NLC full council resolution of October 2005, which provided a mandate for the Northern Land Council’s further dialogue with the government on a possible nomination, and I quote:

The Northern Land Council supports an amendment to the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 to enable a Land Council to nominate a site in the Northern Territory as a radioactive waste facility, provided that:

the traditional owners of the site agree;

sacred sites and heritage are protected (including under current Commonwealth and NT legislation);

environment protection requirements are met (including under current Commonwealth and NT legislation);

Aboriginal land is not acquired or native title extinguished (unless with traditional owners’ consent).

Given the clear intent of this resolution, there is a serious question to be asked here: has the Northern Land Council approved the proposal to remove the mandatory nomination rules which closely parallel their own requirements? In effect, the current bill proposes to relegate both the Northern Land Council’s resolution and the nomination rules inserted by the government’s own MP for Solomon into irrelevance and will be opposed by Labor as an important matter of principle.

In addition to the three potential sites included in the 2005 act, departmental officers have confirmed in the recent round of Senate estimates hearings that they have been discussing possible further nominations with the Northern Land Council. Officers have also assured my office that there has been no further definite nomination to date. They have also advised that the details of those discussions are confidential at this stage but, once again, the minister may see fit to inform the House if this continues to be the case when she closes the debate.

However, I am aware that there are a number of possible sites under consideration for nomination, one of which is a property known as Muckatty Station. I am aware of this possibility because I have spoken to traditional owners and families from the property and surrounding areas who came to see me about the possible nomination of their lands for use as a nuclear waste dump. These traditional owners oppose the nomination of Muckatty. The women who came to see me expressed their considerable concern, indeed their distress, at this prospect. They told me they feel that their rights, their views, their concerns and their lands are being trampled upon by this government.

The bill under consideration by the House today will magnify that distress because it openly and harshly rips away the legal requirement that any nomination of Indigenous land for a nuclear waste dump must have the full and informed consent of the traditional owners of that land. In addition, if Muckatty does indeed turn out to be nominated, it may also highlight the removal of rights of affected neighbouring groups to be consulted and to have their views taken into account. Muckatty is situated right on the border of Northern Land Council and Central Land Council lands, and the Central Land Council remains implacably opposed to the use of Indigenous land for the dumping of radioactive waste.

We need to be very clear about this: under this bill before us today there will be no enforceable rights of the traditional owners or affected persons to be informed—to ensure that implications of a radioactive waste dump are fully understood—or to give or withhold consent for their traditional lands to be compulsorily acquired and used for the handling and storage of radioactive waste for at least 300 years. And if that is not enough, there will be no enforceable right to receive their land back once the Commonwealth’s use as a waste dump has concluded; the bill simply provides that it may be handed back. All traditional owners, all their representative groups and all Northern Territorians should understand this point: the Howard government is intent on making sure that you have no rights, no legal review avenues, no right to express your view and no right to give informed consent and absolutely no say in this government’s blind pursuit of dumping nuclear waste in the Territory.

The government’s history in relation to the nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory gives us a very real indication of how they propose to move on nuclear issues writ large, in taking Australia much further down the nuclear road with 25 nuclear power stations now proposed by Mr Howard’s nuclear inquiry—and, of course, there will be associated radioactive waste dumps. If the Howard government cannot consult, cannot build community consensus, cannot leave important legal rights untrampled, cannot gain the informed consent of Indigenous people for a low- and medium-level nuclear waste facility, what hope can we have that they will comply with International Atomic Energy Agency best practice guidelines in relation to nuclear power and the resulting radioactive waste? I know that many of my colleagues are keen to explore these matters further and in much greater detail than I have time for today. For all the reasons I have set out, Labor will not support this bill and I urge the House to support the amendment I have moved.

Harry Jenkins (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The purpose of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 is to enable the return of a volunteer site to its traditional owners once the site is no longer required by the facility, should such a site be used for the Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility. Currently, the act allows for the Commonwealth to acquire all rights and interests in the volunteer site but there is no mechanism for the return of those rights to the traditional owners. The federal government, therefore, would not be able to return such a site to its traditional owners under the current legislation. In the extremely unlikely event that contamination occurs as a result of the use of the land, the traditional owners will be indemnified by the Commonwealth against any resulting claims. However, I do not believe that this risk is high at all.

Over the years I have taken a very keen interest in developments in waste-handling measures by Australian scientists. Unfortunately, all too often the terms ‘radioactive waste’ or ‘nuclear waste’ are used to cause fear in the community. Indeed, in my state of Western Australia it is spruiked by the state Labor government whenever they are experiencing difficulties, particularly with hapless ministers. Shortly after Minister Norm Marlborough was required to resign from parliament over his evidence before the Corruption and Crime Commission of Western Australia last month, there was a flurry of press releases claiming uranium mining and nuclear reactors in metropolitan areas and that nuclear waste dumps were being foisted on the community. It is an issue of: ‘Whoops! We’ve got a problem with one of our ministers, what do we do? Aha! Let’s look for an issue. Nuclear—good word! Nuclear waste.’ After the failed bid in the High Court, the Western Australian public was once again browbeaten by Premier Alan Carpenter on the radio on 14 November. He said:

It opens up the possibility that the Commonwealth Government, the John Howard Government, could legislate to force WA to accept nuclear waste, for example. No matter what West Australians think about the issue, it is extremely, extremely critical now.

Problem? Transfer. This is clearly irresponsible government. It has all the hallmarks of a premier in trouble: ‘Look over there! Look anywhere but at my cabinet and my administration.’ I believe that Western Australia should have a role and responsibility to look after its own nuclear waste. Each year thousands of people receive the benefit of nuclear medicine. Nuclear waste is generated every time a specialist refers someone to a hospital and that person undergoes medical treatments that use nuclear technology. These life-saving technologies are also developed by ANSTO at Lucas Heights. We are all able to access the benefits of nuclear medicine in hospitals in WA, but we take none of the responsibility for the disposal of the waste. The argument by Western Australia’s Minister for the Environment, Mr McGowan, is that ‘any waste produced by Lucas Heights or any other nuclear fuel production facility should be dealt with by those facilities.’

In 2004 then Premier Gallop stated, ‘WA does generate some radioactive waste from medical and industrial uses and, to a smaller extent, from research.’ The Radiation Safety Act 1975 requires the owner of any premises that use or store radioactive substances to register both the premises and the radioactive substances. In Western Australia there are just over 300 registrations for premises that have radioactive substances. Many of these registrations contain more than one radioactive source or substance for which disposal must be undertaken in accordance with the act. Clearly, around 300 sites in Western Australia alone is not an efficient solution. One wonders what must be the number of sites registered across the country. It would be far more sensible to have one major repository to deal with this waste.

The federal government has never ducked its responsibility to ensure the safe handling of radioactive waste; indeed, it takes responsibility for proper storage and handling of the waste. I am very much a believer in a federal system and in a shared responsibility between federal and state governments. But even more so I believe in a nation called Australia and in responsibility for matters of national concern being handled by the national government. The placement of nuclear waste is a matter beyond the concerns of states alone. It is a national concern, and a matter that clearly should be dealt with by the federal parliament. This is not a matter for parochial ‘nimbyness’. The ‘not in my backyard’ mentality exists all too freely. Instead of scaring the constituency with threats of nuclear waste dumps, we should start acting responsibly. It is time to take off the blinkers and look to the exciting technologies and advances that fellow Australians are making in respect of nuclear waste.

One such person, who should have been applauded for his invention, is the late Professor Ted Ringwood, from the Australian National University. In 1978 he invented synroc, a material that allows the storage of high-grade radioactive waste for geological time periods. Over the years, ANSTO has developed different forms of synroc for a wide range of radioactive wastes. ANSTO has constructed a mini synroc plant to demonstrate the manufacture of a non-radioactive synroc plant at Lucas Heights. It also safely immobilises waste arising from medical isotope production. Tailored synroc waste forms have been developed to target problematic Cold War legacy waste streams that are difficult to incorporate in glass.

The US Department of Energy chose synroc for the plutonium immobilisation program in the late 1990s. ANSTO has established the synrocANSTO business team to oversee the commercialisation of this technology. They are working with Nexia Solutions in Britain to design a plant to immobilise five tonnes of plutonium residue waste from the British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Sellafield site. This technology is also applicable to other legacy plutonium and actinide waste streams around the world. However, in the Australian context, if nuclear energy were required, it would be unlikely that synroc would be needed to store it for very long time periods, because there are fourth generation reactor designs that burn most of their own waste.

These designs are very interesting in that they not only have significantly reduced waste life—because they burn their own waste, the waste forms are only harmful for a period of 200 to 300 years—but also use significantly less fuel because they use up the fuel far more efficiently than conventional reactors. In fact, you would be looking at a waste volume and a use volume of uranium of about one-sixtieth that of current nuclear reactors. These technologies obviously are extremely interesting and exciting for the Australian context, looking potentially at the time frame that we would be looking at.

As I mentioned, the waste from these reactors that burn their own waste is only harmful for a period of 200 to 300 years. This might seem a long time to some, but think of some other industrial wastes that we generate—such as lead, arsenic, cadmium et cetera—that have infinite half-lives and so are harmful in the environment for an indefinite period. They do not decay; they are there forever. This is an interesting thing about radioactivity. The issue of long radioactive half-lives is often touted by the antinuclear groups as being extremely problematic—and indeed it is problematic. However, what needs to be realised is that the radioactivity of a substance is inversely proportional to its half-life. So something that has a very short half-life is very radioactive, and this can cause damage very quickly, whereas something with a very long half-life is not very radioactive at all. It is like a slow-burning wood heater. Indeed, I have already pointed to substances that have infinite half-lives. They are still radioactive; they just have infinitely long half-lives.

The community is interested in the changes to technologies in both reactors and waste handling. We should be proud of our internationally recognised achievements in waste management. If Australian ability in this area were better understood, the fear campaigns that are often waged by underperformers or people concerned with any sort of change would lose their effectiveness.

I have previously encouraged members of this House to take the opportunity to visit ANSTO and speak to Dr Ian Smith, the head of ANSTO, and his colleagues. It appears that some opposite wish to remain in a state of ignorance, because the take-up on this has been extremely low. It would appear that people think: ‘By remaining ignorant, I can in good faith perpetuate the untruths that I tell on this issue in the community.’ I want to re-encourage members, as I have said, to investigate and discover for themselves the exciting technologies that are significantly contributing to the global solutions on nuclear waste.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought my colleague the member for Tangney might have taken a bit more time since this topic is of such great interest to him and he is a person who has some expertise. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 is extremely important for all of us to contemplate, for a whole range of reasons, not the least of which is the impact that it will have on the rights and interests of Aboriginal people who are traditional owners of land in the Northern Territory.

On Monday of this week, I was privileged to be at Gan Gan, a small community in the north-east of Arnhem Land. At Gan Gan there was a ceremony which had lasted some four or five days. It was attended by around 800 people, Aboriginal Territorians from as far south as Ngukurr and Numbulwar and from Galiwinku and the coastal communities to the north of Gan Gan as well as the other communities of north-east Arnhem Land, including Yirrkala. These ceremonies are very important indeed. This particular set of ceremonies is important because they are about the transmission of knowledge, the passing on of sacred knowledge to do with the land and Aboriginal people’s responsibilities to it. This was the passing on of the knowledge of an old, very distinguished man in a wheelchair, Gawarrin Gumana.

This is important in order to put the discussion that we have been having this morning and will continue to have later into some sort of context, a different context to the one which is being embarked upon by the government but one which underlines the very importance of appreciating, understanding and coming to terms with Aboriginal traditional law. It underlines the importance of understanding the obligations that Aboriginal people have under that law—in this case, in the Northern Territory—and what those obligations mean in relation to the land that they are the custodians of and for which they have responsibility, for which they hold the stories and the ceremony. That is the sort of knowledge which was passed on earlier this week in the ceremonies by Gawarrin Gumana to people who are to follow him.

Another ceremony took place on Monday which again emphasised the nature of relationships, the nature and importance of land and what has happened to this place in terms of land. At this ceremony a memorial was unveiled to commemorate a massacre that took place at the waterhole at Gan Gan in 1911. This massacre does not feature in Keith Windschuttle’s story of Australia. Indeed, it does not feature in many written authorities on the story of Australia. An expedition led by non-Aboriginal people came to this place. We do not know exactly for what purpose, but we suspect it was to look for a geologist who had gone missing while exploring for minerals in north-east Arnhem Land. The supposition was that he had been killed by Aboriginal people in north-east Arnhem Land. So this was a reprisal and it saw the massacre of a large number of people at Gan Gan. The result was that six people were killed. Their names are identified on the plaque because of the genealogies that exist—people know who the people were. There were survivors. One of them dived into the billabong and was able to retell the story to the following generations. That person was able to tell the people who followed him the story about the land and, in this case, about the Manatja clan. They had responsibilities for land in that country, but they have become all but extinct as a result of this massacre.

The reason this is important is that it provides some insight into the way in which Indigenous Australians—in this case those living in the Northern Territory—see their responsibility towards one another and as part of a community. They have obligations to the country which they have custodianship of and which they do not want to leave. This was picked up in the considerations of Justice Woodward, who was commissioned by the Whitlam government to look at land rights in the Northern Territory. He looked at all of the issues around the question of land rights and land tenure. He came to understand the importance of the relationships between the people, between the people and the land and between the people and all the things on the land—whether they were trees, rocks, birds, crocodiles or whatever. The relationship that exists between people and land was understood. It is in the stories; it is in the ceremony. It demonstrates very clearly people’s title to the country.

So it was no surprise that Justice Woodward said that land title should be given to Indigenous Australians, in this case in the Northern Territory, and that it should be inalienable, freehold title—a communal title which could not be easily taken away. If the Commonwealth were to acquire compulsorily any of the land after this new form of Aboriginal title were introduced, it should only take place with the consent of the regional land council or by the authority of a special proclamation tabled in the parliament and subject to disallowance by the regional land councils. That is not exactly reflected in the land rights act, but what we are seeing today is a none too subtle attempt by this government to undermine the very principles of the land rights act and the things that are seen as so important by the Gawarrin Gumana and other people of north-east Arnhem Land as well as by people living elsewhere in the Northern Territory. What is important to them is their relationship to country, their responsibilities to country, their ability to speak for country and their knowledge of country. But, as I said, we are now seeing a none too subtle attempt by the government to undermine those relationships.

We know that the land rights bill subsequently passed by the Fraser government was a very enlightened piece of legislation. It placed great responsibility upon land councils as representatives of the traditional owners in how they deal with land or with any proposals to develop land. We know that in terms of country, the land councils have a set of specific requirements on consultations with traditional owners and any developments of their land. The land councils must consult with traditional owners; they must have regard to the interests of traditional owners; they must not take action without the consent of traditional owners; they must ensure that traditional owners understand any proposal; they must ensure that affected Aboriginal communities have expressed their views; and they must comply with the decision-making processes of the traditional owners. It is a very strong obligation upon the land councils.

This obligation was in part reflected in amendments to previous legislation. In dealing with the potential for Aboriginal land to be used as a waste site, obligations exist under the land rights act for parties to consult with traditional owners and to act on the basis of informed consent in any decision making that takes place. Nominations, including provisions on the process of nomination by a land council, must demonstrate evidence of consultation with traditional owners, that traditional owners understand the nomination, that they have consented as a group, that any community or group that may be affected has been consulted and that it has had adequate opportunity to express its views.

I would say, and I think most people would say, that is a fair representation of the obligations that land councils have to represent properly the views of traditional owners and to reinforce those relationships that were being expressed in the form of a ceremony at GanGan earlier in the week. Now we know that the legislation we are discussing this morning would relegate these protections to mere guidelines, because item 4 of this legislation would make them unnecessary.

The Bills Digest is very instructive. It goes through the items seriatim and states:

Item 3 inserts proposed sub-section 2A which negates the legal significance of Section 3B by stipulating that failure to comply with these rules—

that is, the ones I have just referred to—

has no legal effect—i.e. a nomination will still be valid.

We know that the impact of this amendment would effectively be to render the requirements in the original piece of legislation non-binding recommendations whose breach would have no legal effect. The concluding comments of the Bills Digest quote the second reading speech of the Minister for Education, Science and Training, in which she said:

I can assure the House that, should a nomination be made, I will only accept it if satisfied that these criteria have been met.

The Bills Digest says:

... [i.e. the criteria governing consultations and information that must be provided to and about traditional owners before a nomination is made].

This legislation provides unambiguously, as we are informed, that there is no binding legal need to ensure the criteria have been met. So it is a con. It is a very sneaky way of undermining the very foundations of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, because what is also anticipated in this legislation is that the Commonwealth will have ownership of the land. It will not be leased to them but, somehow or other, they will get access to that country either by compulsory acquisition or by some agreement. We now know, because there is no binding effect on the need for consultation, that the land councils will not be required to do the consultation which they would normally do. If they do not, and they nominate land or provide some agreement to the Commonwealth about a piece of land, because any procedural rights that might otherwise have existed have been removed by this piece of legislation and because the decisions will not be appealable a deal could be done whereby the Commonwealth could take a parcel of land, like the land that Gawarrin Gumana was passing on ceremony for, and almost by fiat determine that it would be a site for a nuclear waste facility, knowing that there would be no legal challenge against it. They could say that they were going to take the land, remove the inaliable freehold title, make it a Commonwealth title for the purposes of this facility and, at the end of 200 or 300 years, have no obligation to hand it back.

I do not believe that anyone has been fooled by the intent of this legislation and the amendments before us today. They are a con. They are a very cynical attempt to undermine the rights that Aboriginal people currently have to due process in consideration of developments on their country. This bill finishes off the job that was started with the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Amendment Act 2005. As we know, it had already blocked some avenues of legal challenge to site selection by giving the minister absolute discretion to choose any site—removing any entitlement to procedural fairness, removing the need to comply with procedure, preventing the application of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 and, in relation to the site’s nomination, giving to the minister absolute discretion to approve a nomination. This bill further prevents the application of the AD(JR) Act, it removes any entitlement to procedural fairness and it removes the need to comply with the procedures previously set down.

We know that, despite this, Aboriginal people certainly expect their views to be properly heard and understood. We know that the Central Land Council have undertaken their obligations seriously. They know that their obligations for consultation under sections 23 and 77A of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act and sections 203BC and 251B of the Native Title Act require them to undertake certain procedures, which we now know will not be necessary down the track if someone chooses not to follow them in relation to a site proposal. But they have followed them. They have had a large number of meetings with traditional owners of the two sites in Central Australia that have been earmarked, Hart’s Range and Mount Everard. Between 16 August 2005 and 9 November 2006 they have had 13 meetings, 11 of them with traditional owners of the proposed sites. There has been appropriate consultation. These meetings have facilitated representations by ANSTO and DEST officials and exhibited test maps and schematic posters. DEST officials were invited to further discuss the issues and update TOs. The meetings have explained the legislative processes and the proposed laws, provided information in translated audio and video format as well as in newsletters, complied with traditional decision-making processes and spoken up for the interests of TOs at their request.

And what is the government’s record? As with the 2005 amendment bill, the government simply introduced this amendment bill in this House, with no warning, a month ago, without so much as a by-your-leave or an attempt to discuss it with the people who it will affect. And, as we know, of the 13 meetings organised by the Central Land Council, only one was attended by DEST and ANSTO officials. DEST was invited to attend a meeting on 7 November at Alice Springs and another on 9 November at Mulga Bore, to the north of Alice Springs, and chose not to attend.

This is a very serious piece of legislation. As I have said, I think it is a very cynical attempt to undermine the rights of traditional owners in the Northern Territory and to continue the process of imposing upon the people of the Northern Territory, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, a nuclear waste facility that may, at some time in the future, house the waste of 25 nuclear plants—because that is what the government will have the power to do.

This is a shameful piece of legislation which should be rejected, and I urge members to support the amendments moved by the member for Jagajaga. (Time expired)

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

This bill, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, is a small piece of legislation designed specifically to address an issue that was not adequately resolved on the introduction of the Commonwealth radioactive waste management legislation of 2005.

If you are not too busy, Mr Deputy Speaker Lindsay, I might later make some remarks about tidal power in which you may be interested.

This is a simple piece of legislation. It addresses the opportunity for the Commonwealth, having acquired the land for this waste facility in the Northern Territory, to return that land to the traditional owners if it finds that the land is excess to its needs or if the land is no longer required because of a change of policy.

The member for Lingiari was at pains to stress the rights of the Aboriginal landowners to speak for country, and I would certainly endorse their right to speak for country. He makes constant reference to a land council. But my observation of the process is that it does not address that right.

The land entitlements of various tribal groups were minuscule compared to the coverage granted to land councils. A land council is a sort of cooperative and a bureaucracy that has taken upon itself the right to speak for individual native title traditional owners.

Might I quote to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, the experience I had as a minister when I thought it was appropriate to clean up an embarrassing slum in Canberra, outside Old Parliament House, which some people—campers, if you like; and I am surprised that a few Australian pensioners have not thought it appropriate that they turn up and park their caravan there on some similar grounds—had set up. When I set out to clean that up and replace it with an appropriate interpretative centre, to recognise the original tent embassy—which, by the way, happened to be a beach umbrella, but it caught the popular imagination of Australians—I had a very interesting experience. I thought it quite appropriate to consult sincerely with the traditional owners, the Ngunnawal people. But it became obvious to them that most of the inhabitants of this so-called ‘embassy’ were not traditional landowners—they did not even come from the region! They took some exception to this, once it was obvious to them, and went down and told these people to leave and started to pull down their tents and the other things that they had constructed there. And those people went off to the whitefella court—the Supreme Court of the ACT—for protection from the traditional landowners who did not want them there. This is how farcical certain aspects of so-called land rights can be.

And for the member for Lingiari, as he traditionally does, to stand up in this place defending the rights of a bureaucracy, in terms of what might be best for the traditional landowner, is, I think, just typical of a Labor Party bureaucratic approach. Consequently, I reject the amendments that he and others have promoted on this.

I find it quite amazing that we have (a) to (f)—in fact, we have two paragraphs of amendments, which of course in the first place state that the bill not be given a second reading. But when we get down to 1(f), they criticise the government’s failure to deliver a national waste repository after 10 long years in government. And they have spent the bulk of this debate saying why it should not be in the Northern Territory!

Yet, of course, it is in the Northern Territory because when the residents of the Northern Territory were given the opportunity to become a state and have some constitutional rights in regard to the land under their administration, the people of the Northern Territory voted against it. So I think there are a few realistic matters that have come forward. But the reason that this is in the Northern Territory is that, by the decision of the local people, it is still a territory answerable to the Commonwealth. And it is also, of course, appropriate, in many ways, from a geographical, a geological, perspective.

It is interesting to look at the second reading speech of the Minister for Education, Science and Training. In that speech we are told that, through this bill, the Australian government seeks to ensure, should a volunteer site be selected for the facility, that there is a mechanism for the land to be returned to its original owners or successors when the site is no longer required. We will not be returning a dirty or polluted site.

The bill provides that the return may not be effected unless the independent regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency—highly regarded, I might add—has released the facility from regulatory control. Further, the traditional owners must consent to the return of the site. However, in the extremely unlikely event that contamination occurs as the result of the use of the land for the facility, the traditional owners will be indemnified by the Commonwealth against any resultant claims. A related purpose of this bill is to amend both this act and the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 to prevent politically motivated challenges to a land council nomination. What could be more sensible than that?

If we ever have a nuclear power industry and a uranium enrichment facility in Australia, we must have a safe and properly controlled nuclear waste management facility. I find it remarkable that people get all frantic about this when the prime purpose of the Lucas Heights facility is to produce radioactive isotopes for the purpose of human medicine. As is well known, those isotopes are injected into the human body by a doctor using a syringe of some description, some rubber gloves and maybe some other robes. These items could be ‘contaminated’ by that process. Each of these items becomes low-level nuclear waste.

State premiers who say ‘No nuclear waste in my time’ approve the storage of such products in the basements of their hospitals. Admittedly, the only protection needed between these items and other human beings is a sheet of cardboard, but surely such waste, if it is declared to be low-level nuclear waste, should have an adequate repository.

There is now almost total acceptance that sending Aboriginal people out onto some of their traditional lands with no commercial or other opportunities has been a disaster. A nuclear waste management facility would bring a lot of commercial activity in which I hope these people would be able to find employment. It would clearly bring better roads and many other facilities for which, I think, they would be grateful.

This legislation refers to nuclear waste. The member for Lingiari was at pains to point out that the potential exists to have 25 nuclear power stations in Australia and, in that regard, a waste repository would be required. This gives me the opportunity to speak for some time on that situation. I am neither frightened of nor concerned about a nuclear power industry. In fact, I have advocated for the storage of international nuclear waste in Australia, particularly the waste from yellowcake, or uranium oxide, exported from Australia. It is my view that, whatever the economics of it, it should be enriched in Australia, leased to users and returned to Australia—if only to guarantee that the cycle is complete and that Australia, as a contributor to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, is able to guarantee the safe and secure storage of that waste. I have often said that I would much prefer to have the waste returned in the appropriate container than at the head of a rocket. Therefore, I think it is appropriate that Australia have a facility and a commitment to that approach.

However, considering the greenhouse emissions debate, the economics and the arguments for a reliable and consistent form of renewable energy—remembering that nuclear electricity generation does not create any greenhouse effect—I would prefer that my government, and maybe this parliament, look at a better option. This is not the first time I have drawn the attention of the parliament to the huge, reliable, predictable and renewable resource of the tides of the Kimberley. I have recently been advised that there is an opportunity for an electricity generating facility at Walcott Inlet. This is a 50- to 60-kilometre inlet which twice a day experiences mean tides of 11 metres. It is 50 metres wide where the water rushes in and out and it has the capacity to produce 2.8 gigawatts of electricity—arguably, 2½ nuclear power stations. And that is a drop in the ocean. If you take my index finger as a representation of the energy capacity of the tides of the Kimberley—

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that parliamentary?

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

I thought the member for Grayndler might be interested in this example; he might want to include it in his policy instead of being totally negative. If you take my index finger as a representation of the generating capacity of the tides of the Kimberley, the generating capacity of the Snowy River scheme would be the thickness of my fingernail. This is a good way, in a visual context, to make that comparison—and I was not sending a sign to the member who interjected! But I hope he listens closely, because, as I have said in this place before, if the Labor Party wants to do something positive after 10 years in opposition, it might want to steal my ideas.

We have wind power, which is so variable. New Zealand is experiencing variations over five minutes of 100 megawatts, which means that somewhere you have to keep burning coal in anticipation of that variation. The sun is quite helpful in a way, provided you do not need to turn the lights on at night time. We have hot rocks energy, which may have some potential as, more particularly, it is compliant with a grid; you can turn it up or down.

You can predict the tides of the world for 100 years. If you were proposing to have tidal generation power without the available adjustments that you can achieve through the pump storage of water during high-tide flows, you could back it up with coal, because it is predictable: you know that at a certain time on a certain day you would need the generating capacity of a coal-fired power station to replace the power that was not available from the tides because they were neap or whatever else.

On clean-coal technology, I might add that the best that the CSIRO can offer us to date is that a power station requires 20 per cent of its energy production to be used to actually clean up its own mess. That means that somewhere else you have to burn 20 per cent more coal. That does not seem to me to be a high-priority option. I would say the same about nuclear power whilst, as I said earlier, I am neither frightened by it nor opposed to it.

The problem with Kimberley tidal power has been that there has not been a customer as the site is too far away. As we all know, technology in Australia changes every day, and a very significant customer is now in the immediate vicinity of the Kimberley tides. It is the liquefied natural gas industry. For every million tonnes of liquefied natural gas exported out of Australia, we burn 100,000 tonnes, or 10 per cent, of that gas resource. What is more, there is an emission problem associated with that. When we burn the gas as a gas, we pay little attention to the amount of natural carbon dioxide that is found within that gas. The big problem for Gorgon is that it is up to 14 per cent, and the government is negotiating with them to attempt geosequestration, which is significantly easier to do in a liquefied natural gas process than in taking it out of the very hot chimney stack of a power station.

So there is a customer for tidal power. The Browse field, yet to be developed by Woodside, requires 900 megawatts of electricity generation. That is the output of a very big suburban power station. I doubt we have got many of that size in Australia. That field is one of many; Gorgon has not started yet. In other words, we could meet those gigawatts of demand in the immediate vicinity by developing the tidal resources of the Kimberley—totally renewable, perpetual and predictable.

But now it so happens that Australia has walked into the high-voltage DC transmission industry. We have a very credible facility called Basslink. We have crossed Bass Strait with a power line that obviously could not have transformers and all the usual things by which we pump electricity along wires. It is based on HVDC technology. It is two-way traffic—and very sensibly so. Instead of wasting the hydro resources of Tasmania on baseload, they are now consuming baseload from coal, topping up Victoria’s and their own grid with hydro.

America’s HVDC transmission capacity is such that it is now transporting electricity over 2,000 miles, or 3½ thousand kilometres. The other day I got out an old Main Roads map that I had when I was a truckie and that tells me distances around Australia, particularly distances around the state of Western Australia. I was surprised when I suddenly found that Perth is only about 2,300—don’t hold me to the exact number—kilometres away from Derby, the centre of this tidal power region. We could transmit that power all the way to Perth and the south-west. It is not that much further to Port Augusta, where there is a substantial power station and, to the best of my knowledge, an interconnection throughout the eastern seaboard. In other words—for the information of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, who is sitting at the table—we could give some tidal power to Melbourne and we could balance that against the emissions from their brown coal. Instead of wasting 20 per cent on trying to clean the coal, we balance it with probably 40 per cent renewable power that creates no emissions. Of course, you can also go across Australia and hook up to the coal-fired power stations and resources of Queensland. Then, as you do with Basslink, you go back and forth: from the coal to the liquefied natural gas when that is needed and to tidal power for the major cities of Australia when it goes the other way. In my closing remarks, I am asking the opposition to come with me and ask the Prime Minister for another Switkowski inquiry into the potential of tidal power generation. I do not see why it should be left out.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member’s time has expired. I thank the member for O’Connor for his commercial. I advise the House that whether power is transmitted by AC or DC the losses in the lines are the same.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in this debate on the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 and, in particular, to support the amendment moved by the member for Jagajaga. With regard to the member for O’Connor’s comments, I think the great tragedy of the Switkowski report is that it is a narrow report which looked at just nuclear energy. If the government were fair dinkum it would have looked at renewable options, including tidal energy. I say to him that I have been to the Energetech operation off Port Kembla near Wollongong in New South Wales, and it is a very effective example of Australian innovation. We should be exploring these options, including tidal energy, geothermal generation, solar, wind and all the options that are available to us.

Yet the government is clouded by its ideological approach when it comes to nuclear issues. It is clouded by the fact that it is stuck in the last century and it is unable to embrace the change that we need if we are going to address climate change by adopting this century’s technology and by moving forward into the future not only in our interests, the interests of the environment and the economy but also in the interests of future generations.

When the government introduced the original Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill last year I described it as one of the most draconian pieces of legislation that has been brought before this chamber. I underestimated how extreme the Howard government could be. Since then the government has announced its plans to build 25 nuclear reactors across Australia and has introduced this extreme bill. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005, which this bill amends, was rammed through both houses of parliament. It is an extreme piece of legislation. It imposes a toxic nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory and it overrides the Howard government’s own environment and heritage protection laws. It overrides the Native Title Act and the Lands Acquisition Act. It removes procedural fairness. It allows the Commonwealth government to do whatever it deems necessary to establish or operate a nuclear waste dump and whatever it pleases to ensure the nuclear waste gets transported to the nuclear waste site. In other words, the act brushes aside critical environmental protection, community safety and Aboriginal rights laws to ensure that Territorians get dumped with a toxic nuclear waste dump.

Having enjoyed the taste of extreme laws, the Howard government has gone a step further with this bill. It has gone further down the extreme road by introducing these changes. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Bill 2006 goes a step further by introducing three additional measures. Firstly, it removes the right to appeal the nomination of nuclear waste dump sites through the courts. Secondly, it provides that failure to comply with the site nomination rules in the act will not affect the validity of the minister’s approval of a nomination. Thirdly, it removes any entitlement to procedural fairness in relation to nomination of a site.

Before outlining Labor’s concerns about these measures I remind the House of the Howard government’s track record of broken promises and extreme behaviour when it comes to nuclear waste dumps. Australia should remember this track record when they consider John Howard’s determination to impose 25 nuclear reactors across Australia. For years the Howard government tried to impose a nuclear waste dump on South Australians. This was opposed by the South Australian government and the South Australian public. A poll in the Adelaide Advertiser of 2003 showed 87 per cent of South Australians opposed a nuclear waste dump in their state. Nevertheless, the Howard government wasted more than $17.5 million, including an extraordinary $620,000 on public relations consultants, trying to impose the dump on South Australians. In the end, the Howard government gave up on that exercise. Why? Because the polls showed the government would lose seats in South Australia. That is why the government turned its attention to the Northern Territory. Just prior to the federal election the Minister for the Environment and Heritage ruled out the Northern Territory as a site for a nuclear waste dump. He said:

The Commonwealth is not pursuing any options anywhere on the mainland, so we can be quite categorical about that, because the Northern Territory is on the mainland.

A promise from the minister has as much credibility as an AWB executive appearing before the Cole inquiry or as much credibility as the member for Solomon who, in June 2005, infamously 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 1 haven’t heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election.

The member for Solomon must not listen to his caucus colleagues in the government. Broken promise after broken promise has occurred from a government which now wants to impose 25 nuclear reactors on Australians at unspecified locations. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 gave effect to that broken promise, forcing a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory. It should be remembered that the current dump sites in the Northern Territory were not chosen on the basis of any objective scientific criteria.

As the Australian Conservation Foundation has pointed out, none of the sites under consideration were shortlisted when scientific and environmental criteria were used to assess alternative sites around Australia in the 1990s. This is a government that ignores science, ignores economics, ignores the environment and listens only to pollsters.

The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendments) Act 2005 excludes application of the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 to the minister’s decision on the location of a site. That was all about stopping local individuals and communities and state and territory governments from legally objecting to decisions. These measures destroyed any recourse to procedural fairness.

The bill goes a step further by removing the right to judicial review in relation to relevant decisions of Northern Territory land councils. The bill makes an absolute mockery of the original amendments introduced by the member for Solomon and passed by this House last year. Members of this House may recall that the member for Solomon’s amendments had the effect of allowing Aboriginal land councils to nominate a site in the Northern Territory, provided that the land council demonstrated evidence of consultation with traditional owners, that the traditional owners understood the nomination, that they had consented as a group, that any community or group that may be affected had been consulted and had had an opportunity to express its view.

The bill currently before the House provides that a failure to comply with these conditions does not affect the validity of a nomination. That effectively removes those conditions, gutting the member for Solomon’s credibility even further. The member for Solomon has failed to stand up for the people of the Northern Territory and has failed to stand up to the Howard government. He may think he is a lion in Darwin, but he is a kitten in Canberra. He has set the Northern Territory up to be the site for a global nuclear waste dump and a nuclear reactor. Australians should be under no illusion that the Howard government will do whatever it takes to build those 25 nuclear reactors. The environment minister made this absolutely clear on 22 November, when he said:

The Federal Government will do what’s required to ensure Australia has a secure energy future.

Senator Ian Campbell was asked repeatedly by journalists to rule out using the government’s corporations powers to impose nuclear reactors and refused to do so. In the Senate on 27 November, Senator Campbell again refused to rule out using these powers. There is no doubt that, with the outcome of the recent High Court decision in the Work Choices case, the Howard government will be seeking to trample on community objections and state and territory laws to impose nuclear reactors and high-level nuclear waste dumps on local communities across Australia.

The Switkowski report has been seen by some as a vindication of nuclear power’s role as the silver bullet answer to climate change. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. John Howard’s plan to build 25 nuclear reactors is not a plan to avoid dangerous climate change; it is a plan to avoid taking action on climate change. With incredible optimism, Switkowski has suggested that Australia could have its first nuclear reactors within 10 years. The only way that could happen is through the use of the extreme measures in this and related bills: overriding state and territory laws banning nuclear power, overriding critical environmental protection and safety laws, and denying natural justice and the application of democratic principles. Even if the first nuclear reactor were built within 20 years, that still means 20 more years of inaction. We have already wasted the last decade. Our children and grandchildren cannot afford to see us waste another 20 years in the critical fight to avoid dangerous climate change.

The Stern review makes it very clear that we have 10 years in which to act. We are already at about 430 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is increasing at a rate of about two parts per million per year. If that continues, we will hit 450 parts per million in the next decade. The scientists agree that that means a two-degree Celsius increase in our temperature. Scientists agree that somewhere between two and three degrees Celsius is when you hit dangerous climate change. The fact is that we need action immediately—we need it now.

What is lacking is national leadership. Australia needs to go on a low carbon diet, not on a nuclear binge. Independent experts are telling us that we need to cut our greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050. That is exactly what Labor will do, and we have a plan to achieve that: ratifying Kyoto, having a national emissions trading scheme, significantly increasing the mandatory renewable energy target, having a climate change trigger in the EPBC Act and supporting renewable energy and clean coal technology as the way forward to achieve that objective.

The Switkowski report, however, makes it very clear that the Howard government has no plan in place to cut Australia’s greenhouse pollution below year 2000 levels. Australia’s greenhouse pollution, according to the draft report, will increase by 29 per cent by the year 2050. That is taking into account all existing measures, including the low emissions technology fund, and the impact of the 25 nuclear power plants. What we will have is Australia’s greenhouse emissions soaring from 558 megatonnes in the year 2000 to 718 megatonnes in the year 2050, according to page 81 of the Switkowski report.

John Howard’s nuclear plan will take Australia further down the path towards dangerous climate change. If global greenhouse pollution were to rise 29 per cent by 2050, the world would probably experience a four-degree rise in global temperatures. What does that mean for Australia? It means no more Great Barrier Reef. It means no more Kakadu National Park. It means a 48 per cent cut in water flow to cities and the Murray-Darling Basin. It means increasing the bushfire danger across Australia. It means moving the dengue fever transmission zone down to Brisbane and possibly all the way to Sydney. This is all according to the CSIRO. The government has had this scientific advice.

The CSIRO and the Stern review make it very clear that global emissions must be cut by 60 per cent by 2050 if we are to avoid dangerous climate change, but John Howard’s nuclear power plan will lead to a 29 per cent increase in our greenhouse gas emissions over that period. What is more, Stern has said the economic cost of action will be substantially more if we choose to delay the transition to the carbon constrained economy that is necessary.

Stern has spoken about the need to take action in the next 10 years if we are going to avoid a decrease of perhaps 20 per cent in the size of the global economy and a recession equivalent to both world wars and the Great Depression. It will be the Great Depression but with much worse weather. That is what we can expect if we continue to refuse to take action to move to a carbon-constrained economy. Climate change is a serious threat, but posturing about expensive and toxic nuclear energy, which is more than 10 years away, is a distraction that Australia simply cannot afford. Nuclear power is more expensive than energy efficiency and renewable technology, which is available right here, right now, today. Australia needs to cut our greenhouse pollution now, not in 10 or 20 years time.

The Switkowski report purports to be an economic analysis of the cost of 25 nuclear reactors, without looking at where those reactors will go and where the waste dumps will go. It is like asking a real estate agent for the cost of a house without looking at where it will be and how many rooms it has. It is absurd. Location is a prime determinant of the cost of any facility, let alone a nuclear power facility. If you think about having 25 nuclear reactors then that means sites in Cairns, Townsville, Gladstone, the Sunshine Coast, Tweed Heads, Port Stephens, the Illawarra, Lithgow and the Hunter Valley, just in Queensland and New South Wales alone—as well as having nuclear reactors around Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania and Melbourne. It is a disastrous plan for Australia and it is dishonest to be out there promoting the Prime Minister’s nuclear fantasy without looking at where the reactors will go.

I have had a question on notice now for months asking the Prime Minister to rule out specific locations in each of the 150 electorates around Australia. The Prime Minister defies the Speaker and the standing orders of this House, and indeed has contempt for this House and for the parliament, by refusing to provide an answer to what is a very simple question. At the next election this will be a major issue. It will be a referendum on nuclear power: do you have John Howard’s fantasy for nuclear power, with laws which override state and territory laws, which override appeal rights, as this bill does? Or do we move down the clean coal technology and renewables road? It is quite clear what is necessary if we are going to avoid dangerous climate change and it is quite clear that this bill has given us yet another reminder that this is an arrogant government, out of control, prepared to impose draconian laws in order to pursue its ideological objectives. (Time expired)

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. From the outset, I would like to say that I am totally opposed to this bill for the very same reasons that Labor was opposed to the initial bill and subsequent amendment bill from last year. I support the amendment moved in this House by the honourable member for Jagajaga.

As I have said, Labor opposes this bill. Labor will defend the right of the community to be consulted about radioactive waste to be transported through or dumped in their backyard. The primary purpose of the 2005 act was to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory and to override community concerns and state and territory laws that may get in the way of that. This very heavy-handed approach, including the removal of procedural fairness and judicial review rights, has been extended even further in this amendment bill that we are discussing today. This bill paves the way for this very arrogant government to override any legislation from any state or territory that seeks to prevent the dumping of toxic waste in its area.

This bill can be viewed in the wider scheme of this government’s illogical persistence about taking our nation down the road of nuclear power. They certainly seem to be committed to doing that instead of actually looking at and addressing all of the issues to do with climate change. The fact is that they have refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol and they have totally disregarded all of the issues that were apparent in the Stern report. Despite all those warnings, all they keep talking about is the pursuit of nuclear power.

This bill removes judicial review. In effect what it does is to take away the accountability of this government. This bill amends the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 to make land nominations non-reviewable under the act. This bill provides that failure to comply with the site nomination rules in the act will not affect the validity of the minister’s approval of a nomination and removes any entitlement to procedural fairness in relation to the nomination of a site. What does this actually mean? It means that no-one will be able to hold the government to account for its actions in selecting a site for a waste dump. Under these bills, there is no recourse available to ordinary Australians and no access to the courts is possible. In effect, this provision will extend the current protection from judicial review applied to ministerial consideration and decision-making on sites onto the processes and decision making of Northern Territory land councils. The government do not want to be held accountable for their actions and decisions; that is why they have made these changes. The reality is that the community will hold this government accountable next year, because this sort of action is typical of the arrogance that we see from the Howard government across so many different areas.

As I mentioned earlier, this bill needs to be viewed in the wider context of this government’s nuclear plan. It is an indication of what the people of Australia can expect in terms of consultation and choice on the nuclear issue. This is what they can expect—no consultation and no choice. This of course does not come as any surprise from this government.

I say to the Howard government on behalf of the people of Richmond and I say about this government’s nuclear plans: no to nuclear and no to the waste, not in our community, not at any time, not anywhere throughout the federal electorate and, indeed, not in any community throughout Australia. Many people in Richmond have raised with me the concerns that they have about this issue. As we have seen again and again, this government does not care about community opinion or consultation and that is clear from this legislation.

Let me say clearly that the economics of nuclear power plainly do not stack up. The reality is that insurers could charge up to $400 million to insure a nuclear power plant against the threat of terrorism. Britain has estimated it will cost $170 billion to clean up its 20 nuclear sites. In the US, direct subsidies to nuclear energy totalled $115 billion between 1947 and 1999, with a further $145 billion in indirect subsidies. In contrast, subsidies to wind and solar combined during the same period totalled only $5.5 billion. The government would have to subsidise 14 per cent of the construction costs and over 20 per cent of the costs of electricity produced for the first 12 years for nuclear energy to be viable.

What has the government had to say about the economic feasibility of nuclear power? Not surprisingly, there have been several contradictory statements. The Treasurer said on 23 May 2006:

At some point I would think that it would become commercial; that’s some time off.

And on 15 May 2006, the Treasurer said:

It is not economic at this time in Australia because we have such proven resources of gas and coal.

On 21 May 2006, the Minister for Finance and Administration said:

I cannot see how nuclear power could possibly be viable in this country for at least 100 years. I think we could waste a lot of time and hot air debating nuclear power, when really it’s just not going to be on the horizon economically for a very long time.

On 23 May 2006, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage said:

My assessments of the economics of nuclear power for Australia have not changed—I suspect it would be a long, long way down the track.

On 22 May 2006, the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources said:

The economics of nuclear power just simply don’t add up.

So even the government know it is not economically sensible. All those statements from government ministers reaffirm that. The real cost of nuclear electricity is certainly more than that of wind power, energy from bio-wastes and some forms of solar energy. Of all the energy options, there is no doubt that nuclear is the most capital intensive to establish, decommissioning is extremely expensive and the financial burden continues long after the plant is closed. We know that this bill, by establishing toxic waste dumps, is setting the stage for nuclear power in this country. There is no doubt that it will happen, and everyone knows it.

Nuclear energy is not a solution to climate change and it is not a solution to our growing energy needs. It seems only government members continue to say that it is a solution. We have an abundance of free energy sources in Australia. Solar energy and wind energy could be harnessed at little cost to the environment. We have abundant sources of alternative energy. Nuclear power is not necessary. It is not the answer. There are cleaner, greener, cheaper, safer options which should definitely be pursued.

This government plans to impose nuclear waste dumps on unwilling communities. That is what this legislation is all about. We know from this bill some of the areas in which the government wants to put the waste, but the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education, Science and Training have refused to talk about specific locations—although I know the science minister has been quite happy to rule out her own electorate. The people of Australia want to know: will there be nuclear waste dumps in areas other than the Northern Territory? 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 if they are to have reactors nearby? What will be done with the nuclear waste? These are questions which Australian communities desperately want answered but the government refuses to answer them.

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 problems of nuclear waste and its transportation and the safety of operations of nuclear facilities. The reality is that the Prime Minister has refused to come clean on the question of where he will put his nuclear power plants and dumps. These are certainly questions that we on this side of the House will continue to ask because this issue is a major concern to people throughout Australia.

The people in Richmond are very concerned and scared. They are scared because the geographical and environmental requirements for a nuclear power plant seem to exist in the Northern Rivers area. The people in Richmond have a right to be concerned because in May this year the Treasurer, who was then Acting Prime Minister—which is probably as close as he is ever going to get—refused to rule out Richmond as a site for nuclear power plants when I put that question to him.

Let me tell this government now, before they get any ideas, that the people of my electorate will not stand for a nuclear power plant in our area. It is quite simple: we will not stand for waste being dumped in or trucked through our communities—under no circumstances. We do not want this waste and we do not want a plant near our schools or our homes. The people do not want the associated risks, the fear or the unsightliness. If the Howard government are so keen on nuclear reactors, perhaps electorates such as Bennelong or Higgins might be better places for reactors than dumping them in areas like Richmond.

Putting aside this government’s persistence with an illogical and dangerous nuclear agenda, one of the most concerning aspects of this legislation is the lack of community consultation. Of great concern is the fact that this government has imposed its will on the Northern Territory. The Central Land Council is opposing the waste dump in the Northern Territory. They are strongly opposed to the Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility being located there. We know from international experience that community consultation is both necessary and desirable. We know that it should be happening. In the case of nuclear waste, the United Kingdom’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management reported on 31 July this year:

There is a growing recognition that it is not ethically acceptable for a society to impose a radioactive waste facility on an unwilling community.

Finland and Sweden are two countries that have achieved site selection on the basis of community consent, through a process of public participation and involvement going well beyond the traditional report and respond approach.

Local communities have a right to know this government’s intentions and what to expect from it, both on nuclear power plants and on the siting of future nuclear waste dumps. But this government refuses to answer questions in relation to these matters, totally removing the issue of community consultation and disregarding the wishes of Australians.

There are many issues surrounding the storage of toxic waste, and they certainly are of grave concern to many people. Let us look at the facts associated with toxic waste. Every nuclear reactor generates 20 to 30 tonnes of radioactive waste each year. At the moment there are 443 nuclear power plants around the world and 284 research reactors, and 220 ships and submarines are powered by nuclear reactors. Britain’s civil and nuclear industries have accumulated 2.3 million cubic metres of nuclear waste around their country. The fact is that more than 250,000 tonnes of waste is already stockpiled around the world and we do not know what to do with that waste because no solution has been put forward to deal with it.

The Department of Education, Science and Training About Radioactive Waste fact sheet of 2005 tells us that the Commonwealth has approximately 3,600 cubic metres of low-level waste and produces about 30 cubic metres of low-level waste per year. The Commonwealth has approximately 400 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste in Australia and generates about five cubic metres per year. As a nation, we still do not have a solution for the disposal of our very small quantity of nuclear waste. So what is the government’s reaction?

When government ministers have been asked about nuclear waste storage we have heard them say, ‘Oh, that’ll just be a matter for governments of the day.’ That is a very irresponsible position to take. Is it a problem that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren? Is this the kind of future that we want to leave for them? The reality is that, by doing that, we are just sentencing future generations of Australians to live in a toxic wasteland—again, another irresponsible move by the government in that they are just fobbing it off for future generations to worry about.

What about the logistics of transporting this waste? How will that happen? Even if we are talking about waste from Lucas Heights, how will it be transported to the Northern Territory and which towns and villages will be on the route? Which schools will the trucks of toxic radioactive waste be travelling past and which homes will line the roads that they will be travelling along? People want to know which regional and rural towns with little access to emergency services required to respond to a toxic spill will be in the firing line, because no-one wants truckloads of toxic waste travelling through their streets on the way to somewhere else and no-one wants it stored in their neighbourhood. There are very real safety concerns here in relation to transportation. In 2004, the New South Wales government instituted an inquiry into the transportation and storage of nuclear waste. The executive summary says:

It is hard to see how the proposal to move waste to remote areas away from the point of production will increase safety as the transportation of the material actually increases the risk from accident or intervention.

The Howard government will be placing our rural and regional communities at risk by transporting this waste. That is the harsh reality.

This government plans to ride roughshod over moves by any state or territory government to protect their people. Despite legislation passed by the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, this government will override the rights and interests of the Northern Territory community. The federal government has deliberately chosen to intervene in the affairs of the Northern Territory and override those rights, and the Territory community has every right to be unhappy about that process. Indeed, the member for Solomon has walked away from promises made to the Northern Territory community prior to both the last federal election and the last Northern Territory election that there would be no such waste facility in the Northern Territory. But it seems that no promises are sacred and no areas are immune from this government’s determination to go nuclear.

If the Northern Territory is the government’s first victim, which state will the federal government choose to override next? If this government is planning to take in waste from other countries, it is going to need a lot of dumps for the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste looking for a home. We know there is growing momentum internationally for countries that process uranium to also accept spent fuel. 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.

As I have said before many times, those of us on this side of the House stand for renewables, not for reactors. The people in my electorate of Richmond are totally opposed to the reality of having a nuclear reactor in our area. It is a matter of grave concern for us and for our children in the future. The reality is that nuclear power will not deliver solutions; it will just create more problems for our children and grandchildren. As I have said, the economics of nuclear power simply do not stack up at all when you look at the facts. Of all the energy options, nuclear is the most capital intensive to establish, decommissioning is extremely expensive and the financial burden continues long after the plant is closed.

It is absolutely shameful the way the Howard government has failed to address the issues of climate change. We all know the extreme impacts of climate change. We know that we need to have national leadership and national direction on this issue. We all saw and read the stark findings of the Stern report and noted the harsh reality of what will happen to our world if, as a community, some action is not taken in relation to climate change.

On so many occasions we have put it to the Howard government that, first and foremost, it needs to ratify the Kyoto protocol. But the government just runs away from that and is not prepared to take any action, despite the fact that international communities are saying that our government should be doing more and that people right across Australia are saying that the government needs to be taking more action in relation to it. Instead, all we see is the government mocking those who stand here and speak in a very concerned way about climate change. We do not see the government taking any action at all to protect the world as it is today and to protect it for our children and grandchildren. Instead, we just see the government hell-bent on and committed to pursuing the issue of nuclear power. That is always its stock standard response.

That may be what the government is saying, but I know it is certainly not what the people of Richmond, or indeed the people of Australia, are saying. This certainly will be a major issue at next year’s federal election, because people will be making specific decisions about having nuclear reactors in their area. I can assure you that whether it be any of the towns throughout Richmond, such as Tweed Heads, Banora Point, Murwillumbah, Kingscliff, Pottsville, Mullumbimby, Brunswick Heads, Byron Bay, Lennox Head or even Nimbin, or other towns, none of them want to have a nuclear reactor in their backyard. So it will be a major part of next year’s campaign, as we see the Howard government hell-bent on pursuing its agenda on nuclear power and failing to fulfil any realistic obligations about climate change and failing to look at renewables. That is the direction we should be taking and that we should be seeing from our national government; instead, we see it running away time and time again.

It is for these reasons that I am totally opposed to this legislation. This issue will increase in intensity. Many months ago I started a petition in my area about not having a nuclear reactor within the federal electorate of Richmond. I received an overwhelming response from people who are concerned that they will eventually have a nuclear reactor in their backyard. Many people continue to sign that petition, because their concerns about this issue are so intense. They constantly see the Howard government going down this path and refusing to rule out where these reactors will go. That is irresponsible and shows a complete lack of leadership. In fact it is mocking the Australian people by not answering the questions on the very serious issues we have in the community about the presence of nuclear reactors. It is certainly an issue that people keep raising with me. (Time expired)

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to support the second reading amendment moved by my colleague the member for Jagajaga and the remarks by previous Labor members as I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. The bill amends the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1997 and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 to make land nominations, as distinct from decisions, nonreviewable under the AD(JR) Act and to provide that the failure to comply with the site nomination rules in the act will not affect the validity of the minister’s approval of the nomination. Labor has noted in the House that this legislation removes any entitlement to procedural fairness in relation to the nomination of a site.

Specifically, Labor opposes this legislation because it undermines the existing amended Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act. Additionally, because it clearly reduces the need for consultation and community consent, which is an absolutely essential prerequisite to decision making of this kind, it is inconsistent with international best practice guidelines and existing statutory obligations under the land rights act. This is particularly important in the light of the release of the draft Switkowski review, with the prospect of a greatly increasing volume of radioactive waste being generated in Australia if in fact the Howard government’s plans for a substantial increase in a domestic nuclear energy industry come to fruition. I will return to that issue at some point later. At this stage I confine my observations simply to say that it is not acceptable for the Australian population to find in any planning and approvals processes for the storage of radioactive waste or nuclear waste that the legislative framework, and the consultation framework under which that operates, is less than world’s best practice, which has been identified particularly in European countries and the United Kingdom as requiring a full, informed and participatory mode of community involvement. Very clearly the legislation before us in the House does not provide that standard at all.

Additionally, Labor opposes the legislation because it circumvents judicial review. Yesterday we were considering legislation in the House which related to whether courts could take into account customary matters in terms of sentencing under the Commonwealth Crimes Act. Again this government saw fit to enact legislation that reduces the capacity of the legal system and judges to exercise their responsibilities, both under the law and under statutes. So this bill is an extraordinary narrowing down of the capacity of normally allowable and accessible processes that communities and the public have, both to challenge and to be informed about government decisions.

A strong argument has been put that the debate about the return of nominated lands, as identified under this legislation, should be delayed until the final Switkowski report is brought down. I think there is a very good reason for that and I would certainly like to put that to the government. It seems clear that what is proposed in the draft report—the review has encompassed a fairly significant expansion of likely nuclear activity in Australia, or at least the possibility of that—will bear down very strongly upon Indigenous communities, which hitherto are the ones that have borne the brunt and will bear the brunt of having radioactive materials stored in or near their lands.

As I address the House I cannot help reflecting on the extremely casual acknowledgement that Mr Switkowski gave to the prospects of the safe disposal of radioactive waste in Australia. As I saw it on television, it was one wave of the hand and the suggestion that we have enormous amounts of remote inland regions where no-one particularly is and where, surely, we can find a location for our waste.

Apart from that being an inaccurate judgement on his part, it also fails to understand that both the history of uranium mining in this country and the history behind the identification by the Commonwealth of a site for the storage of low-level, medium-level and ultimately high-level radioactive waste have only ever involved Aboriginal communities, Indigenous communities. The fact of the matter is that the material has been stored and still is stored in places like Lucas Heights, but ultimately it will be Indigenous communities that will be faced with the prospect of having facilities like this in and around their country for very significant periods of time. It seems to me that their interests ought to be given appropriate consideration and that, under this legislation in particular, despite the fact that the Northern Land Council has had an interest in seeing this legislation come into the parliament, the broader Indigenous interest of communities is not being met.

Labor has opposed this bill for a number of reasons, but I think it is worthwhile reviewing the history in some detail and pointing out the statements that various ministers have made over time in relation to the storage of waste and what the Commonwealth’s approach would be to a waste dump. On 24 January 2005, the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Nelson, specified particularly that the Commonwealth would prioritise an offshore site for a waste dump. He said:

So the Australian government will be looking at an offshore facility, that is our clear preference.

That was a very clear statement by a senior government minister who had responsibility at that point in time. In fact, he said:

We are determined that it will be an offshore facility but we are also concurrently looking at a ‘remote’ area, a long way away facility, to store intermediate and low level waste should the offshore site not be available.

There is no question that he was giving himself a get-out-of-jail card when he made that statement. It was grossly irresponsible of Minister Nelson at that time to start suggesting as he did, almost unilaterally, that there would be the prospect of the storage of medium-level or high-level waste in offshore islands or on Commonwealth land somewhere off the coast of Australia. Clearly, he was flying a kite to take away the very real political heat that the government has felt on this issue in the NT.

Senator Ian Campbell, just prior to the 2004 election, specifically ruled out the Northern Territory for a dump site. He said:

The Commonwealth is not pursuing any options anywhere on the mainland—

he also had the offshore option in mind—

so we can be ... categorical about that, because the Northern Territory is on the mainland—

A small geographical lesson from Senator Campbell, just to point out to us exactly where the Northern Territory was. Then later, of course, the member for Solomon, Mr Tollner, also ruled out the Northern Territory as a host for the Commonwealth waste dump. As late as June 2005, 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.

It could not be clearer: a succession of government ministers and government members have completely misled the Australian public, the people of the Northern Territory and, in particular, Aboriginal communities about what the likely consequences were of them making a decision to determine where radioactive waste would be disposed. And they have had absolutely no qualms about doing that.

That is of enormous regret. In particular, it is of enormous regret because the Australian population is now faced with the prospect of increasing amounts of radioactive waste being generated by Mr Howard’s dreams of a nuclear energy industry ramped up to the max, some 25 reactors that have been posited as possible by the Switkowski review and report, and, of course, the question then of where the waste that is generated by these reactors ultimately will go. What confidence can Australians have—whether they are in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and so on—in anything that the government says about nuclear matters and, in particular, about the critical issue of where waste will be disposed of and how it will be stored, if in fact its assertions in the past have been proven to be totally false?

It is a matter of history that the government abandoned its search for an offshore site, which I suspect did not take much time, effort or energy, and announced on 15 July that it would investigate three locations in the Northern Territory. In late 2005, the Howard government completed parliamentary passage of the legislation and imposed a site selection, construction and operation of a waste dump on the Northern Territory. That was in complete contradiction to its pre-election commitments and in the face of considerable, and I think justified, opposition from the Territory government and local communities. I must stress here that Labor accepts that there is a need to find a safe repository for these existing wastes but that it has very grave concerns about the process that has been adopted by the federal government, including the processes that are part of the amendment that has come into the House and that we are debating today.

The purpose of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 was to put beyond doubt the Commonwealth’s power to conduct those activities relating to siting, construction and operation of a radioactive waste facility. The purpose of the provisions is to prevent local individuals or communities, representative bodies or even state or territory governments from being able to undertake legal objections to the Commonwealth’s action which may delay the project. Labor did oppose the 2005 bill on a number of grounds, including those that I have mentioned: that it broke the government’s pre-election promises; that it overrode many federal legal protections including the then Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, the Native Title Act and the Lands Acquisition Act; and that it was literally refusing to listen to the concerns expressed by Northern Territorians, including a group of Indigenous people who came and visited the parliament and met with a number of parliamentarians, including me, at that point in time.

Additionally, we opposed the legislation because it destroyed any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone who wished to challenge the minister’s decision. Also, and I think importantly, the fact that the legislation did not contain the capacity for proper consultation and proper public community involvement in determining how, why, in what manner and in what form waste would be imposed upon a community meant that those matters were not considered at all.

The original CRWM Act provided for assessment of three potential sites—Fisher’s Ridge, Hart’s Range and Mount Everard. I know the Mount Everard site in some detail. I have some real concern about the desirability of all of them but about that site in particular, which I have addressed in the House previously. Additional land nominations provisions were inserted by way of amendment by the member for Solomon. These provisions were to allow for the land to be nominated for assessment as a possible site for a facility by the NT Chief Minister or the Northern Land Council.

The Department of Education, Science and Training have acknowledged in Senate estimates that they have been undertaking discussions with the NLC on possible nominations of additional sites. The government stated that the bill addresses concerns raised by the NLC in relation to nominating a site under the CRWM Act. If not addressed, the NLC may be unwilling to nominate a site should a community within its jurisdiction wish to volunteer its land. Departmental officers have not denied that the objective of this bill is to do that—to facilitate a site nomination from the NLC. Importantly, this goes against the previous Tollner amendment, which included provisions that a process of nomination by a land council should demonstrate evidence of consultation with traditional owners, that they have consented as a group and that any community or group that may be affected has been consulted and has had an adequate opportunity to express its views.

The new section 7(5A) provides that a failure to abide by what are currently binding rules of nomination will not affect the validity of a nomination. Yet again, it is really window-dressing—laying in place a political solution to a political problem but not providing a policy or a procedural solution to what is a deeper issue, which is the requirement and the necessity for there to be adequate and comprehensive consultation, particularly for Indigenous people whose lands or whose attachment to land may be affected in that way.

The Northern Land Council’s full council resolution of October 2005 provided a mandate for the council to continue its further discussion with the government. I will summarise it briefly, given the time. It says that the NLC supports the amendment provided that:

(i)

traditional owners of the site agree;

(ii)

sacred sites and heritage are protected ...

(iii)

environment protection requirements are met (including under current Commonwealth NT legislation).

Clearly that is not the case with the legislation that is in front of us. It continues:

(iv)

Aboriginal land is not acquired or native title extinguished (unless with the traditional owners' consent).”

But the provisions of the bill that we are debating today are in opposition to that. They do not permit that to happen, and they also contradict the commitments to the parliament by the Minister for Education, Science and Training in her second reading speech when she said:

Current provisions of the act set down a number of criteria that should be melt if a land council decides to make a nomination.

…         …         …

I can assure the House that, should a nomination be made, I will only accept it if satisfied that these criteria have been met.

But of course she can do the complete opposite if she so chooses. Again, it is a cascade of words, of processes and of amendments which have a very simple effect—to deny the capacity for an Aboriginal community to assert their necessary rights and their involvement in a process of this kind.

In the time that is left to me, I want to make a further reference to the question of the safe disposal of radioactive waste and nuclear waste generally. I simply remark that we are having a debate about whether or not Australia should embrace the nuclear option as a means of generating its energy into the future on the basis that it would be environmentally safe and that it would not impose additional economic costs on the community by way of the taxpayer meeting insurance, underwriting construction, organising soft loans or providing for write-offs in the event that a project should go horribly wrong. If the government is serious about pursuing this policy ambition and does not take into account the likely consequences of the increasing transit of nuclear material within Australia and overseas then it will find that the Australian people will not support the direction.

We should consider the very difficult processes in this country that attach to properly regulating and ensuring the safe disposal of the already existing low- and medium-level wastes—which are quite low in volume—and the amount of regulatory oversight that is necessary. The only way that the government has been able to secure some possible short-term solution to the issue it faces with the nuclear facility at Lucas Heights in getting up and running in its second phase and their meeting licensing requirements in finding a location for that waste is to impose a waste dump on Aboriginal people and communities in the Northern Territory. This sets an extremely poor precedent for future processes when we will have much greater volumes of radioactive waste if the Howard government’s plans for a nuclear Australia proceed. I am confident that most Australians do not want a future of that kind. We reject this legislation and we reject Mr Howard’s nuclear future.

Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kingsford Smith for some of his views, with which I certainly align my beliefs. There is something of a ‘groundhog day’ happening here. Just over a year ago I stood here and condemned the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendments) Bill 2005, which overrode any state and territory laws where they would regulate, hinder or prevent any work undertaken to select, build and operate a nuclear waste dump.

Those two bills also allowed the Commonwealth to override its own existing laws originally drafted to afford a minimal degree of environmental and heritage protection as well as the recognition of traditional ownership, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and the Native Title Act. Those bills also asserted that the Minister for Education, Science and Training need not accord any procedural fairness to anyone affected by these decisions. They ensured that the parliament cannot disallow any declarations made under it, such as the government’s decision on the preferred nuclear waste dump site or the extinguishment of existing rights and interests. They allowed the minister to dismiss any objections raised by traditional owners of the land who were about to have nuclear waste dumped on their country or, indeed, any objections by other bodies, such as those state and local governments through which waste might be transported across Australia. Those bills made sure that any decisions made by the Commonwealth about the storage of radioactive waste are not subject to judicial review.

Fast forward to June this year and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006, which rode roughshod over the legal rights of traditional owners, trampling guarantees that informed consent must be given by the owners of their land before anything happens on or to that land. That bill, now law, allows the minister to approve the delegation of a land council’s authority and functions to people who are not the traditional owners of that land, and it allows the creation of a new land council without necessarily the traditional owners’ permission, understanding or knowledge. That bill allows land legally owned by traditional owners to be leased for 99 years to the Northern Territory government, which may then sublease it to any body for any use it pleases.

Just six months later, through this, the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006, we find the government taking further life and meaning from Indigenous rights while breathing more life into the spectre of nuclear power, with its poisonous legacy. For that is what this is all about: it is the post-Pangaea solution—access Indigenous lands for intermediate waste, with a view to stepping up to full-blown nuclear energy waste; a waste no country on earth has found a site for or method to get rid of.

This bill comes back to finish the job the previous bill started by removing procedural guarantees that had normally been accorded to decisions taken under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, until its emasculation earlier this year. Once, the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977 facilitated examination of processes through which a land council made its decisions on behalf of the traditional owners it was supposed to represent. Under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, this meant ensuring that land councils negotiated with the traditional owners and with those affected by any proposal using traditional or other agreed processes to allow those owners informed collective consent. It insisted that the land councils responded to the views of those Aboriginal peoples who held collective title to their traditional lands.

Today this bill removes from the oversight and protection of the AD(JR) Act the process undertaken in the nomination of a site for a radioactive waste dump, so removing any legal compulsion to ensure the informed and freely given consent of those whose land is being offered, either by an unrepresentative land council or by the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, under the so-called authority of a 99-year lease. In the minister’s second reading speech the eradication of this legal, indeed moral, imperative is swept away as being:

… to prevent politically motivated challenges to a land council nomination.

This is cemented by ensuring that neither decisions by the minister nor nominations by land councils or the Chief Minister need provide procedural fairness—that is in item 4—and by confirming that a ministerial declaration of a site which has been made in breach of the now ineffective safeguards in the existing legislation—section 3B—is immune to those safeguards anyway.

Should we all applaud the government for its generosity when it provides for the future return of Aboriginal land to its original owners, provided it is the same land trust or its successor which originally held the land on behalf of the traditional owners—if some future minister decides to do so at his or her ‘absolute discretion’ and when the facility is no longer needed as a radioactive waste dump and is declared to be safe? Should we all congratulate ourselves on our largesse in providing indemnity to the land trust against any action, claim or demand arising from damage caused by radiation exposure?

That the minister should claim in the first sentence of her second reading speech that this bill provides for the return of a volunteer nuclear waste dump site to its traditional owners is rubbish. This bill is not about guaranteeing the return of a site at some indeterminable time generations down the track. It is about removing any legal, environmental or moral safeguards that would get in the way of the government storing radioactive waste on land owned by Aboriginal people who might not have given their permission freely—or indeed at all—and those who might not even have the language to contemplate the acquisition of land by another body without their permission, or the words to describe a potential poisoning of country through such an insidious thing as radiation, or the concepts to even imagine willing the risk of poisoning country for hundreds of thousands of years after them.

This bill is about the death of Aboriginal rights to and control of their own land. It is about the demise of accountable government and due process. It is all about this government’s push to nuclear power, its short-sighted and dangerously lazy adoption of the nuclear option and its dismissal of serious commitment to alternative energy sources—especially solar, wind and wave—and lack of commitment to encouraging conservation of power instead of profligate consumption by a generation that by and large cares little for tomorrow. This bill is about the glittering prize of rising royalties paid straight to the Commonwealth through the mining of uranium—again, short-term illusory wealth with the waste swept under the carpet or, in this case, under traditional Indigenous lands. The minister says in her second reading speech:

We will not be returning a dirty or polluted site.

No-one on this planet has been able to guarantee that, except this minister. She says that, ‘in the extremely unlikely event that contamination occurs’, ‘the traditional owners will be indemnified’. No-one can guarantee ‘extremely unlikely’, and the minister knows it.

Let me just place on the record some facts. The world’s nuclear sites will require monitoring and protection for centuries after they are closed down. How well did this country monitor asbestos mining and the town sites of those mining communities? Remember Anthony Mundine’s home town of Baryulgil near Grafton, whose largely Aboriginal inhabitants suffered the ravages of asbestos poisoning for 30 years and who are now bearing the health costs? How much did we care to monitor those sites over the years?

You may be able to cover asbestos; you can’t do that to radiation. The global volume of spent fuel is about a quarter of a million tonnes and is growing by 10,000 tonnes annually. No wonder there is the urgency to bury the stuff—especially if we, in our short-sighted greed, are going to mine more of it.

However, despite billions of dollars spent by the nuclear industry and governments around the world, no-one—not even this minister—can come up with a feasible and sustainable solution. You might say we are talking about low-level and intermediate waste in Australia at the moment and in this bill, but this is all about preparing for the waste disposal options of a substantially ramped-up nuclear energy—and, undoubtedly, nuclear weapons—industry.

After nearly 20 years of research, and billions of dollars, the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada is as far away from use as ever. Not one gram of spent fuel has so far been taken to the site from nuclear sites across America. Yet the US pushes on with plans for an expanded nuclear industry.

And, according to Greenpeace, the dilemma does not end with high-level waste. There are numerous examples of disposal sites containing low-level waste which are already leaking radiation into the environment. Drigg in the UK and CSM in Le Hague, France, are said to be two of those sites. There are simply no proven technologies to isolate nuclear waste from the environment.

Whatever the bland spin of the government—that this is about low- and medium-level radioactive waste management—we know the agenda is greatly different. The Ziggy Switkowski report and the Prime Minister’s nuclear enthusiasm betrays that agenda. The Prime Minister and his generation will be dead and gone, but the lasting legacy of nuclear waste will be with us forever. It will be for our kids’ kids to monitor the radiation leakages, long after the last uranium ore has been mined. And uranium is one ore that, if removed from our exports, would hardly register on the GDP radar. The value of uranium exports has been totally overspun by this government, the Labor Party’s resources spokesman and the minerals industry. On top of that, there is the inevitable proliferation of nuclear weapons from exported uranium and the impossibility of any meaningful IAEA safeguards system.

This legislation is about cynical exploitation of land that has been Indigenous for 60,000 years, with a view to contaminating it for at least another 60,000 years. It is the thin edge of yet another Howard wedge, and I totally reject it.

Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. This bill is about the Howard government using Commonwealth power to impose a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory, in particular on traditional landowners. But do not think that it will end there. Following the release of the government’s nuclear inquiry report last week, we can assume that the Howard government will use Commonwealth power to impose nuclear waste dumps and nuclear power stations on unwilling states and territories right around Australia—but I will discuss that a little later. First, let us look at the developments of this bill and why the Howard government is so desperate to impose a nuclear dump on the Northern Territory.

The Commonwealth has approximately 3,600 cubic metres of low-level waste, half of which is at Woomera, and produces around 30 cubic metres of low-level waste per year. The Commonwealth also has approximately 400 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste in Australia, and generates less than five cubic metres per year. Intermediate-level waste generated from spent fuel has been sent to France—6½ cubic metres—and the UK—26½ cubic metres.

The waste dump is needed and intended to house waste from, firstly, the new reactor, the Open Pool Australian Light-Water Reactor, or OPAL, presently under construction; the old reactor, the High Flux Australian Reactor or HIFAR, which is still operational; returning waste from France and the United Kingdom; defence waste, held at various sites around Australia, including contaminated soil from the Woomera test sites; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO accelerator waste; and other Commonwealth waste.

In 2004, the government stated that it would cease trying to place a national low-level dump site near Woomera in South Australia and was going to pursue sites on Commonwealth land, both onshore and offshore. These sites would now co-locate low-level and intermediate-level waste.

Just prior to the 2004 federal election, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, ruled out the Northern Territory for a dump site: ‘The Commonwealth is not pursuing any options anywhere on the mainland, so we can be quite categorical about that, because the Northern Territory is on the mainland.’ That was a revelation for him, I am sure!

In June 2005, the member for Solomon stated:

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.

In July 2005, the government did what it does best: it went back on its word. It announced that it would investigate three locations in the Northern Territory to determine the most suitable location for a waste dump. In contradiction of its pre-election commitment and in the face of strong opposition from the Territory government and local communities, it decided to impose its wish. The government introduced the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 to enable it to impose a radioactive waste dump on the Northern Territory. While I will not go into the technical legalities of the bill, I have to say that it excluded many of the procedural guarantees that normally allow a decisions to be made under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. In other words, it destroyed the existing or possible rights of Aboriginal people to fight against having a waste dump imposed on them. Indigenous people would have no recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the minister’s decision to put a waste dump in the Northern Territory.

Labor strongly opposed the 2005 bill because of the impact it would have had on the voice of the Indigenous people and also for several other reasons: firstly, the government broke its pre-election promise not to locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory; secondly, it tramples over the rights of all Northern Territorians by overriding any existing or future state or territory law or regulation which interferes with the Commonwealth’s waste dump site selection; and, thirdly, it disregards the International Atomic Energy Agency’s recommendations on good social practices like consultation and transparency in relation to nuclear waste. I say in passing that this government tends to ignore those sorts of social practices on a range of issues, not just this one.

It is important to note that we have discovered in Senate estimates that the government has had discussions with the Northern Land Council on possible sites for radioactive waste. Unfortunately, the government will not reveal the content of those discussions but, in departmental briefings, officers have not denied that the purpose of the 2006 bill is to facilitate or encourage a site nomination from the Northern Land Council.

The 2006 bill, which we are debating today, goes one step further than the 2005 bill. It takes away even more rights from traditional owners of land. This bill amends the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1997 to make land nominations non-reviewable under the act. So, if a land council or the Territory government nominates land as a site for nuclear waste, local traditional owners of the land have no right to challenge that nomination. The government would have us believe that this will not occur. In her second reading speech on this bill, the Minister for Education, Science and Training said:

Current provisions of the act set down a number of criteria that should be met if a land council decides to make a nomination. Importantly, these criteria include that the owners of the land in question have understood the proposal and have consented to the nomination, and that other Aboriginal communities with an interest in the land have also been consulted.

I can assure the House that, should a nomination be made, I will only accept it if satisfied that these criteria have been met.

This is a farce, because the provisions in the bill remove the judicial review rights and the bill specifically provides that a nomination which does not comply with these criteria will still be considered valid. This bill also conflicts with the criteria set out by the Northern Land Council resolution of October 2005, which states:

The Northern Land Council supports an amendment to the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 to enable a Land Council to nominate a site in the Northern Territory as a radioactive waste facility, provided that:

(i)

the traditional owners of the site agree

(ii)

sacred sites and heritage are protected (including under current Commonwealth and NT legislation);

(iii)

environment protection requirements are met (including under current Commonwealth and NT legislation);

(iv)

Aboriginal land is not acquired or native title extinguished (unless with traditional owners’ consent).

I can only imagine how difficult it might be for land councils in the real world in which we operate if they are faced with pressure from the government and offered large amounts of funding or other incentives while some Indigenous communities strongly object to their land being nominated as a nuclear waste dump. This has the potential to split Indigenous communities and put a lot of pressure on many people.

There is a further appalling aspect of this legislation. The legislation provides for Aboriginal land used as a radioactive dump to be returned to the traditional owners when it is no longer required and when it is considered ‘safe’. The problem is that the legislation does not guarantee the return of the land; it just outlines the process in the event that the Commonwealth chooses to return it. I ask a fundamental question: how long would it take for the land to be ‘safe’? As I understand it, a waste facility would probably be operational for 100 years, and then a further 200 years at least is needed for monitoring. So any possible return of the land to traditional owners could not occur for about 300 years. As the member for Calare said in his contribution to this debate just a few minutes ago, it seems that, under this government’s ideas, this land is basically destined to be polluted forever.

This bill takes away the rights of traditional landowners and gives the Commonwealth power to place nuclear waste dumps in the Northern Territory without consultation or the approval of traditional landowners. This leads to the question: how far is the government willing to go to place nuclear waste stations and dumps throughout Australia? The release of the recent nuclear inquiry report tells us that, if the coalition wins the next election, 25 nuclear power stations will be built around Australia—and obviously each of these power stations will produce nuclear waste. The government has refused to tell us where these power stations and high-level nuclear waste dumps will be based. Not one of the state or territory governments wants a nuclear power station or a dump, but that appears to make no difference at all to this government.

The government was quite happy to override state and territory rights to force harsh industrial relations reforms on all Australians, so why wouldn’t it do the same on nuclear power stations and dumps? As the member for Canberra, I cannot let this go without noting that the democratically elected government of the Australian Capital Territory has, on more than one occasion, been overruled by the Commonwealth government when it sees fit to do so. If the Commonwealth government does this on other issues, it is obviously going to be happy to do it on this issue as well.

We in the Labor Party have a very different view on energy. Labor believes that nuclear power is not the answer to Australia’s energy future. Our future lies in clean coal, gas and renewables, not reactors. I strongly believe that nuclear power is the wrong way for this country to go. The economics do not stack up. We have abundant low-emission energy resources. The issue of nuclear waste disposal is not resolved, and there are serious national security concerns. I think the government should adopt key measures from Labor’s climate change blueprint, including our plan for a national emissions trading scheme. Labor’s national emissions trading scheme is the right course for Australia’s environment, economy, jobs, homes and industry. In conclusion, I strongly support the amendment moved by my colleague the member for Jagajaga, which states:

... “ the House:

(1)

refuses the Bill a second reading, because of the Howard Government’s:

(a)

continuing arrogant approach imposing a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory without proper scientific assessment and consultation processes;

(b)

broken election commitments to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory;

(c)

overriding of many Federal, State and Territory legal protections, rights and safeguards;

(d)

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

(e)

continuing and aggravated disregard of the International Atomic Energy Commission’s recommendations on good social practices like consultation and transparency in relation to nuclear waste;

(f)

failure to deliver a national waste repository after ten long years in government, and,

(2)

in light of the Howard Government’s imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory community, and the recent High Court decision in the Workchoices case, expresses deep concern that the Howard Government will override community objections and State and Territory laws to impose nuclear reactors and high level nuclear waste dumps on local communities across Australia”.

In conclusion, my concern over and above all of those things is for the welfare of the people of the Northern Territory, in particular its Indigenous people. They do not deserve to be treated like this and they should not be treated like this. It is yet another of this government’s policies of disregard for our Indigenous people and their heritage. I am very concerned for their future should this go ahead.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some weeks ago the Prime Minister called for a debate within the broader electorate on nuclear energy. I think the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 presents the first opportunity for many members of parliament to actually make a contribution to the nuclear debate. I have listened to a lot of the people speaking to this particular amendment bill talking about various energy issues, even though they are slightly outside the scope of the bill, so I would like to take the opportunity to make a contribution in that vein if I may.

I listened with interest to the member for O’Connor’s speech earlier. He made some points about the generation of tidal power being used as a source of energy particularly in the Kimberley region. One comment of his that I thought was most appropriate was that using tidal energy, given the potential market for it from gas installations that are taking place, could in fact provide power equivalent to that from 2½ nuclear power plants. That gives us an insight, although we are not actually looking at this.

The Prime Minister and others in the parliament, mainly for objectives of short-term political gain through wedge politics, are looking at nuclear power as an issue that will help move the debate away from the problems that they confront with carbon emissions and emissions generally. But the member for O’Connor has given us this insight into some of the potential that is out there: the power of 2½ nuclear power plants—10 per cent of what the Prime Minister is talking about—could in fact be put in place by the use of the energy of natural forces, tidal forces.

I do not pretend to be an expert, but if we are looking at coming to grips with some of the global emission problems we need to note that there is no doubt about climate change. It has been recognised on the road to Damascus within the last month that climate change is a reality. It was not a few months ago, but apparently it is a reality now and I will accept that it is a reality. I think anybody that has seen Al Gore’s film would have thought three months ago that it was actually a cartoon. But what it says has now become somewhat of a reality or has been recognised as a reality in terms of global climate change, carbon emissions and the rest of it.

Even though the government has recognised that there is a global problem—the Prime Minister has recognised it, the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources has recognised it and the Treasurer has recognised it—that, in their view, the Kyoto protocol is not the way to go and that there are new and improved versions of how we get to utopian emission controls—and that involves clean-coal energy et cetera—I believe it is not addressing a number of issues.  To bung on the nuclear debate because they cannot think of anything better to do is not only an insult to the ingenuity of our scientists and research people but almost an abuse of future generations of Australians. There is no way that I as a member of parliament will support 25 nuclear power stations in Australia when we do not have to go down that road. The member for O’Connor spoke of one alternative. People have spoken about solar and wind energy, about energy from natural forces. The industry minister talks about geosequestration. There is clean coal technology and a whole range of other technologies. But, for some reason, all of a sudden, with recognition on the road to Damascus of climate change, we have the nuclear debate lumped into this debate about how we produce clean energy for the future.

I think we all understand what is happening—and if people do not then they should have a look at what is currently happening in England and in other parts of the world—that is, this amendment bill is about the storage of radioactive waste. The storage is for generations—for thousands of years, and for anybody in this parliament to suggest that that will be safe for thousands of years is an insult to our intelligence. More importantly, in my view, it takes a great risk with future generations of Australians who have not been born. We are in a position, because we are alive, to make decisions about the living conditions of others in thousands of years. I think we should take that more seriously than the short-term wedge politics that are now being played out with this nuclear debate and the political impacts it may have on the Labor Party, the Greens or whoever happens to be wandering past at this moment.

This is a very important issue and it is a debate where the truth should be told about the long-term safety of storage of radioactive waste. No-one can give an absolute guarantee that a substance that is dangerous for thousands of years can in fact be guaranteed to be in safe keeping. Even if carbon credits and emission payments in some way bring nuclear energy closer to being more cost competitive with clean coal, I do not think those decisions should be made just on an economic basis.

We have had the absurd debate in this place on renewable fuels, and the logic of the government is almost staggering. An arrangement has been put in place whereby in 2011 the production of ethanol and biodiesel, for instance, will be used as a source of taxation revenue for the government. For the Prime Minister and others to now be suggesting in one breath that we have to encourage renewable energy, we have to look at clean coal, we may even have to look at some way of structuring the market so that clean coal becomes dearer and nuclear energy suddenly becomes competitive, and then in another breath to be saying, ‘By the way, if you move into the renewable energy market and start producing ethanol and biodiesel in 2011 we will use you as a source of revenue for taxation purposes,’ is an absurd juxtaposition with respect to policy.

We have done similar things before in this parliament in terms of policy—I have mentioned this before—but I congratulate the Treasurer. Remember that superannuation was about encouraging people to save for their retirement. It was recognised that we were going to have an older population and that, if we did not save on the way through, a worthy policy objective would have to be put in place. As that was moving through the system Labor and Liberal governments decided to tax it—‘There’s a lump of money there, and these people are getting old and saving for their retirement; we’ll tax them on the way in, we’ll tax them while they’re there and we’ll tax them on the way out, and then we’ll also let all the superannuation brokers make a fortune on the way.’ That is an absurd message in terms of the original goal.

If we are really serious about renewable energies, why would we put in place a taxation regime in 2011 to tax them on their energy content? The government are comparing them to fossil fuels. If we are serious about renewable energy emission controls into the future and CO sequestration—all these sorts of things—the taxation regime should be turned around so that it actually encourages those people to do those things. We have this absurd position where we are doing the opposite.

Just to give you another example, yesterday in this parliament the member for McMillan asked the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources a question, aimed again at wedge politics—all very good stuff. I will repeat the question:

... I got this question for the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. Would the minister update the House on practical government initiatives to lower Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions?

And this is the minister who has suddenly recognised that climate change is upon us and that Al Gore’s movie was not a cartoon. The minister answered:

I acknowledge the hard work and support of the member for McMillan on our policies in relation to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. When it comes to practical measures and real results, there is no better example of those policies than the Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fund. Through this fund the federal government is now supporting five cutting-edge low-emission projects to the tune of $310 million. These projects cover a suite of technologies, from clean coal technology to renewable energy to coal seam methane—projects worth some $2 billion. On Friday, the Minister for the Environment and Heritage announced that the government would be supporting the world’s largest CO sequestration project. At its peak, this Gorgon project will be burying some three million tonnes per annum of CO every year off the coast of Western Australia.

That is new technology that the minister is talking about. He went on:

When this suite of technologies, demonstrated by the five projects, achieves its full potential, it is estimated that they could reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 50 million tonnes per year from 2030 …

What are we talking about nuclear energy for, when the minister, who had only a recent conversion, has been able to do that in a matter of weeks? Here we have to have this debate about 25 nuclear power plants because we want to have a little bit of a game with the Greens and the Labor Party. Much more important in my view—and, I think, in the view of the Australian public—is the longevity of the human race, not the longevity of the Liberal Party, the Greens or the Labor Party. I think we are all aware that the Independents will go on forever!

After a little bit of criticism of the Labor Party, the minister went on to say: ‘... while they ignore the opportunity to debate the potential for nuclear energy’. But the minister himself in the first part of his answer has given us the answer: we can ignore nuclear energy. We can achieve our Kyoto protocol emission controls through other areas. He has given us the answer. Then, at the bottom of his answer, he returns to the nuclear debate to create the wedge. I think it is pointless having this debate when we do not have to. If the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, within a period of weeks, can put in place these various funds—and I congratulate him: I think it is great and that more people should go to Damascus!—what can people, serious people like the member for O’Connor, do with tidal energy? What can we do with renewable fuels if we get serious about it?

The government has an MRET of 0.8 of one per cent of our petrol needs—350 million litres—by 2010. I think we are running at under 50 million litres now—and it is 2006, so 60 per cent of our time is gone. What could we do if we actually got serious about some of this rhetoric? There should be absolutely no need to talk about nuclear energy as an option when there are no guarantees that the waste can be protected for thousands of years and when we have solar energy, wind energy and renewable fuels that we have talked about earlier.

I was at a conference only last week in Canberra—the national carbon conference. A lot of the reason we are talking about nuclear energy again—other than the political reasons for doing it—is because of what we have done about carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Very few people have mentioned the potential in at least the short and medium term to store atmospheric carbon in perennial pastures and soils. We are here to talk about trees. Trees, in the short term at least, are emitters of carbon, then they start to take it up and, longer term, they emit again. With a combination of pastures and better land use management using what we in our region call no-till farming or conservation farming techniques, where you build up the organic humus matter in the soil, you can actually store carbon. Where is the research that is going on into that?

I asked the Prime Minister this question the other day: will he look at putting the farm sector on this carbon credits task force that he has put in place? Will he look at including the farmers in that debate? Because they could be part of the answer or the future research into perennial pastures and ways of building up organic matter or humus in the soil. That could be part of the answer. There are people who say it is not; there are scientists who say it is. There are trials in the United States at the moment where carbon credits are paid to farmers for sequestering carbon in their soils. I know there are problems with measuring, but these are the issues that we should be out there addressing. If there is a problem, let us solve it. If there is a question, let us answer it. But we seem to have gone past all of these natural options and straight to nuclear energy, because that is a short-term fix and we will not be here if there is a problem further down the track. I do not think that solves the problem at all.

I would ask the Prime Minister again to include the farm sector in the carbon credits task force, so that those people who are custodians of most of the land in Australia could be part of developing a market-driven structure so that we have cleaner energy and so that the emissions we produce are stored—some, as Minister Macfarlane says, well below the ocean or the earth; others may be stored in the top profile of the soil. We may change some of the land use management. We may have incentive payments that give carbon credits to the farm sector for storing carbon dioxide in the soil, as we are talking about doing in plantation forestry. There are many options out there.

In the renewable energy and renewable fuels debate, some government ministers quite often say that you cannot encourage ethanol and biodiesel because it would impact on the market. You cannot subsidise Australian production of ethanol from sugar or grain because it would be a blemish on the fuel market. What are they contemplating doing with clean coal emissions? They are penalising the coal producers in terms of carbon credits so that it will lift the price so that nuclear energy can become viable. If that is not impeding the market, I do not know what is. I would agree with that impediment being placed on the market, because it develops a situation where the polluter pays and where those who are removing the problem get the credit. The market is working. But you cannot have, on the one hand, this burning ambition to develop an artificial market to take care of the carbon dioxide problem and then, on the other hand, say we cannot have biofuels in this nation because that would be seen as a blemish on capitalism. That is an absurd suggestion. (Time expired)

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stated at the beginning of this debate that, in addition to the land hand-back, a purpose of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 is to prevent politically motivated challenges to a site nomination. The need for these provisions is as a result of the numerous threats by the Northern Territory government to oppose this government’s actions by using any means available, including legal challenges. Anti-nuclear green groups have also demonstrated a track record of taking legal action against government activities involving nuclear materials. None of these threats is based on any objective analysis of the safety of the planned waste facility. The safety and security of the facility are assured by the comprehensive and stringent Australian environmental and regulatory requirements that apply to it. Following completion of the scientific and technical works and presentation of a detailed assessment of any chosen site, people with a genuine belief that there are unresolved safety issues will have the opportunity to formally put their case to the independent regulators.

The act explicitly requires compliance with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998, which include requirements for public consultation to ensure that the waste facility complies with the highest standard of environmental protection and radiation safety. These threats of legal action are to stop the government getting to square one—that is, selecting a site to undergo full independent environmental and regulatory scrutiny. These threats are to stop Indigenous communities nominating their land for the facility, if they so wish. The allegation that this bill is about the government bullying the Northern Land Council into nominating a site is outrageous. Under the existing provisions of the act, the only way a nomination can be made is if a land council or the Northern Territory Chief Minister make it. It is an entirely voluntary process. This bill does not alter that requirement in any way.

With the assistance of my colleagues the member for Solomon and Senator Scullion, the original Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill was amended to allow land to be nominated for the waste facility. The Northern Land Council was supportive of the mechanism to allow this voluntary process. The Northern Land Council has indicated that there is interest amongst Aboriginal groups within its area in nominating land. Further, it has indicated that it is concerning for groups to permanently give up their freehold title to the land. This government is responding to those concerns in a sensible and constructive way. If those opposite consider that listening and responding to representations is the equivalent of bullying then I suggest that they need to raise their level of English comprehension.

The land councils have made it clear that they cannot and will not nominate Aboriginal land without the consent of the traditional owners concerned. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 lists the functions of a land council as including consultation with the traditional owners of Aboriginal land with respect to any proposal relating to the use of that land. The suggestion that a council would act against the expressed wishes of its constituents is offensive to that council. I repeat my assurance to the House that, should a nomination be made, I will only accept it if I am satisfied that the criteria listed in the act have been met. What the government will not accept is speculative legal challenges that are designed not to ensure that Aboriginal people have given informed consent to a land nomination but to frustrate and delay the establishment of the facility.

We already have three potential sites on Defence land being investigated. If we do not receive a nomination, we will go ahead on one of those three sites. Of course, there is another important element of the bill which is largely overlooked in this debate. It is to ensure that, should a volunteer site be selected for the facility, there is a mechanism for the land to be returned to its original owners or successors when the site is no longer required for the facility. This can only be done with the consent of those wishing to receive their land back. The government would welcome the opportunity to sit down with the Indigenous community that, unlike most of those opposite, is prepared to take a mature and responsible approach to radioactive waste management.

Labor are in no position to criticise the Howard government for acting to put beyond doubt the Commonwealth’s power for the safe and secure management of Commonwealth radioactive waste given their own failure to establish suitable radioactive waste management and facilities in their 13 years in office. The Australian government have had to take responsibility for waste management due to the state governments’ ideological and ‘not in my backyard’ approach to this issue. The states are all happy to benefit from the radioisotopes produced by ANSTO for the treatment of cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, but they refuse to take responsibility for the disposal of the waste that is a consequence of the production of nuclear medicines. So the question remains: what would a Labor government do with Australia’s radioactive waste? Would they store it in a safe and responsible manner? Where would they store it? What is their policy on this issue? It is time the Labor Party stopped their hysterical scaremongering and politicking on this important national issue. I commend this bill to the House.

Question put:

That the words proposed to be omitted (Ms Macklin’s amendment) stand part of the question.