Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am aware that in five minutes the House will adjourn, and I am extremely disappointed that we do not have the opportunity to more fully canvass what I think are very, very important matters for this parliament to discuss and debate—and definitely in the national interest. I had a full 20 minutes to speak on the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 and I now have about four.

The fact is that the 2007 inventory of radioactive waste shows that the Commonwealth currently holds a total of 3,820 cubic metres of low-level radioactive waste. This originates from many different areas—some of it from smoke detectors and other radioactive materials, including soils. Of course, we know that a lot of it comes from medicine that is used in hospitals. A full list can be found on the department’s website. One thousand, six hundred cubic metres is held in Lucas Heights, right in the middle of suburban Sydney; 2,010 cubic metres of contaminated soil is held at Woomera; 210 cubic metres of sealed radioactive sources are held at various defence sites; and further waste is held at various CSIRO sites. With respect to long-lived intermediate level radioactive waste—that is, radioactive waste that may require shielding for handling, transport and storage—the Commonwealth currently is responsible for 430 cubic metres, and the states and territories in total hold approximately 100 cubic metres.

This is always a very emotive area to talk about. Australia does not produce high-level radioactive waste at the present time. In 1999, as chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, I presented on behalf of that committee to the parliament a report on the replacement OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights. That report highlighted that radioactive material was—and unfortunately still is—held at more than 50 interim sites throughout Australia. The committee found that:

In many cases, the waste is held in temporary storage, in buildings neither designed nor located for long term storage.

As part of that report, the committee recommended that ‘a national repository should be a high priority’. In fact, the search for a suitable site to build a national repository commenced in 1992. The honourable member for Hotham, Simon Crean, the then primary industries minister, was responsible for the initial surveying.

The sites around Australia include suburban hospitals, not just city-based hospitals. The headline of the Northern Territory News on 4 March 2010 is an exemplar as to how we should be considering this matter. The headline read ‘Radioactive waste in hospital basement’. Ad hoc and temporary storage areas are unsatisfactory. The coalition government took action on this issue, legislating for a national repository—to move radioactive material out of our suburban hospitals and into a purpose built facility. That legislation is the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005. That legislation is enacted today; however, Labor’s policy is to repeal that legislation. Why?

On 22 October 2007, about one month before the 2007 federal election, the member for Kingsford Smith, now the environment minister, circulated a press release. In the press release, the member said:

No working family wants a nuclear reactor or a waste dump in their backyard.

Only a Rudd Labor Government will say no to nuclear reactors and the waste dumps that go with them.

Yet today, here we are considering the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010, presented by the Rudd government to recreate the framework to choose a so-called waste dump. Labor is proposing this bill to investigate and potentially develop a site—

Consideration interrupted; adjournment proposed and negatived.

Labor is proposing this bill now to investigate and potentially develop a site that has already been put forward and can be investigated and developed under existing legislation. An area known as the Muckaty Station site, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, was volunteered by the Ngapa people and the Northern Land Council under the process in the existing legislation. Under this bill that nomination will remain. In a recent interview on ABC radio, the Minister for Resources and Energy said:

We will proceed firstly with the only voluntary site that we have, and that goes to the Ngapa land with respect to the Muckaty station.

The Northern Territory News summed up the situation in their article ‘How Canberra has wasted territory’ published on 27 February this year. Paul Toohey wrote:

When in opposition, Labor promised to repeal the legislation … In one of the most plainly insincere examples of legislative slight of hand ever seen in this country, Labor this week did repeal the legislation – and reinstated legislation that gives an almost identical outcome. All this for the sake of appearing to keep a promise.

This is not the kind of action that one expects from responsible government on a subject that is already very emotive in the community and often argued without reference to the facts.

Interestingly, this bill actually expands the potential areas that could house a nuclear waste facility. Under section 3A of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005, only the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory or an Aboriginal land council can nominate a site for consideration. Under proposed section 6 of the bill, if a person holds an interest in land and the land is in a state, the Australian Capital Territory or the Northern Territory and the estate is in fee simple, the person who holds the interest can nominate the site as a potential radioactive waste facility.

Essentially, anyone who owns land in any state or territory can suggest their land for a waste dump. Quite literally, you could nominate your backyard. However, should you fail to consult with your neighbours as per clause 7(1) of the bill, it is not fatal. Clause 7(4) says that your failure to comply with clause 7(1)—that would be telling your neighbours you want to house nuclear waste in your backyard—does not invalidate your nomination. Further, the minister under clause 8 has ‘absolute discretion’—clause 7(4)—to approve the site. The minister for the environment may believe that no working family would want a waste dump in their backyard, but this bill certainly allows for that possibility.

As much as backyard radioactive repositories are a legal possibility under this bill, as I read it, I would defer to common sense. No minister would ever grant such an application. I urge other members, too, to take a common-sense approach. Nuclear medicine benefits over 500,000 people in Australia every year and that number will only continue to grow. We need to take a mature approach and leave out the hysteria and finally get a national repository to safely store our waste.

As my colleague the member for Kalgoorlie said in his speech earlier in this House, today we saw over 100 children come to this place from all parts of Australia to talk about what it is like to be a child with type 1 diabetes or juvenile diabetes. These children have this condition not through any fault of their own but through a fault in the genes and a pancreas that fails to function properly. Last night we were fortunate to hear from some of the best medical researchers this country has. I know this is moving slightly from the topic of this bill, but we do have a very progressive nuclear medicine facility in this country. We have some of the best researchers in the world and nuclear medicine has become a fact of life. Very few of us remain untouched by the benefits of nuclear medicine. I am sure that someone in most of our families or circles of friends has had that benefit. It is simply closing our eyes to the reality that we cannot continue to store the waste material that comes from modern medicine, and particular from nuclear medicine, in city hospitals and in other city based repositories around this country.

It makes sense for us to talk factually about this matter in the community, to let the community know that this material has been stored at Lucas Heights, right in the middle of suburban Sydney, since the 1950s. To my knowledge, there has never been a serious problem with that. There has never been a serious breach of security or an episode that could give rise to a lack of public confidence in our capacity to store this material safely. But there simply is not enough room, from a practical point of view, to continue to store the material there. It certainly should not continue to be stored, as I said, on hospital premises and other facilities in less than ideal conditions.

Common sense should prevail. I think those of us on this side of the House are very keen to see this legislation pass. As I said, this issue was canvassed before, when I was Chair of the Public Works Committee in 1999—in fact, we made it a condition of our report to the parliament that, before the new reactor went into Lucas Heights, before the old reactor was replaced, we wanted the government to identify at the very least, a site where radioactive material could be safely stored. So I would just urge everyone to have a cool head on this, to get out in the community and talk factually about the issues and to make sure that this country can properly deal with its radioactive waste.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I express my appreciation to the members for Groom, Flynn, Tangney, Solomon, O’Connor, Brand, Grey, Herbert, Kalgoorlie and Pearce for their contributions to a debate on what is a complex, challenging question for the Australian community to finally front up and resolve in a mature way.

Whilst I will deal with a few of the issues raised by the opposition members, can I say at the outset that I appreciate the support that is being given to the government by the opposition on this matter. It is time for Australia to resolve this issue—the process, as the member for Pearce point out, having commenced in 1988. We have to front up to the fact that as a mature society that wants access to, potentially, the best health care in the world, nuclear medicine has and will continue to be part of our future. Five hundred thousand Australians per year have access to nuclear medicine, and there is not a person in this House who does not have a family member or a personal friend who has not had access to nuclear medicine.

It is in that context that it is about time the hysteria and the misrepresentation of the facts by some in the community—including, I might say, the Greens, who simply do not want this issue resolved. I must say that I give credit to the Indigenous community. The Ngapa people have taken the time to go to Lucas Heights and properly consider the complex issues at hand. What is really worrying the Greens more and more in this day and age is that the Indigenous communities are now making their own decisions. For far too long, representatives of some environmental NGOs and the Green party have sought to unduly influence the thinking and decision-making processes of the Indigenous community.

Right across Australia at the moment, with respect to the nuclear repository in the Northern Territory—and the determination of the Ngapa people and the representatives of the Indigenous community in and around Broome with respect to a potential economic development around a gas hub—the Indigenous community is standing up and saying: ‘You wanted to give us independence and a capacity to make decisions about our land. We are now going to do it in the context of what is in our best interests and we are not going to be influenced any longer by emotive, hysterical contributions from some in the community.’ It is in that context that I approach this debate this afternoon.

With respect to the contribution of the opposition members, I simply want to make a couple of brief points. Firstly, the bill that we have introduced into this parliament is different to the one introduced by the Howard government in four significant ways. I will firstly go to the issue of procedural fairness, which will now apply to declarations and decisions made by the minister under this bill. Secondly, the bill will allow voluntary, nationwide nominations to be made if it is unlikely that a facility will be able to be constructed and operated on Aboriginal land that has been nominated under the bill. This would include the existing nomination or a new nomination on a site of Ngapa land on Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory. Thirdly, the government has removed from further consideration three sites on defence land in the Northern Territory, identified by the former government. These sites are: Harts Range-Alcoota and Mount Everard in the Alice Springs region and Fishers Ridge in the Katherine region. Fourthly, the bill no longer singles out the Northern Territory as the only location the minister can consider to establish a facility.

In relation to the procedural fairness provisions, I note that under the act introduced by the Howard government procedural fairness was expressly excluded from persons affected by the approval and selection of a site for a facility. Under this bill, procedural fairness will now apply to decisions and declarations made by the minister—including, the approval of land nominated by a land council, a declaration opening up a nationwide voluntary nomination process, the approval of any voluntary nomination if made, and a declaration to select any land at the site for a facility. This approach appropriately honours commitments made to the Ngapa traditional owners of the land at Muckaty Station, who are nominated land under the current act. Procedural fairness will apply to any new site nomination on Ngapa land on Muckaty Station. In addition, procedural fairness will apply if the minister decides to select any site on Ngapa land on Muckaty Station as the site for a facility.

I now want to briefly go to issues raised in a sincere way by the member for Solomon, and I note his concerns which I have listened to carefully. I can assure him, his constituents and the House that it is our intention to consult fully with all native title holders, including those whose land has been nominated to be used for a radioactive waste repository as well as those whose land would be affected. I note that the traditional ownership of land at Muckaty Station is not the subject of any dispute. I only ask that others who are giving their voice to this political dispute in another place have proper regard and respect for Indigenous decision-making processes, which they are seeking to dismiss and undermine despite years and years of struggle by the Indigenous community in Australia to establish such rights.

16:44:40

No-one is challenging the traditional ownership of the land nominated by the Ngappa plan on Muckaty Station. Traditional ownership was established through proper process under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 with the Aboriginal Land Commissioner conducting hearings and publishing a report in 1997 and the appropriate land council, the Northern Land Council, subsequently performing its functions in accordance with the act.

The purpose of this bill is, therefore, to finally establish a facility for managing at a single site radioactive waste currently stored at a host of locations around the country. I remind everyone it is our waste and our responsibility to store our waste because we want the benefit of nuclear medicine. Such a repository will ensure the safe and responsible management of this waste arising from medical, industrial and research uses of radioactive material in Australia. The bill ensures the Commonwealth’s power to make arrangements for the safe and secure management of radioactive waste generated, possessed or controlled by the Commonwealth.

Australia produces low-level and intermediate level waste through its use of radioactive materials. For the information of the House, the low-level waste includes lightly contaminated laboratory waste—such as paper, plastic, glassware and protective clothing—contaminated soils, smoke detectors and emergency exit signs, many of which we are familiar with because they exist in our homes and our workplaces. Intermediate level waste arises from the production of nuclear medicines, from overseas reprocessing of spent research reactor fuel—our spent research reactor fuel—and from disused medical and industrial sources such as radiotherapy sources and soil moisture meters.

The generation of low- and intermediate level radioactive waste is an unavoidable result of many worthwhile activities. Radioactive materials have a variety of important uses—just think about it—in medicine, industry, agriculture, environment and sterilisation as well as in our own homes. As I and others said in this debate, 500,000 patients annually in a population of 22 million benefit from a radioisotope in medical procedures such as cancer diagnosis and treatment. However, accepting these benefits also means accepting the responsibility to safely manage resulting radioactive waste. The two go hand in hand—and so they should. Australia also needs to comply with its international obligations to manage radioactive waste. As a party to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management we need to promote the consistent, safe and responsible management of our radioactive waste. We need a long-term solution to this unavoidable but not unmanageable issue. Let mature debate resolve this matter once and for all. I thank those who contributed to the debate in a positive way and I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.