Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill, which is one of Australia's largest public research organisations. It's primarily focused on nuclear research and technology, although, as this bill talks about, what it now requires and enables has grown beyond that, moving further into the research ecosystem and, hopefully, the commercialisation value chain.

ANSTO, as it's known, has a number of facilities—there's the head office in Lucas Heights, the OPAL research reactor in Sydney and the Australian Synchrotron in Notting Hill, which is actually in my electorate. I live in Notting Hill, a few hundred metres from the Synchrotron, which was a wonderful initiative of the then Brumby Labor government, who leapt out ahead of the pack and stole the march on Queensland where the Howard government was looking, for electoral reasons and against expert advice, to put the Synchrotron. ANSTO also, I discovered in my research for this bill this morning, has a number of other facilities that I haven't heard of or visited, so I'm putting them on my 'nerd out' list. They are the Centre for Accelerator Science, the cyclotron and so on.

I am a science nerd. I have a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Monash University, although, given my final year, some of the other activities I was up to and the distractions, it's probably a good thing for Australian science that I stopped!

An honourable member: Did you say 'science nerd'?

I said 'science nerd', and I'm a proud science nerd. I've also got a view, from that training and discipline, that knowledge, evidence and reason should be the primary underpinnings of public policy. It's an old-fashioned view, I know, in this era where there's a war on evidence and a war on facts by those opposite—for example, in relation to climate change. But, in relation to science and nuclear research, globally it's fair to say—that dreadful, tired phrase—that we do punch above our weight. That's no accident. Unfortunately, though, we're not great at commercialisation. If you have a look at the rates of commercialisation, unfortunately we're still down towards the bottom of the OECD for a range of reasons—not only scale but also incentives. I do hope that initiatives like this will help move us along, but we can't take them for granted, and we need to innovate to create new knowledge and to create value from that knowledge.

I read a beautiful speech, actually, on Friday morning by Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel. Those opposite would've heard of him—he gave them the report they asked for but now don't seem to want. They commissioned a report from the smartest scientist in Australia and seem to have sent it off to the dumbest side of their party room to try to resolve the issue. Nevertheless, in musing about science, this speech talked about the future and the role of science fiction. I won't go to the role of science fiction, but I do highly recommend that members read this speech. We were all emailed the speech. It really is a beautiful read. It's a fairly long speech.

There's some beautiful prose that I will draw on, because it gave voice to the optimism that I feel, which is that science, knowledge and research technology can continue to do amazing things for humanity. In his speech to the Cranlana Program last week, Dr Finkel said:

I start in the firm conviction that human beings can and do adjust to complicated and even dangerous technologies, given time.

Look at the motor car. Look at electricity. Look at aviation.

All of them were once seen as technologies far too dangerous to put in human hands, and yet we tamed them.

So we can and do harness our powers for good—like a child, learning to pick up the sweet guinea pig, and pat it nicely, without crushing it to death.

But soon we’re going to be a child with superpowers—a child who could crush civilisation in his fist before he ever gets the chance to grow wise.

But also, a child with superpowers who could do amazing things.

He then went on to paint three traps that we must avoid if we're to harness the incredible possibilities of modern, cutting-edge science—utopianism, dystopianism and atavism. I do recommend that part of the speech, particularly to those opposite—not the two members here, to be fair, but to some of your colleagues. Then, he concludes his speech by saying:

We are more capable and creative than we know.

We hold the pen and we write the future.

We can choose to be heroines and heroes.

Set out in that spirit, and I promise you, our greatest adventure has barely begun.

And our children will marvel, when they come to read our chapter … that we touched with our human minds, a distant tomorrow.

Certainly, out of all our research institutes, the work, the mission and the physical and human capital of ANSTO is central to this positive future. Nuclear science is, indeed, a superpower for humanity. It could crush civilisation, but it also does and can do more amazing things.

I have visited the Synchrotron a number of times. For any member who hasn't, I'd be happy to hook you up with ANSTO in my electorate. I try not to go too often lest I become a stalker! There are always new things being done there and new things to be seen. It's pretty much 24/7. I was delighted to see that the Commonwealth, in the last budget I think, finally came through, after a few years of negotiation, on a 10-year block of recurrent funding. ANSTO and the Synchrotron are now in this perverse reality, for most agencies, where they've got the recurrent funding locked in and now they're out scouting for capital. Usually, it's the other way around for new beamlines. Hopefully with the next budget industry, universities and the Victorian government will get the new beamlines.

I also visited Lucas Heights last year. I heard about their work and the value created there and their exciting plans. The new nuclear medicine manufacturing capabilities will meet Australia's growing needs and, economically, will be a boost in helping to meet the global hunger for nuclear medicine and isotopes and so on that are in short supply. I was briefed on the plans to develop this innovation precinct—centred there but it also has national benefits, for the Synchrotron and for universities nationally and in New Zealand. This bill provides for an innovation precinct at Lucas Heights but also, importantly, a potential for similar precincts at other sites around Australia that ANSTO controls, now and into the future. The precinct clusters together subject-matter experts, scientific partners, high-tech businesses and industry and graduates, and uses all of ANSTO's capabilities, those human capabilities and knowledge but also the research infrastructure, to create an innovation ecosystem. It's a really clever and well-thought-out proposal.

I commend ANSTO on the work they have done as an agency in building that case with evidence but also on building it within government. Very cleverly, they've had a number of events here at Parliament House and brought members along as well as the local community. Co-location in the precinct is intended to reduce and remove barriers to mobility for STEM professionals between sectors, agencies and universities. It's that kind of research ecosystem which the modern theory says is particularly critical for cross-pollination and collaboration across disciplines, and for that more fluid work and interrelationship between those who create knowledge and those who seek to commercialise it. Labor commends the government for backing this legislation and supports the precinct because, of course, it was first raised by Senator Kim Carr, the Labor shadow minister, when he was the minister in 2011. Labor expressed this in its Australian jobs plan list in December 2012, and it was commendably picked up in the current government's climate statement in, I think, 2015. So, that bipartisan support has certainly gestated along the way.

The Graduate Institute is an important and critical part of the precinct proposal. It is distinct although critically related. It's a formal training program for researchers, which will see 300 to 400 postgraduate and postdoctorate researchers as part of the institute. The research will be conducted in Sydney at Lucas Heights, at the Graduate Institute there, but also in Melbourne, at the campus in my electorate, at the Synchrotron. It is right next door and across the road from Monash University. They've done a lot of good research in looking at the best such precincts and institutes around the world. It's drawn, particularly, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, one of the world's leading universities on that model. Students will stay enrolled at their universities but the supervision and access to infrastructure can happen at ANSTO. You will get top research students and postdoctorates from universities all over Australia and New Zealand, working side by side but still supervised, I guess, and issued with degrees and qualifications by their universities.

ANSTO already works with 40 Australian and New Zealand universities, and several universities have expressed interest in being formally part of ANSTO's Graduate Institute. It's a very clever model. It won't confer the degrees, but the knowledge and education-intensive hub for STEM and nuclear medicine is important for research in its own sake, for development of skills and for help to commercialise in the precinct. Also, this research is global. It provides a hub for connections with others around the world working on similar problems and challenges.

With that as the context, the bill itself formally broadens ANSTO's mandate. There is a new definition of 'scientific research, innovation and training', which is broader than the current narrow restrictions in relation to nuclear science and technology—which, largely, ANSTO has outgrown. The world is not so linear and segmented now, so it needs a broader definition. The bill replaces the words 'on a commercial basis' with 'whether or not on a commercial basis', which gives ANSTO the necessary flexibility in its functionality without requiring that everything has to be on a purely commercial basis. This makes sense, and allows ANSTO explicitly, in a new subsection, to share its knowledge, expertise, equipment, facilities, research, property and so on to other entities, whether or not those entities have a direct connection or sit solely within the nuclear science and technology silo.

I think this bill clearly is of national importance. If you haven't been there, do make the time when you are in Sydney to visit ANSTO for a couple of hours. The government relations team are great and they're passionate about sharing their knowledge and showing you around. It is not just the nerdy science bit that is exciting; it's seeing their entrepreneurialism for spotting market opportunities to create economic value and revenue. It will make any little Treasury bureaucrat's eyes light up with joy, seeing them thinking about revenue streams and so on.

On a parochial note for my electorate, I point out that the proximity of the Australian Synchrotron to Monash University, my alma mater, is of enormous value not just to the City of Monash but to that whole south-east Melbourne precinct. In coming years we will be looking for other places—knowledge hubs and clusters—around the country, and I think that Monash precinct is fast emerging as one of the most exciting innovation precincts. We have the new heart hospital being co-located with the teaching and research hospital and we have the Australian Synchrotron, which does so much work around cancer treatment, protein structure types and creating world-first drugs. There is some fascinating stuff—which sounds a bit scary—about treating actual patients and experimenting with new treatments for people in incredible pain with bone cancer. There is also the physical side of things. They use neutrons from the OPAL to test the integrity of materials—turbines, bridges, pipes and aircraft engines. They test refurbished power station turbines and give a subatomic seal of approval, if you like, that they are fit for purpose. They are helping water resource management in the natural environment stream of their work, and so on.

So, in a national sense as well as a parochial sense, I think ANSTO's work is exciting. It is important and deserves airtime and a record of our commendation in the House of their new mission to create knowledge and wealth for the country.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Bruce for making the most sensible speech I have heard him make in parliament. With the exception of the giggle-worthy comments at the beginning of his speech trying to critique the government, I thought it was otherwise quite a commonsense approach, and I would like to congratulate him on it.

At the end of the day, we are talking about a bill here relating to nuclear science. A lot of people in Australia would hear those words and think that the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017 must be esoteric in some shape or form. Often, people think that nuclear science has very little to do with their daily lives or even their long-term interests. At one fundamental level, that's pretty understandable and perhaps inevitable. Nuclear science is the pursuit of a tiny minority of unbelievably intelligent people, dealing with matters—and with matter itself—that very few of us could even begin to comprehend. To the vast majority of us, nuclear science can seem incomprehensible. Say the word 'nuclear' in Australia and thoughts of nuclear weapons will be immediately invoked in many people's minds. It will immediately trigger debate and, for some, concern. But people rarely think of the more benign and beneficial aspects of nuclear research. However, this bill encourages us to do just that and provides greater flexibility to promote nuclear research and direct collaboration with universities via minor amendments to the legislation of 1987, which established, and continues to govern, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, ANSTO, as a corporate Commonwealth entity.

The amendments reflected in this bill are necessary not just because of the positive outcomes and direct impacts here in Australia but also in light of Australia's longstanding participation in this science. The obvious example to point to is health. A statistic I read today that I would like to repeat in this House because I found it amazing is that around one-third of all medical procedures now conducted in our hospitals have a nuclear science component. One-third involve radiation or radioactivity as a diagnostic or even therapeutic tool. On average, every one of us at some point in our lives will have a brush with radiopharmaceuticals and nuclear medicine. Applications are extremely broad. Nuclear medicine is relevant in sectors from cardiology to paediatrics to psychiatry. Some cancers are now being detected two years earlier than they otherwise would have been thanks to nuclear medicine. And such early diagnosis obviously saves lives. There are a vast range of procedures, including irradiation of bones and tendons that are intended for transplants or grafting. Irradiation is also used for sterilisation of bandages, cotton tips and other materials used for implants. Bone imaging can be used to diagnose stress fractures and is widely used not only in our hospitals but by vets, especially in the horseracing industry. The list of medical benefits which have real application to our lives is all but endless.

Another area that benefits from nuclear science is in fact food safety. The radiation of foodstuff at safe levels, far too low to induce radioactivity, can and does make both domestically produced and imported foods safer to eat and for longer. An extension in agriculture involves balancing the use of our precious water resources with maximum productivity. Grape growers, for example, optimise their crops when water is delivered to their vines at precisely the right time and in the right quantities. Nuclear moisture probes pushed into the soil provide extremely accurate data to enable irrigation that is just right, generating big boosts in overall productivity, profit and sustainability. Similar technology is being applied to many other irrigated crops, with equally significant environmental and productivity benefits, which is a very significant thing in a country like Australia which is just so dry.

Other agricultural applications of nuclear technology include sterilised male fruit flies released into the wild that do not breed. This technology, helping to control pests by sterilisation, has enormous extended benefits by helping to reduce insecticides in the environment and is now a very common means of controlling insects and pests worldwide, including right now in controlling fruit flies in south-east Australia.

Many other industries and procedures benefit remarkably from nuclear science. Steel rolling mills use superaccurate nuclear science enhanced gauges to get precisely the right dimensions in their products. The same applies in the accurate measurement of everything from the amount of product in soft drink bottles to the precise composition of detergent ingredients and even jet engine fuel.

Closer to home, smoke detectors rely on nuclear science, with tiny amounts of radioactive materials measuring the quality of the air, triggering that lifesaving beep exactly when it's needed. Even watch faces that glow in the dark owe that glow to very, very small amounts of radioactive material. And the now ubiquitous personal computer and many other electronic devices rely on silicon chips that have been irradiated in a way that turns atoms into phosphorus, enhancing the semiconducting capability of the chips. The mantles used in gas lanterns that have lit many a camping trip, microwave ovens, electric lights and car windshields all owe something to nuclear science.

I could go on and on, providing a long list of examples demonstrating how peaceful nuclear science and research is contributing to our daily lives and to our industries in positive ways and is very often unrecognised outside the immediate environment in which they have their impact. It should be a source of pride to Australians that our nuclear scientists and our nuclear facilities, restricted as they are, have been significant players in the field at a global level for so many decades.

The principal use of our first reactor at Lucas Heights from the late 1950s when it was commissioned was for medical purposes. Its purpose was to produce neutrons for the production of nuclear medicines and for other civil scientific uses, which has led to countless lives saved and massive contributions to industry. We produce our own nuclear medicines and have done so for a very long time. The successor to Lucas Heights, the OPAL reactor, opened at the same site in 2007 and for the same purpose. It's a state-of-the-art facility, one of the best and most important of its type in the world. And the science that's being applied there today accounts for 60 years of Australian expertise in the production of nuclear medicines, industry technologies and academic research. OPAL will, it's expected, become a major source of supply of nuclear medicines globally. A former major supplier, a reactor in Canada, closed last year, and a number of others worldwide are ageing, so we have increased our capacity and our output to mitigate a potentially serious global shortfall. This is also, as a residual benefit, good for the Australian economy.

This bill seeks to further leverage our experience and the quality of our contribution in nuclear science. We are globally recognised as a significant player in this space, albeit from the exceedingly narrow base of a single nuclear reactor. The government wants to enhance our contribution because we have, in our science community, in our population, the innovative capacity to do so at a level that can lift our already significant reputation, based on real achievements, up to even higher levels and continue to deliver tangible benefits. We want more to flow from that expertise—more life-saving breakthroughs in medicine and more benefits for agriculture, the environment and industry. This bill gives ANSTO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the legislative flexibility it needs to develop that opportunity by establishing an innovation precinct comprised of three elements—a graduate institute, an innovation incubator and a technology park—to better enable ANSTO to boost outcomes by sharing the knowledge, facilities and properties it has with other entities and individuals, and to become an even more effective conduit between research, industry and universities.

The specific proposal facilitated by this bill—to establish an innovation precinct at ANSTO's Lucas Heights campus—aims to crowd in scientific partners, knowledge-intensive businesses, high-tech industry and STEM graduates from around Australia's regions into a premium nuclear facility and also a hub of knowledge. This is by no means an insignificant aim. Once established, the ANSTO innovation precinct will become the world's first nuclear science and technology incubator—innovation that is in lockstep with the government's National Science Statement and the objectives of our National Innovation and Science Agenda. These reforms are key to the coalition's policy and vision. Whether it be for the defence industry or nuclear science, our aims are the same, and they are to drive growth in our capability and our economy, and to create jobs through investment and ongoing innovation. It's no wonder, therefore, that members opposite do support this bill; it's no wonder that, in consultation with industry groups, universities and local governments, they were all excited about this new vision for ANSTO. It's hard not to be. The potential here is unmissable. The only exception to this, of course, are the barking-mad Greens, but that should go without saying.

This is all good news, but there is a further imperative, and that is the need to capture and hold new technology and skills in Australia. As Australia has, to date, sought to deny itself a nuclear energy sector at even a minimum level, we lag behind our peers in the application of the technology in that regard. If we are, however, to continue down this path or, if, indeed, we decide to seriously explore the nuclear option for energy purposes, then a small but highly capable and well-resourced nuclear science based expert group will keep open a better range of options for our country. In this 21st century, the pace of knowledge generation and the application of that knowledge is 'blurringly' fast. If we want to stay in the main game, we have to accelerate, because standing still is never, never an option. It is for that reason that I commend the bill to the House.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fairfax for his comments. I unequivocally support the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017 and recommend it to the House. This bill will enable ANSTO to expand its operations, improve its research, increase both its pre- and post-graduate training opportunities in nuclear physics and nuclear medicine, provide high-technology jobs and increase flexibility to adapt to changes and opportunities which are occurring on an almost daily basis in this high-technology field. It will help to promote the innovation precinct in southern Sydney—a concept first conceived and introduced by the Labor Party, under Senator Carr, as the then minister for industry, in 2011—and provide export earnings and high-value jobs in the technology of the present and the future. It will also help, very much, to promote post-graduate education in nuclear science and nuclear medicine in a sustainable and innovative manner to which a larger student group will become available and provide outstanding, I'm sure, research in the future.

A little bit of history is important. Australia has led the world in many ways in nuclear physics and in nuclear medicine. ANSTO began in 1949 as an industrial committee, which evolved into the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. It has had many outstanding scientists since. The AEC started in 1953 and it was replaced by ANSTO in 1987. The first nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, the HIFAR reactor, was switched on by the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, on Australia Day 1958. The present OPAL reactor, the Open Pool Australian Lightwater reactor, was opened in 2007. As well as providing radioisotopes for medical use, OPAL is invaluable in research, industrial applications, material analysis, industry, agriculture and many other situations. It is state-of-the-art technology and is staffed by incredibly talented scientists.

As well as the facilities at Lucas Heights, ANSTO operates the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne, which uses particle accelerators to produce a beam of high-energy electrons that travel at almost the speed of light, which is invaluable in material analysis, molecular biology and physics. Interparticle or molecular physics is used for highly technical research and has applications across a broad range of industries—agriculture, mining and medicine. It is another world-class high-technology facility.

ANSTO's OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights produces over two million doses of medical isotopes every year. About 80 per cent of nuclear medicine procedures use one particular isotope, molybdenum-99, which degrades to the medical isotope technetium-99. ANSTO produces molybdenum-99 from low-enriched uranium targets in its reactor. Most of the isotopes are used in Australian hospitals and nuclear medicine facilities, but ANSTO also exports to the USA, China, Japan and South Korea, with increasing interest in many other countries. There previously has been a shortage of supply of molybdenum-99. When I was working at the children's hospital and at Campbelltown Hospital at that time—2009 to 2011—we had a shortage of isotopes available for medical use and it was quite a problem. This was thought at that time to be due to older nuclear medicine plants closing down. But there are now looming shortages, because most of the plants that produce these medical isotopes are reaching the end of their productive lives. ANSTO's new facility will help fill some of that gap.

The new facility, including with its nuclear waste plant to capitalise on processing of nuclear waste, will produce almost 30 per cent of the world's requirements for molybdenum-99. We rely on our nuclear medicine physicians to give us much-needed information about an increasing spectrum of illnesses, so the use of nuclear medicine will increase around the world, particularly for our northern neighbours. They will require increasing sophistication of their medical facilities and the requirement for medical isotopes is going to increase. In paediatrics in particular we use nuclear medicine quite a lot, because we find it much better in terms of requirements for invasive procedures. Nuclear medicine can often avoid some of these. An example is investigating a child for a possible bone or joint infection. We use nuclear medicine scans to try to see if the infection is in the bone, where surgery is not recommended, whereas infection in the joint requires immediate surgery and drainage. Nuclear medicine can be very important in discerning the differences. It can also help tell us whether the child has an infection or an inflammation, such as caused by juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. We use nuclear medicine techniques to look for collections of purulent material, collections of pus, to drain that aren't immediately obvious. So it is a very important non-invasive investigation.

We use nuclear medicine in medical oncology in children, particularly for some of the rarer childhood cancers, such as neuroblastoma or Wilms tumour, a kidney tumour. We also investigate for subtle changes in kidney function, particularly kidney scarring, which can follow urinary tract infection, and can dictate best methods of treatment for these conditions. So, in paediatrics we use nuclear medicine a lot. Throughout Australia, the isotopes we use come from the Lucas Heights reactor.

In adult medicine, we also use nuclear medicine isotopes increasingly in things like cardiovascular disease. Cardiac scans can give us a lot of information in a non-invasive way about coronary artery function and myocardial heart muscle function. It can tell us whether we need to consider things like coronary artery bypass surgery or valve surgery or whether even more-invasive procedures are required. Nuclear isotopes are also used in the investigation of thyroid disease. Indeed, iodine-131 is sometimes used in treatment of hyperthyroidism and thyroid cancers. This is another isotope obtained from the nuclear facilities at Lucas Heights. It is also very useful in investigating people for metastatic malignancy. This is very important in determining staging of different cancers and in treatment options. So, increasingly, we are using nuclear medicine investigations.

There is a burgeoning field now of using targeted radio isotopes attached to molecules that can be injected and targeted in a more localised way of providing radiotherapy in some forms of cancer. A classical one now is in the treatment of prostate cancer, where a molecule can have a radioactive isotope attached to it that is concentrated in bone and the isotope then attacks the prostate cancer in the bone, which can be very important in particular for relieving the bone pain that occurs in metastatic prostate cancer. Most of us, unfortunately—or fortunately, in many ways—will require nuclear medicine investigations at some stage in our lives. The technology and the types of investigations are rapidly developing almost every day.

According to the OECD, their nuclear energy agency feels that almost all the current major radioisotope-producing nuclear reactors in the world will cease production over the next 10 years. We've spoken about the 2009-11 crisis in availability of nuclear medicine isotopes, and ANSTO's new production will enable us to provide a significant proportion of the world's global demand in the next few years, increasing the availability of high-technology jobs and increasing export earnings for the country. The Labor Party thoroughly recommends that this bill be passed to enable ANSTO to compete on a global basis for these sorts of technologies.

In industry, the need for radioisotopes is also growing. The development of the ANSTO facility as well as its postgraduate and graduate teaching facilities will further help us meet demand in this burgeoning technology, as will the development of the Synroc waste processing plant, which is part of the redevelopment of the nuclear hub and will be completed in 2019. That will provide us with even more jobs. Labor has for some years promoted the concept of higher-technology, value-added jobs in technology hubs, and this is a really great example of that. The government is to be commended for doing what it can to try to help this get developed. We feel that this current bill will help drive improvements to ANSTO's ability in research and the development of high-technology jobs and export earnings, and also with its collaboration with private industry.

We must continue, of course, to provide supports to ANSTO to continue to upgrade its facilities, also including the Synchrotron, in Melbourne, for which the government has just provided some extra funding. But every year we need to continue to update our progress in these areas. I thoroughly commend this bill to the House.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to commend the member for Macarthur for his speech on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017. To have such an educated medical man give such convincing, thorough and detailed approval of the work ANSTO does is truly refreshing, especially when we hear in parliament some of the nonsense that is peddled by Greens members. I say that as the only member in this parliament who actually has a nuclear reactor in his electorate, and I say that with great pride, because ANSTO truly does world-leading research that plays a valuable, important role in the health of all Australians.

As my good friend the member for Macarthur noted, on average every single Australian can expect to have a nuclear medicine procedure that uses radioisotopes for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes at some stage in their life. On average, we'll all need those vital, lifesaving nuclear medicines that Lucas Heights provides. Yet we have some misguided Greens who sit in this parliament and want to close it down. What a tragedy that we see such misguided people who fail to look at the evidence and fail to look at the science.

But getting back to the specifics of the bill, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017 will provide Australia's nuclear science and research agency, known as ANSTO, with the flexibility required to successfully establish an innovation precinct adjacent to Lucas Heights campus in southern Sydney, in my electorate of Hughes, and will potentially establish additional precincts in association with other campuses. This is fantastic news for my electorate. Having that innovation hub, that innovation precinct, next to ANSTO will enable hundreds if not thousands of high-paying research jobs in the southern part of Sydney, in the electorate of Hughes. I am very, very excited about the future for nuclear medicine and the work ANSTO will do in the future.

We know that one-third of all procedures in modern hospitals involve radiation or radioactivity. The science tells us that these procedures are safe, effective and don't require anaesthetic, and they are useful for a broad spectrum of medical specialities—from paediatrics, which I note the member for Macarthur was very much involved and has great expertise in—to cardiology and psychiatry. This is something that we as a nation should be proud of. In fact, I note that one of Canada's large nuclear facilities is closing down. This will enable Lucas Heights to increase its isotope production from about 550,000 a year to around 10 million. A quarter of the world's demand will come out of the ANSTO reactor at Lucas Heights in my electorate, something that I am immensely proud of. Everyone who is involved in ANSTO should also be immensely proud.

The issue we have had over the years is that we simply haven't had the nuclear research technology that we should have, despite the great work that ANSTO has done. Australia, with our deposits of uranium, should have been one of the global leaders in nuclear technology across the board. But the sad thing was that, when we constructed the new OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights, the country that had the technology to build it for us was Argentina. In fact, we didn't have the technology or the scientists here in Australia. We had to go to Argentina in South America to get the technology that we needed. That was because of the misguided scare campaigns we had against the nuclear industry in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that prevented the development of a nuclear industry in Australia.

A very interesting article in today's Australiantalked about the future for nuclear power. This was written by a gentleman called Michael Shellenberger. He is a former renewables advocate and adviser to Barack Obama and was awarded TIME magazine's Hero of the Environment in 2008. He said:

Like most people, I started out pretty anti-nuclear … I changed my mind as I realised you can't power a modern economy on solar and wind.

He said:

Wind and solar are only useful for leveraging the fossil fuel mix … They have to have back-up, they are doubling the cost of electricity and they have big environmental impacts …

He said:

All existing renewable technologies do is make the electricity system chaotic and provide greenwash for fossil fuels.

He went on and said that opposition to nuclear was 'like a superstitious religious belief'. He said:

In what other issue does the science say one thing so clearly but such a vocal group—

referring to the Greens—

refuses to accept the evidence …

That is where we are. He concluded:

Nuclear is the only technology that can lift everyone out of poverty and reverse human impact.

Yet we, for some unknown or illogical reasons, have simply banned the development of nuclear power in this country.

If we are going to be serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, we simply cannot, as Mr Shellenberger notes, run a modern economy on solar and wind. This is the mistaken ideology that we have had behind the renewable energy target. I think we are now starting to see the results of that policy. I think by the time the history of this century is written, and someone sits down to look at all the policy decisions that have been made throughout this entire century, they will say one of the greatest policy mistakes this nation ever made was Kevin Rudd's Renewable Energy Target. It has caused absolute chaos in our electricity market. It has been the main thing responsible for lifting the price of electricity in this nation, taking what was once our nation's greatest competitive advantage—that of low-cost energy—and turning it into a competitive disadvantage. That is what it has done.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Get back to the point. Get back to the bill.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am getting back to the bill. This bill talks about Lucas Heights and the work they are doing in nuclear science. In the future this innovation hub will lead us to a greater understanding of nuclear technology. But the reason that we are actually behind in many aspects at the moment, and why we had to go to Argentina to get the OPAL reactor built at Lucas Heights, is our misunderstanding of nuclear power.

We have seen, as I said, the mess that the Renewable Energy Target has caused. If you want a practical example of the failure, just go and look at what has happened in South Australia. Here is a place that now has the proud title of having the highest electricity prices anywhere in the world. It takes a special level of incompetence to go down the track of imposing policies upon your state that give them the highest electricity prices in the world, yet that is what the Labor government has done in South Australia. You would think that, if you had the highest electricity prices in the world, the electricity would at least be reliable, but they've managed to give themselves not only the highest electricity prices in the world but the most unreliable electricity in this nation. We saw blackouts last Christmas. The Australian Energy Market Operator estimates that there is a 30 per cent chance that there will be further blackouts this summer in South Australia.

We've seen the publicity stunt they pulled, the idea that the world's biggest battery can somehow solve it. Look at the numbers for that completely and utterly farcical publicity stunt. It will produce 129 megawatt hours of electricity—129! How much electricity, in megawatt hours, does South Australia need on a hot day? They need close to 50,000. This idea that you can somehow have batteries to back things up is an absolute farce. Just look at the numbers: it will produce 129 megawatt hours out of a daily need of 50,000. For that, it's north of $100 million, and we don't even know what the cost is. Then they have to back that up with 200 megawatts of diesel generators, again at a cost to the taxpayer of over $100 million, that will burn through 80,000 litres of diesel fuel in an hour. If you want to generate electricity in the dirtiest way possible, you probably can't do worse than diesel generators that rip through 80,000 litres per hour, but that is what South Australia are doing.

You would think, holding that up, that everyone would see what an absolute debacle that is, that no-one in their right mind would copy South Australia and that we would thank them for the grand experiment they inflicted upon their people, because we have learnt what not to do. That is what common sense and logic say should happen, but instead we see Labor in Victoria saying: 'We want to copy South Australia. We'll go down the South Australian track, like lemmings off a cliff, and we'll copy South Australia's policies.' When Labor came to power in Victoria, they said it was their policy to get Hazelwood to close down, tripled the coal royalties and chased them out as quickly as they could. What has the Australian Energy Market Operator said of that mess, now they've chased Hazelwood out of town? What's going to be the result? The Australian Energy Market Operator has estimated that, this summer, the state of Victoria faces a 40 per cent chance of blackouts. Not only have they accelerated electricity prices and made them unaffordable to many but they've also given the state a 40 per cent chance of blackouts. You would think common sense, logic, everything that we've been taught, is to look at the examples. We look at the example of South Australia and we say, 'What an economic disaster; that's not what you do.' We look at Victoria—another lemming over the cliff. You see that you cannot go down the path of a 50 per cent renewable energy target. But in this federal parliament the alternative government, the opposition, want to do exactly that. They want to copy Victoria. They want to copy South Australia. They want to bring in a 50 per cent renewable energy target for this nation.

That is a recipe for the complete economic destruction and de-industrialisation of our society. But the Labor Party stand up in parliament and complain—we hear them complain—about how sad they are about the cost of electricity. Yet they have a completely illogical and incoherent policy that they're copying because they want to appeal to those Green, inner-city basketweavers for votes. They are selling out regional areas, selling out the working people of Australia, selling out the mums and dads and the pensioners in their pursuit of Green votes. That's what this parliament has descended into, where we see that policy from the Labor Party.

If we are going forward, we should have a look at what the options are. What is the nuclear option for our electricity generation fleet? Great research in this area is currently being undertaken. Small nuclear modular reactors of 20 and 50 megawatts are being developed. They're still several years down the track, but we should have that option in this country. We should keep all options on the table. We should take advantage of new technology as it comes along, not artificially force-feed higher-cost electricity options to the market because it will win Green votes in the inner city.

I am very proud of the work that ANSTO does. This bill will enable them to continue with their great work. It will bring many more jobs, highly paid jobs, to my electorate, and I commend this bill to the House.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a very important debate because the facilities that are managed by ANSTO are massively important research assets for our nation. It is hard to overstate the significance of these particular facilities. At the Sydney campus, there's the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, and, at the Melbourne campus in Clayton, the Australian Synchrotron, which are, as I said, vitally important research facilities.

I'm very pleased that I was able to visit the Synchrotron, at Clayton, in recent months to see some of the work that is being done there. Not everyone knows what a synchrotron is, of course. It's a massive facility, about the size of a football field—a great, big, round facility. What it does is speed up electrons so they're going almost at the speed of light and then it deflects them through magnetic fields, creating superbright light. Shooting off from the big, round Synchrotron are things called beamlines, which are big pipes, and that light travels down these big pipes.

'What on earth could that be useful for?' you might ask yourself if you're not a nuclear technology and nuclear science buff. Happily, for all of us, including me, the ANSTO website has a bit of information about the applications of the Synchrotron, and I was able to see some of them in person when I visited. Some of those applications are to biosciences, including macromolecular/protein crystallography and cell biology. When you can see through incredibly strong microscopes the work that's being done, the science that's being done, at this facility, it's quite incredible. Of course, medical research is a major use of the Synchrotron, in microbiology, disease mechanisms, high-resolution imaging and cancer radiation therapy. It has applications to the environmental sciences; agriculture; minerals exploration; advanced materials, like nanostructured materials; engineering, such as imaging of industrial processes in real time; and forensics, such as the identification of suspects from extremely small and dilute samples.

You can tell from what I've said that there's an incredibly diverse and varied group of applications for the Australian Synchrotron, so it was particularly delightful to be able to get the opportunity to meet with ANSTO and have a look at the facilities. These are facilities that a range of Australian universities seek to use for their own research work. I think ANSTO is a national treasure, and that is why I was so keen to speak in relation to this motion today. On the other campus, the Sydney campus, ANSTO has been expanding its activities, including a nuclear medicine plant, and this has tripled the production of molybdenum-99, of which there is a worldwide shortage. It is wonderful to see the nuclear medicine work that ANSTO is doing.

The aim of this bill is really to develop the Sydney campus into a major national innovation precinct. I was pleased to be able to attend an event here at the parliament that ANSTO conducted a little while ago to talk about their vision for this becoming a major national innovation precinct. It's important not just to think about the benefits that we get from the research that would be done by ANSTO but also to think about the benefits that would be obtained through collaboration at an innovation precinct. If you've been to Silicon Valley, for example, you would have seen that a lot of the work that gets done and the achievements that are made are because people who have the creativity and the right skills are in the same place at the same time. Collaboration does matter, and it's more likely to occur when you bring people together in a precinct. It is also important to remember the broader economic benefits of having good, world-class research facilities, not just because of the ability to commercialise the research that gets done in relation to these facilities but also because it provides opportunities for the local community to have flow-on or second-order benefits from the existence of a research facility or in this case an innovation precinct. It's part of the economic revitalisation of the area in which this innovation precinct is being proposed. When you look at experience in cities around the world, you see that where there's a university, a big research facility or an innovation precinct they stimulate other activities as well. People get excited and it really helps to bring the area to life. So it's a very exciting proposal for ANSTO but, more importantly, it's a very exciting proposal for the part of Australia in which the innovation precinct is intended to be built, down in Sydney.

So I support the proposal to develop the campus into a major national innovation precinct. Unfortunately, at the moment, as it stands the legislation governing ANSTO unduly restricts the scope and potential of that precinct. This bill would overcome this by allowing ANSTO to share its knowledge, expertise, facilities and property with other entities. These entities would not need to have a direct involvement in nuclear science or technology. That's an important point, because one of the benefits of innovation precincts is that they bring together so many different disciplines, skills and businesses that might not have anything to do with each other, but the communication and camaraderie that develops provides a spark of innovation. Who knows which ideas might come? Who knows which ideas might be developed? You could have an anthropologist working with a nuclear scientist, and the different perspectives they bring to each other can spark new and creative ideas. That's a very important thing.

This bill broadens the definitions of scientific research, innovation and training in the ANSTO Act so they are not restricted in that way to nuclear science and technology. The precinct will include a graduate institute providing research training for up to 400 postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows at the Sydney and Melbourne campuses. Again, very importantly, there are direct opportunities for research for postgraduate studies and postdoctoral research. It's very important that we broaden the opportunities that people can have from using ANSTO's facilities and assets. These facilities can make such a massive contribution to research in Australia.

Together, all of these changes in this bill will make it easier for ANSTO to cooperate with industry, as well as universities and other publicly funded agencies. That collaboration with industry is very important. We do need closer connections between industry and research in Australia. It's something that a lot of universities and other institutions have a strong history of doing. This isn't a comment intended to suggest in any way that only commercialised research or industry-connected research is valuable—I certainly don't suggest that for one minute. Most people in this place would have the view that blue-sky research—research that may not have any immediate foreseeable commercial application or industrial application—is still very important, because blue-sky research can lead to all sorts of world-changing ideas and studies. The recognition of the importance of blue-sky research does not, in my view, undermine the practical work that needs to be done in relation to building connections with industry. From my experience of talking to people working in science and in research, I think it is also quite satisfying to have connections with industry. One of the frustrations that can arise in purely academic work is that you see what needs to be done, but you're not necessarily translating it into getting it done; whereas when you do have industry connections there is a strong imperative for translational work to be done. That, I suspect, is quite satisfying for people—to see ideas and research in real-life application and making a difference to people's lives.

I'm quite excited about this bill. It's great to see the work that's being done to promote the links with industry and to promote the collaboration between research institutions and between Australian universities. As I said, visiting the Synchrotron was really an opportunity to see how different universities were using a piece of plant, or a facility—a very big and technologically advanced facility, but a piece of plant nonetheless—to come up with new applications to solve old problems and to look at things in different ways using incredibly bright light. I think this idea of inviting even more people in to collaborate more, to get more engaged and to work together is a very solid and sound one, and one that deserves support from across this parliament. I should say that this is the kind of exchange between sectors that Labor promoted in government, and we support this bill for those reasons. In fact, we also took to the last federal election a range of innovation policies in which we acknowledged and recognised the importance of bringing people together. I think that that remains such an important focus for innovation and research policy in this nation.

I am pleased to be able to support the bill and am very grateful for the opportunity to have spoken in support of it. I do wish the people at ANSTO well in actually executing the work to be done under this bill in creating an innovation precinct. They can rest assured they've got a good supporter in me—I've got my little ANSTO badge on for them! I do think it is important to promote the work that is done in the nuclear sciences, including nuclear medicine but not limited to nuclear medicine, here in Australia. We do have a lot to be proud of. We're a smart nation. We're a nation that can look forward to good, strong, quality research.

This has been a week of argument about our university system, and I don't necessarily want to repeat some of the concerns that I have about the impact of public funding cuts to universities and what that might do to overall university quality. You will have read the matters in the paper recently about possibilities for other cuts in the event the government's preferred package doesn't go ahead and some of the suggestions that were made there. I hope this is an opportunity for us to say, 'Actually, what we want to see is world-class research in Australia,' because we do have an advantage in it. We do have high quality, we do have the smarts, we do have great facilities, and we do have a tradition of supporting research and innovation here in this country. If we work together, we can see facilities like the wonderful ones that ANSTO has continue to become even greater assets to the Australian community.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all members who have contributed to this debate, including the member for Griffith who's just spoken and the member for Hughes who spoke so passionately just before her. We've heard a lot about research and innovation in this debate and, to that end, I want to compliment most earnestly the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Senator Arthur Sinodinos, and his assistant minister, the member for Reid, for what they're doing in this space.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017 makes minor but important amendments to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's governing legislation, the ANSTO Act. The amendments will allow our national nuclear science agency the flexibility to successfully establish an innovation precinct adjacent to its Lucas Heights campus in southern Sydney. They will also allow ANSTO to, potentially, establish additional precincts in association with other campuses. More broadly, the bill will facilitate enhanced collaboration between industry, universities, researchers and ANSTO across all its sites. Importantly, the amendments will only empower ANSTO to make available its expertise and equipment or lease its land and facilities to parties that have a science, innovation, high-tech manufacturing or technology development focus and related amenities, and not for unrelated general retail, office or residential purposes. The proposed ANSTO innovation precinct will co-locate and crowd in scientific partners, knowledge-intensive businesses, high-tech industry, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, and medicine graduates around Australia's centre of nuclear capability and expertise.

Close synergies and collaborations between our publicly funded research agencies, such as ANSTO, Australian universities and Australian business and industry are a national priority, and the minister and his assistant minister have certainly made that key to everything they talk about and everything they bring to the parliament. These are key to driving Australian innovation, and geography does matter for some innovation. Precincts can facilitate the sorts of collaborative relationships Australia needs if it is to innovate and grow. We all know that. As a parliament we want to remove any impediment that may restrict or discourage these relationships. This bill does just that.

ANSTO already contributes so much to the Australian community. On average, one in two Australians will benefit from the life-saving nuclear medicine produced by ANSTO. ANSTO's landmark and national research infrastructure, including the OPAL research reactor, the Australian Synchrotron and the Australian centre for accelerated science, are a crucial part of Australia's scientific, social and economic base. They enable scientists to tackle some of Australia's most pressing challenges, in areas as diverse as human health, the environment and solving complex problems for industry. Critically, they maintain a home-grown highly skilled workforce and help sustain Australia's competitiveness and global relevance. The adoption of this bill will allow ANSTO to deepen its impact and reach for the benefit of Australian innovation, education, business and industry. I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.