Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The OPAL nuclear research reactor in my electorate of Hughes helps create lifesaving nuclear medicine supporting half a million medical procedures a year to treat conditions including breast cancer and lymphoma. When will the government tell the Australian people where the waste from this facility will ultimately be stored?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hughes for her question. To be fair to the member for Hughes, she hasn't been here for the entire time in which this has been a debate and has not been landed by this parliament. What this does is point towards the difficulty when it comes to a small amount of medical based waste—a small amount; a tiny amount—compared with the extraordinary amounts of waste that are created by a major nuclear reactor, let alone seven of them.

I note the Leader of the Opposition spoke about real estate values in Lucas Heights. Well, I say to the member for Hughes, when you do a direct mail, do one to Lucas Heights. It will be really easy to do one to Lucas Heights because there are zero places with Lucas Heights as a residential address—zero. In a moment of truth, the Leader of the Opposition said that real estate values hadn't gone down because it was close to there. He's right, because there are zero addresses. The medical reactor there plays an important role, just as people getting an X-ray and people engaged in that sort of activity—it's important for health care. We don't come at this ideologically; what we say is that economics should drive what happens with energy in this country, and the economics tell you that the cheapest form of new energy is renewables. They also tell you that the most expensive form of new energy is nuclear